Why Does My Dad's Decision to Go Gray Bother Me So Much?

I remember it clearly. My dad came to pick me up at the Palm Springs International Airport two Christmases ago. It was December of 2020, and my first time on a plane since the pandemic shut everything down earlier that year. I had just spent the last five hours double-masked and dehydrated on the cross-country flight over from New Jersey. Everything about that once familiar journey was strange this time around, but I was wholly unprepared for what came next.

I exited the terminal and looked for my dad, who had just called to tell me he was parked out front. I looked to my left and to my right, but there were no signs of him. As I pulled out my phone to call him again, I saw an old, gray-haired fellow waving frantically at me from a few feet away. I looked around to see who this elderly man was before suddenly realizing he was waving at me. The old man was my dad. I just didn’t recognize him with his face mask on and his snowcapped head.

Even as I write this now, I feel a bit of shame. If anything, I should be proud of my dad for his decision to rock his natural hair color, which at this point, is in fact gray and not jet black. But it was too jarring for me to accept. It felt as though we had time traveled, sped up the clock by a decade, and here was this grandpa, who couldn’t possibly be the father I remembered. And here I was, mostly unchanged and nowhere near reaching the typical adult milestones that would actually make him a grandfather, a title that would be completely acceptable considering our respective ages.

Though I knew on an intellectual level that my dad was getting older—that we were all getting older—it was easier to ignore when he looked the way he always had in my twenties. But now, staring at his snowy tufts of hair, I was forced to contend with the passage of time, his growing frailty, his mortality. I was struck with sadness thinking about what my life would look like without him there to pick me up at the airport someday.

In the role reversal that seems to happen with parents and their adult children, I ask if they’ve eaten enough vegetables and if they’re getting outside to exercise every day. I ask them if they’re happy and I send them emails linking to the latest studies about “the benefits of walking,” or “the importance of social activities as you age,” which they never reply to. This past Christmas, I gifted my dad a journal to write down stories about his life, so I can have a record of it all.

It's been two years since that day at the airport and I am no longer visiting my parents from the opposite coast. I live within a few hours driving distance from them now and I see them as often as I can. I would be lying if I said that my dad’s gray hair doesn’t bother me anymore. It does, but only because of what it signals. I still have moments where I don’t recognize him, with his silvery strands and gently sloped eyes, lined from years of beaming at me. And truly, he did and does beam. After all, my dad has many shortcomings, but expressing his love for me was never one of them.

Now, it’s my turn.