Decisions, decisions

To gray or not to gray, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the indignity of a lackluster salt 'n pepper mop, or to take up arms against the relentless march of age and decrepitude, and by opposing end them?

Well, the first step was to send this picture to Tunde. Sure enough, he said he loved the style, but "what's with the gray?" What indeed. I remember the shock when my mother stopped dying her hair, so I sympathise.

Strangely enough, it's become a really a big question whether to dye my hair or not, and it's not a question of vanity. It has much to do with my self image before the Big C and my ultimate desire to get back to my 'before'self. Of course, as I said before, and as I discussed today with Tony, a fellow cancer survivor and writer, the reality is that one can never get back to the before self, but must create a new self that incorporates the old. So, whether to keep the hair colour natural or not is far more complex than one would imagine.

It's a bit like my affair with the piano over the years. I studied piano formally from the age of 7 until 18, when I told my teacher that, rather than do the two years of training to be a piano teacher, that she suggested, I wanted to go to university to be a doctor. As a result, I stopped formal piano lessons and lost my piano when I went to university. Well, I never became a doctor and life took me in a different direction, but I always missed my piano, which was my soulmate as a child refugee in London.

After I got stuck in the US as a stateless person and moved about a lot, with no room, or money, for a piano, a musician friend actually bought me a guitar to fill the gap, but it didn't do the trick. Five years later, having made great effort to love it without success, I finally sold the guitar and it was only many years later, in 1985, that I finally bought a piano. The significance of this was not lost on my mother, who sighed a big sigh of relief. It meant that I was now settled. My peripatetic refugee existence was over. I was home. I had my own house, a healthy young son and a piano. Life was sweet.

Similarly with the hair colour. When I make my final decision, I believe that I will have come to terms with whoever I turn out to be after - I was going to say 'this adventure is over', but then realised this is nonsense, because it will only be over when I croak – so, after I come to terms with the 'new me', whatever that will be.

In the meantime, I have up days and down days. I've been really weepy for the past two days and it's driving me nuts, but you know I've been there before, and it has nothing to do with the hair, so I guess I'll get out of it again.