Adventures of a Middle-Aged Woman on a College Campus or How To Create a Farcical Scene in a Natatorium

I stepped out of the shower wrapped in the large white towel I had checked out at the front desk, my wet bathing suit in hand. On automatic, I turned to the left toward the small wall-mounted machine that spins the excess water out of bathing suits. “Wait, it’s not there,” I thought, surprised, standing between the rows of showers. “Am I turned around?”

The shiny new Mashouf Wellness Center opened last August at San Francisco State University, just a few buildings away from where I work. I have been swimming a couple times a week since December, usually about 30 minutes, then taking a few minutes in the jacuzzi before showering. Returning to the locker room from the natatorium, you walk through a short, tiled hallway that jogs once and opens into a section lined by five or six shower stalls on each side. The design probably assumes people will go directly into the showers when coming from the pool, but my routine is to go to my locker to get shampoo, conditioner, and towel before showering, dripping all the way.

This day, my routine was different. After my swim, I was headed directly to get a haircut so wasn’t going to wash my hair at the gym. I skipped the jacuzzi too so my approach to the row of doors on one end of the natatorium – offices, locker rooms, all gender bathroom – was the opposite of my usual path. I opened the door to the locker room from the natatorium, followed the short hallway and went right into a shower stall. I pulled the white plastic curtain closed and took off my bathing suit. 

But now, following my shower, ready to go get dressed, I was confused that the bathing suit spinner was not where it normally was. I stood there for 30 seconds looking up and down the room trying to make sense of its displacement without the obvious explanation occurring to me.

It was there I was standing when a young man coming from the pool rounded the corner into the shower section where I stood. He froze when he saw me, and I froze too.

“Am I in the wrong one, or are you?” I asked, wide-eyed and almost shouting. Not responding, the young man turned and ran back toward the door to the natatorium and I took off running after him, towel around me, wagging my dripping bathing suit as I went. I burst back through the door onto the pool deck, where the student, reassured by the signs on the doors, said simply “this is the men’s”, and went back in.

OH MY GOD.

What if I had initially just walked all the way into the locker room as I normally did – and it was the men’s room? What if I had been naked in the shower and heard male voices outside – how would I have gracefully gotten out of there? What if I had stepped out of the shower to find a young man with a towel around his waist – or less?! Each was such a funny and crazy scenario.

I scurried into the women’s locker room and exclaimed to two young women chatting as they dressed, “I just took a shower in the men’s room!” They smiled politely, looking at me with the impatient look of young people wondering why a towel-clad stranger is suddenly speaking to them. It was not a satisfactory interaction.

Still, laughing about the absurdity of my error (and the future comic possibilities of both relating and acting the story out later on), I wondered if the lifeguards sitting across the room had witnessed the farcical tableau. A young Chinese man walks into the men’s locker room and moments later bursts back through the door into the natatorium, followed by a middle aged Caucasian woman in a towel, wet hair slicked to her head, a limp bathing suit flapping in one hand. They pause briefly together before he steps back into the men’s room and she prances quickly on bare feet disappearing into the women’s room. “Did you see that?” one asks the other. “Yes,” the other responds, and they turn their eyes back to the handful of lap swimmers in the pool. Or maybe now when I go to swim, one lifeguard elbows the other and nods knowingly in my direction. 

More likely I am the only one who took particular note of the adventure. Well, me and the young man. I hope he too has related it and acted it out for laughs!

Silver and Gold!

Sitting in the sun the other day, my friend Lisa exclaimed, “your hair is silver and gold!” This photo, taken a few days later, is just shy of the six-month mark of growing it out.

May 2018

Someone recently told me I had to look up the Instagram account Grombre. An “ombré” is two-toned hair color and if half of it is gray it’s a grombre! Check out the glorious sisterhood of women letting the gray come in! https://www.instagram.com/grombre

Put The Book Back - Navigating Menopause

Several years ago I stepped out of the library in San Francisco’s Mission District with three menopause books in my hands and ran right into one of the cute PTA dads from my son’s elementary school. 

“Hi!” he said. 

“Hi!” I said, stopping to talk while immediately wondering how to deflect the inevitable question “what books did you get?” 

Fortunately, he didn't ask that question and either missed or ignored my nervous juggling of the books as I tried to mask titles, spines, and glaring back cover lines announcing “Hot Flashes and Night Sweats!” 

Menopause is a topic and an experience that takes some getting used to and it is not something you want to broadcast to one of the cute PTA dads. Whether he noticed the books or not I don’t know, but I took solace in remembering that he, his wife, and I were all born in the same year, 1961. Menopause was likely a topic and an experience he was becoming familiar with.

