Pandemic hair

 I've always thought of myself as a brunette. The very picture of me on a swing set in a neighborhood playground circa 1984.

It wasn't a particularly flattering photograph: Me hunching forward through the swing's chains, unsmiling, wearing a ratty old flannel shirt; The photographer aiming the pocket camera up from the dust of the next swing's foot space.

But for whatever reason, that picture -- my face awash in the hot light of a flash and my hair as black as a shadow -- is frozen in time as my mind's permanent self-image.

At least it was until my youngest went to Kindergarten. Newish to motherhood, but still long in the tooth, it was just a few weeks of Thursday volunteering when one of his cherubic classmates mustered up the courage to ask me a question. “Are you his Grandmother?"

The innocent inquiry stung as if a crayon-shaped dart had been plunged into my psyche. It pierced the protective bubble that had congealed around my ego until what almost spilled forth was ... well ... a torrent of unsaid thoughts that would have been impolite if not entirely unkind.

The teacher didn't say anything either, but I could see from her pained expression that she would have hugged me if I had been within arm's reach.

Nobody would have blamed me for leaving that den of primary colors and puzzling questions and heading directly for aisle 12 of the nearest drug store, where I would try to choose which box of unnatural color suited me best.

I never thought it would be whatever color this is right now.

The two curtains alongside my face, emanating from a widow's peak at the top of my forehead, are a solid steel gray. Silvery strands throughout catch the light and illuminate like frost on the grass. The haircutter complimented me on the nature of my gray, battling back from long-abandoned attempts to restore it to former glory.

 From the chin down, however, my hair is the color of straw. It even has the same crinkly texture that threatens to fracture and break just by grazing it with my hand as I adjust my shirt collar. I pinch the ends between my fingers, and little serpent tongues slither back at me. It's been so long since my last haircut, I barely remember it.

Once a week or so, I comb out a mat that forms at the base of my skull after a good night's sleep. The rest of the days I just pretend my hair has the body or I hide it under a hat.

This is what happens when time and neglect conspire with the elements to undo whatever magic comes from mixing potions contained in a box of drug store hair color.

Not that my tresses experienced any less stress before the pandemic.

I don't know what color to call it should someone official ... someone, say like the Identifying Officer from the Department of Descriptions, were to try to fill in a box.

Eye color? Brown.

Height? 5'4" with a stacked heel.

Hair color? Let's just call it Manic at the Disco?