Grey Hair

When grey hair permanently colonizes your scalp, or when a comb over becomes less a choice and more a survival tactic, something unexpected happens. You start to feel invisible.

It is as if you are wrapped in a high-tech cloaking device no one asked for. People do not see you or hear you, and your fetching dimples have transformed trans into scenic wrinkle crossings.

This lack of attention bruises the ego, but science wants you to cheer up. Body experts claim major inner shifts occur throughout life, though the fireworks really start in your forties and again at sixty. Folks in their forties experience changes in molecules that deal with alcohol, caffeine, skin, muscles, and cardiovascular health. In other words, all the important stuff.

What any of that has to do with feeling invisible is beyond me, but the experts sound confident, and confidence counts as research in my book.

Then comes age sixty, when the molecular renovation crew returns with clipboards and attitudes. They rearrange your immune system, tinker with kidney function, redo your caffeine tolerance, and remind your skin and muscles who is calling the shots. Skin and muscle get mentioned twice, which tells me they are the real troublemakers.

Here is the unexpected good news. I sailed past both those decades and have not found a single medical headline warning of catastrophic molecule mutiny after age sixty nine.

Of course, I had to increase my screen to sixteen-point type just to read these reports, and I fell asleep halfway through, so maybe the scientists are hiding things. Fine with me.

If you have not passed those critical years, hurry up and get older. Those decades were rough, whether you noticed or not. Your innards were staging a full-scale protest march.

And here you are, still standing, still showing up, still catching your reflection and thinking you might be entering your best chapter yet.

Maybe invisibility was just a phase. Maybe your molecules were too busy reorganizing to hold up a sign that read: do not worry, kid, your prime keeps moving forward.

Little 

Voice