The internal panic I felt during that awkward masking-a-secret-while-talking-to-a-cute-guy conversation was only surpassed by one other in memory – a time when a super cute boy entered my open dorm room right after I had farted. I was sitting at my desk while on exchange at the University of Delaware looking at a photo album when he came through the door. As he approached me to look over my shoulder at the album I whipped those large cardboard pages back and forth in hopes of dissipating the gaseous hangover cloud we were now both in the center of. (sigh)

Sometimes your complicated humanness is going to seep out in any number of ways, and life goes on – even if a 35-year old memory can still cause a cringe.

When menopause symptoms first begin, you don’t really know that that’s what’s happening, especially as some of them begin earlier than you might think. What is this? Is this...? How is this whole thing going to go down?

One of the books I checked out of the library had a chirpy, humorous tone as it outlined the litany of things one could experience: hot flashes, mood swings, fatigue, hair loss, sleep disorders, decreased sex drive, lack of concentration, weight gain, dizziness, incontinence, bloating, anxiety, brittle nails, irritability, memory lapses, headaches, panic disorders, dry itchy skin, dry vagina, vaginal atrophy, digestive issues, constipation, and something called “electric shock sensation,” (among other things.) I was really not prepared for the barrage of every single thing that could happen, and especially not ready for the perky tone of that one book. I might lose my ability to concentrate, AND leak in my pants while working for my new much younger male boss! Ha ha! My vagina could dry up, but it may little matter with my new decreased sex drive! Ho Ho!

I told my friend, Donna about the “panic disorders” and “mood swings” being brought on by reading the first few chapters of the “funny” menopause book and she wisely and simply said, “take the book back.”

The reality is that menopause (like everything else) is unique to each woman. We won’t get every possible symptom so why focus or fret on what could happen? More importantly, what will happen will happen regardless of the books we read, and as they do, you just need to accept or alleviate as best you can. (I chose hormone replacement with a low estrogen patch which has helped considerably with the main symptoms I experienced: hot flashes, dry itchy skin, and short-term memory loss. As for the va-jay-jay, one word: Vagifem, an utter godsend first mentioned to me by a woman older than I. Every woman over 50 ought to know about this option just in case.)

Here’s something as unexpected as learning of the litany of possible symptoms: menopause can free a woman in a way she has never known, with age and experience besting the freedoms we may have had in our 20s. Estrogen is a hormone which, in part, drives us to keep the peace at home and at work. Estrogen does some wonderful things, but also participated in fueling the good girl, the helper, the supporter.  One of the (more serious) menopause books I read said that when your estrogen drops, you may find yourself saying "make your own god damned sandwich!” At its best, menopause can be a time for a woman to find herself, figure out what she likes, wants, needs. It can be a time to pursue long-buried dreams or interests, to learn how to paint or skydive or brew beer; to travel or start a business or leave an unhealthy relationship. Menopause can provide an opportunity for a new start and a new perspective.

Imagine running into someone as you come from the library with a stack of books under your arm and being asked what you checked out. Imagine showing them books about learning to brew beer or starting a new business or reading up on Japan in preparation for a trip there. There are so many plans to make when you’re awake in the middle of the night!

Growing Out Gray Hair, How To #4 – Growing a Silver Stripe or Two

In my Feb 17 post I wrote about the method of dying only your part while letting gray come in underneath. I gave that a try but when I abandoned the effort and dyed my hair again, I decided to let one small patch of silver come in as a test, and a nod to my natural color. That patch was not the top most hair next to my face, but was the next layer down and mostly hidden from view. The streak of silver became a bit of a secret, exposed sometimes depending how my hair fell, or showing when I brushed my hand through my hair or pulled my hair back in a clip. 

Using Silver Stripes To Facilitate Growing In The Gray

I dyed my roots every two to three weeks and would exclude the secret patch of white hair and, over time, a few of its neighboring hairs so the patch of gray got incrementally larger. Finally,  in a step toward going all gray, I changed my part to fall right in the middle of those silver hairs and pulled half of them over to the other side of my face. At that point the silver patch was divided in two with strands exposed on both sides of my face. 

Growing the gray streak, increasing the number of hairs in the streak, and then switching my part so silver was exposed on both sides of my face were all steps toward letting all of the gray come in. I was getting used to it, and so were the people in my life.


 

These three pictures were taken the same night in 2016. I grew in a silver stripe just under the top hair on the right side of my face and it showed or didn't show based on how my hair fell naturally or was pulled behind my ear.

I mention this option - growing in a streak of gray - both because the streak was kind of cool, but also because having those silver streaks on either side of my face became an unexpected tool when I started growing out the gray in earnest.  Since my part was increasingly white and stood out, I could (and can) just pull the full length silver hair near my face up over my head and hold it with a clip, and the silver stripes help mask the growing strip of gray down the middle of my head.  In the early months especially, this was a great trick to minimize the skunk stripe. 

 

In the first few weeks - November 2017

Time To Shine

Sail on, silver girl

Sail on by

Your time has come to shine

All your dreams are on their way

See how they shine

If you need a friend

I'm sailing right behind you.

