Two Decades of Grey: Grade School

When I was in kindergarten, my mother was in her early 40s. She was considered one of the older parents of that generation. She also had a very even sprinkle of salt and pepper grey hair. I have memories of her coloring it occasionally, but she wasn't diligent about it, and I don't think she wanted to be. I have a clear memory of a boy in my kindergarten class asking me if the woman picking me up was my grandmother. That was the first negative impression left on me regarding grey hair. I knew my mother had grey hair, and I knew it wasn't her original hair color. I'm not saying natural because natural changes...it's whatever grows out of your head. And I was intuitive enough to understand that visual greys led someone to think you were older than you actually were. This is one of the earliest moments where I planted an idea in my head: I wanted to have kids early. Mentally, I didn't want to be the mother of a kindergartener and being mistaken for her grandmother. 

I know he didn't mean anything by asking me that - it's an innocent question trying to clarify a potential confusion. But I also know as a young child myself, it left an impression, one that still trails me in my shadows. I see it first-hand now in my own kindergartener. She surprises me daily with the questions she asks me and random conversations we have.

***

I was in grade school when my mother found my first grey hair. I remember it as being 4th grade. My mother had just been diagnosed with cancer within the last year. She saw it one afternoon and said with a sad voice, "You have a grey hair already." Her words held the weight of someone who walked the exact same path - she indeed had. I still have a fear I will be in her shoes from the other side. 

Besides this memory, I don't actually recall my mother commenting on my grey hair for the rest of her life. Maybe she didn't because she knew what it was like to be the young girl with premature grey hairs. Maybe she didn't because she was busy researching and finding the best doctors to consult to help her fight for her life. Maybe she didn't because she didn't care, and there were only a few - literally, countable on one hand at the time. I think this has been a secret blessing because if I remember my mother commenting on this, it would have tainted our relationship even more. So I'm glad she didn't, or I'm glad I don't remember. 

***

Sometime in the last ten years, it hit me that my mother had youthful skin. Even despite losing her hair due to all the treatments she was undergoing, her face looked young. I remember taking one of the last photos I remember with her on my 11th birthday. And for the longest time, it was very hard for me to look at the photo because all I saw were the effects of the cancer, the chemo, the radiation, and I didn't see the mother I knew as a child. 

That's actually not the last photo we have together. I found one from the summer I won grand prize at a piano competition. It was two years before she died. She'd lost even more hair. But she was happy, and she was next to me. Her face is so cute. 

I used to be ashamed of these photos. I didn't want to see my mother in photos because it solidified the horrors and the fears of what she experienced. It made my own trauma and scars that much more real. But I cherish these now. 

I miss the girl in these pictures. She was young, naive in the right ways, and simple. It's sad how with wisdom and knowledge come a layer of heaviness and burden. 

That was middle school.