Gray Hour
Gray Skies
We sit on our canyon-side patio with late-afternoon libations, flipping peanuts to crows, squirrels, and mice. San Diego’s signature blue sky is cloaked in gray clouds of smoke as infernos rage through vast swaths of California, north to south, east to west. Flakes of ash fall at our feet from the fire blazing twenty miles away. The sun sets, but our view is eclipsed.
Gray is a state of mind as well as a color. Metaphorical gray skies loom when a gloomy mood mirrors inclement weather, fogs our sightline. Like now, in the age of COVID-19, when lives and livelihoods have been lost, are still being lost. A gray pall hangs over us, and gray skies are what we’re calling the new normal.
Gray Hair
I color my hair because it pleases me. I’m not under the illusion that it restores my youth, but I prefer this jaunty redhead in the mirror to her faded counterpart. “I can’t see you, but I know you’re here,” Peter Falk’s character says to unseen angel Bruno Ganz in Wings of Desire.
My gray hair started showing up thirty years ago, so I know it’s there, but I keep it out of sight. When telltale roots become noticeable I administer the antidote, Schwarzkopf Vintage Red.
Revealing and reveling in gray hair is in vogue, a side-effect of coronavirus quarantines, shuttered salons. A woman wrote to a syndicated advice column that because she couldn’t see her stylist for routine touch-ups, she was letting her gray hair grow out. To her surprise she loves it and thinks we all should follow suit—98 percent of us would look better, she believes. The response was a gentle rebuke: the writer should do what she wants and let the rest of us do the same; the columnist had been dyeing her hair for twenty years and had no intention of stopping.
Gray Matter
We associate more gray hair with less gray matter, awareness of both heightened as we age. Gray matter isn’t, as I used to think, merely an idiom for the retention or loss of one’s mental marbles. It’s a recognized scientific term for a major component of the central nervous system, consisting of neuronal cells, dendrites and axons, synapses and capillaries. It peaks in early adolescence, but we can—maybe—slow the decline, even boost volume, with various activities, including aerobic exercise, meditation, and learning new skills.
Ruminations on Gray
Gray is the hue of neutrality, compromise, indecision. A gray area spans the mid-range between black and white, yes and no, right and wrong. Definitions of gray include dreary and nondescript, a dismal and colorless life. Depression is gray—sad and lethargic, dull and dingy like soiled socks. Laundry detergent ads promise to wash out the gray.
But look again—gray is sophisticated, chic, a fashion staple. It signifies gravitas. I buy a new pair of Saucony running shoes every year for their fit and function, regardless of color. I’ve enjoyed the flash and flair of lime green, magenta, turquoise, coral, deep purple. My new ones, however, shun frivolity. Two shades of gray with black laces and white soles, and damned if they don’t feel faster and sleeker, more serious.
Gray or grey? Think A for American, E for English. Earl Grey Tea isn’t spelled that way because it’s British—rather, it memorializes the eponymous Charles Grey, the second Earl Grey and Prime Minister in the 1830s. Fifty Shades of Grey is named for antagonist Christian Grey. When cosmopolitans, lemon drops, and other designer martinis became the rage in the 1990s, Grey Goose was the premium vodka of choice, available in harmonizing flavors. I rarely drink hard liquor, but dismal days—gray days—seem like a good reason to bring out the bottle of Grey Goose Le Citron ageing in the cupboard, partake in happy hour instead of gray hour.
Gray Hour
Since the onset of the pandemic, grocery stores have instituted seniors-only shopping, usually the hour before regular opening. Barons is a small San Diego market with local organic produce, an ample selection of cheeses and wines, high-grade salmon. What more could I want? After a nerve-wracking visit to the neighborhood supermarket and lines out the parking lot at Trader Joe’s, Barons became my one-stop-shopping. I dubbed this shopping time the gray hour, a double entendre for the senior shoppers and the enduring clouds.
I line up for the 8:00 a.m. opening to be among the first group of thirty to enter, mask and disposable gloves in place. Customers were required to show IDs at first—a few tittering at being carded in their dotage—but now a glance suffices and youthful crashers are politely turned away at the door. I appreciate the privilege while aware of the irony. If the elderly are more susceptible to the virus, aren’t we exposing ourselves to greater risk by shopping with our agemates?
“Gray skies are gonna clear up, put on a happy face” sang Dick Van Dyke in the sixties Broadway musical Bye Bye Birdie. The song tells us to “take off the mask of gloomy tragedy,” but unmasking isn’t an option, and as gray skies persist, the faces behind the masks are grim and disgruntled as we wait for brighter days.