           (Hear the song Bridge Over Troubled Waters. Lyrics by Paul Simon)

I am much more excited and much less self-conscious about this transition to gray hair than I thought I would be. 

Last night, looking in the mirror in a brightly-lit movie theater restroom, the top of my head shined brightly. I grabbed a thick chunk of hair and held it straight up over my head so my friend Gwenn could see the stark delineation between gray and light brown. 

Demarcation at 3-1/2 Months. February 2018

“When you go gray the first time," I told her, "it's a few hairs at a time over a long period time. It’s crazy how this time the silver is bursting forth from my head!"

Some have asked if I had considered just dying it silver since that has been a trend in recent years. That may be a great solution for some, but a big part of this process for me is to no longer process my hair - no more dye, expense or time. In addition to the relief I feel of not dying my hair anymore, and my desire to avoid the harshness of bleaching the color out of my hair in order to dye it silver, I am also fine with letting the natural color come in in its own time. 

We are so used to controlling things, (I am so used to trying to control things!) and immediacy and instant gratification. How often do we want to skip the process or the journey and just reach the goal?  The time it will take to transition to my natural silver offers me time to get used to it, time for reflection and contemplation, time to be excited, time to be impatient, time to be eager, self-doubting, relieved. 

  

The demarcation in my hair between the old colored hair and the fresh new silver coming in is symbolic to me. There is a dividing line between what has been and what is to be. Look at the synonyms of that word above: distinction, differentiation, boundary, frontier.

More than anything, this process and the arrival of the new/old silver hair feels freeing, emboldening and hopeful to me. And frankly, I like knowing that I am about to really stand out. One thing I'm learning with so many of us covering gray hair between ages 50-70 is that while we may look younger – at least in someone’s peripheral vision – but at worst we fade into the background as just another middle-aged woman with a dyed head of hair; not unique, not special, not distinctive. Or perhaps that is how I felt. I am only 3-1/2 months into this project and much more than I expected I feel like this step to show my true color (my true colors) is giving me an internal boost.

The new frontier feels thrilling and empowering and I am up for both the journey and whatever lies ahead.

Growing Out Gray Hair, How To #3 – Dying Only Your Part, For Awhile

With my mom and brother in September 2016. You can see the streak of
silver I let grow in while I continued to dye the rest of it. The streak was
mostly hidden but would peek out in a nice, unexpected way. I've gotten a
million compliments on my streak!

A hair stylist friend of mine, Teresa Mockler of Zindagi Salon in San Francisco, told me about a method for growing out gray hair that seemed downright ingenious. She told me “Start dying your part and along your face and let the gray start coming in underneath. Then when a few inches have grown in, one day you flip your part to expose the gray and get a short haircut.” Quite a clever way to go! 

My hair grows quickly and I was dying the roots myself every 2 weeks. I could push it to 3 weeks if I used a masking powder on my part. After Teresa told me about this new method I went 4-6 weeks dying just my part and letting my gray come in underneath everywhere else. This was very much an experiment to see if I was ready to let the gray come in. I didn’t know how white it had become since I started dying in in 2006, and I also didn’t know if I were bold enough to go for it and let it all come in gray. I would flip the hair to look at the inch or two of gray coming in and try to envision my head almost all silver. Was I ready? 

I tried this method twice, but after several weeks dyed it again.  That is, all but one section close to my face on the right side.  I let that bit of gray come in, little by little, a hidden streak just under the top hair. That bit of silver became a secret that would be exposed when I brushed my hand through my hair, flashing unexpectedly bright.  And that streak has served me well during this transition.  More on that in a later post.

These videos show a version of dying just a section while letting the rest grow in underneath:

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rl7VP3By2M

Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnYW8G5UbeY

For a more fun and uplifting (and not exactly related) video, I find this gal, Susan Paget, delightful.  She has a series of videos about middle age and this one is two years into her gray hair project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdVWlf23sGY.

Growing Out Gray Hair, How To #2 – Shave it Off!

Just as you can dye your hair for a sudden transformation, so too can you spectacularly shift your style by shaving your head or cutting it very close. This is a more drastic route, not for every woman, but there is also an incredible freedom in it. Women who have decided to let their natural hair color grow in feel a genuine excitement, and feel antsy about how long it can take to complete the transition. 

How to:

1. skip one cycle of dying so your roots have begun to show

2. shave it off!

Watch the videos below of two women, Grace and Diane, who went for it! and shared the experience on YouTube.

GRACE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6w4FT1W1SE Grace

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNRsHLLlLmI Grace’s caveat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G95OWh7OU3k Grace, grown in a bit

DIANE gets a buzz cut!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kikPaZVJdNk&list=PLMtATgaRR3EKiq1dw6EcJYxRnSmNIvy__