Golden and silver

Things that are golden:
Retrievers
Silence
50th wedding anniversaries
Rings given by one's true love on the fifth day of Christmas
Slumbers
Globes
Girls
Me

I found out recently that the characters on The Golden Girls were supposed to be my age. Well, that's not exactly true—two of them were supposed to be younger than me. The discovery startled me. If someone asked me to describe the show, I'd say it was about four older women who live together. "Older woman" is not typically how I self-identify, but faced with the facts, I have to acknowledge that it is not entirely off base.

I've been thinking about it a lot.

As I think about it, I keep coming back to same thing: my hair. My hair, which through the magic of modern chemistry has been a golden shade of blonde for the past twenty years. Truly—I am the same shade as my Golden Retriever, Roscoe.

I also keep thinking about Paul McCartney, who started coloring his hair sometime in the 90s—probably when he was around the age I am now. At first, he just looked like himself. Then time passed and his hair stayed youthfully brown as his face aged until he started looking like an old guy in a wig. Over the past year or two, he has gone totally gray, and he looks fantastic.

And I know, blah, blah, blah, guys can get away with it, silver fox, blah, blah, blah. But I don't buy it. I've spent weeks looking at pictures of women who have started embracing their grays and silvers—Emma Thompson, Allison Janney, and a whole host of people I know in real life whose Facebook photos I've been stalking. To a person, they look fabulous.

So, since I've officially reached the golden age—which, incidentally, Wikipedia tells me is "a period in a field or endeavor when great tasks were accomplished"—I've decided to celebrate by going silver. Or silverish. Let's call it "somewhat silver."

I've got my hair stylist on speed dial, and she promises to hold my hand through the whole process. And though the Olympic events I've been watching this week keep reminding me that the point is supposed to be going for gold, I have a real feeling that for me, right now, silver is going to feel like a win.

Image is of Roscoe and me with matching hair.