Cindy's Six Things
Since brevity is not one of my virtues, this meme is going to be posted in several parts. Tonight's Interesting Thing About Me is so long I decided to do only one.


Hair
My hair first started going grey when I was thirteen years old. My maternal great-grandmother was completely grey by the time she was sixteen, and my mother had a cool grey streak that curved back from her forehead by the time she was in her early 30s, so early grey just runs in my family. But when I was sixteen I started coloring it. Not precisely to cover the grey, though - all the kids in my Sunday School class thought it was cool - but because I wanted to look like Anne Shirley. Heck, I wanted to be Anne Shirley, so I started using henna. After about two years of this, my daddy told me it was starting to look brassy, so I switched to something else, but stuck with the dark auburn color.

I was nineteen when Mike and I first met and he really thought I was a redhead. I told him before we married that I wasn't, but I don't think he believed me. Apparantly my temper matched my hair color. Around the time I was in my late 20s, I decided to let it grow out so I could see what it looked like. I'd been coloring it for more than ten years by then and really couldn't quite remember my natural color. It was surprising to see how my original small grey streak right on the top of my head and grown - there was an area on my scalp about the diameter of a golf ball that grew silver hair. Before too long I started coloring it again, only more of a golden brown instead of dark auburn, trying to make the color closer to my natural color.

Now, my paternal grandmother had very dark brown hair, and she kept it colored up until she was about 80 years old. It was shocking to see her with dark brown hair one visit and snowy white the next. When I first started coloring it, I'd decided that I would stop coloring it long before I was that grey, so the change wouldn't be so shocking. I stopped the second time when I was mid-thirties, but started again when a woman at the mall asked me if I wanted to sign up for a special discount for Senior Citizens. :-p

The last time I colored my hair was in August, two summers ago. It is simply amazing how grey my hair has gotten in the past few years. That spot on the top of my head has grown a bit, but now I also have a grey streak at the right temple, and grey sprinkles throughout the top and front. The funny thing is, I always wear my hair up and it doesn't look grey from the front, except for that vague streak at the temple. And the underneath is still very dark, but the top is so very grey that it just... Well, I'll show you.





This is me from the front, taken last weekend when were at the Highlands Study Center Conference:









And this is me from the back, that same night:





Pretty wild, huh?