Mea Culpa, part deux

Yesterday I posted a picture on my facebook page of my most recent love--a 2010 Chevy Tahoe--a deep red with dark gray interior.  Generally the vehicles that get my pulse racing are not SUVs, but hey, this one is su-weet, and I am a truck lover by nature; and the Tahoe, despite its appearance, is just a truck.

What was not so sweet was the picture of me standing next to it.  I have been loathe to let anyone photograph me, a phenomenon that increasingly reminds me of how much like my mother I am beginning to look, and how she too would avoid cameras for the same reason I am now doing--because of my weight.  It doesn't help that my thin, young, beautiful daughter is in the picture and I find myself with a clearer picture of how my mother might have felt 35 years ago when I was Jasmine's age, and my mother was the same age I am now--or close enough.  It's tempting to blame genetics or the environment in which I was raised, or any number of things I cited in an earlier post with a similar title, but I won't do that.

What I will do is whatever is necessary to improve both my health and appearance.  It shocks me to see this photo, not just because of my weight but also for the fact that I find myself second guessing my decision to let my hair go "au naturel"--another genetic propensity I have for being "prematurely" gray.  In a youth obsessed culture, it seems rather bold and defiant to sport white hair (and it is white!)  What also seems bold and defiant is a decision to mix it up with a little punk color--something I intend to do before I leave for a visit with my family in Michigan and Wisconsin next month.  I'm thinking a color to match that Tahoe would be awesome.

And so it is rather fun to think of my head as a canvas for a palette of color.  If age and experience give me nothing else they have given me a sense of not caring too much about what people think of me, still the fact that this photograph unnerves me is telling.  And so, I apologize to myself for letting my self-esteem suffer because of snapshot taken in a moment when I forgot my appearance and reflected my joy over an automobile.  I apologize to myself for a brief lapse of letting myself believe that a two-dimensional image could even begin to reflect the multi-dimensional human being that I am.   I apologize to God for even the slightest disdain for the marvelous workings of even the mechanisms of biology that made me store fat, and grow once jet black hair that is now nearly pure white.

 I think this is a great metaphor for my life. Black absorbs all light, reflecting nothing back; white reflects all.  When young I was like a sponge, learning and absorbing and taking within my mind, heart and soul, whatever the world would offer.  As my hair lost its pigmentation (it began in my early twenties) I felt as if I was losing my identity and perhaps in desiring to hold onto myself I made myself larger to compensate.  Now it seems all that knowledge, wisdom and experience is something I wish to give back to the world, with it too the shedding of the excess protection I built around a fragile self that could be so easily bruised by this same world.

In the movie "The Ten Commandments" Moses goes up the mountain with a headful of brown hair, and descends with a crown of white.  I have always loved that image, and certainly it is a metaphorical statement of the wisdom of those with hoary heads (but not all are wise!)

Still, like the scars we obtain on the battlefield of life, we are shaped and colored (or uncolored) by our experiences.  As we age we can continue to grasp and cling to the objects, the beliefs, the identities that once formed us, or we can let go.  But not just let go in some resigned way, but intentionally give back what has been given us with joy.  Still, if fate and finances conspire to make that Tahoe mine, I'm gonna hold on baby, and ROCK IT, just like I do this amazing hair!