“Mommy, your sparklies are pretty,” my daughter used to say. She still says it, but now she calls me Mom. What are sparklies, you ask? White hair.
Yes, indeed! I’m 40, and I have lots and lots of sparklies. Being prematurely grey (it’s not grey–it’s white) runs in my family. I got my first one at 18. My mom got her first at 11.
Deidra and Sam over at The High Calling want to know what makes us laugh. Well, I remember one time my mom and I busted a gut laughing about our sparklies. (It’s even on home video).
I was 41 weeks pregnant with my first child and totally miserable, especially since it was summer in Waco. My husband was videoing my mom and I as we sat on the couch and talked about how one day the baby would watch this video and think we looked so different.
“Yeah. It’ll be, ‘Look how dark my hair was!'” I said.
From that point on, Mom and I could not stop laughing. Because every time my brother and I would look at my parents’ slides, Mom would say, “Look how dark my hair was!”
There is a beautiful photo of my mom from 2007, taken by Bill Bastas. Her hair is mostly sparklies, but there are still a few black strands. The next iconic photo of her is from 2008. Her hair is completely white from chemo. Mom never once colored her hair, and I would never even consider it.
When I saw my grandmother (Mom’s mom) this summer, she ran her fingers through my hair and said, “Oh, honey. Look at your hair! There’s hardly any black left!”
I just smiled and thought to myself, “Sparklies.”
