Diary of My Country Life-October 17th, 2025

The original source of this blog: https://www.lotusandmichael.com/blogs/diary-of-my-country-life

10/17/2025 Friday 41-64F Cloudy

This morning when I was combing my hair, since my head was right under the light, I was surprised to see the amount of grey hair from the mirror. It seemed to me that my true age seldom occurred to my mind—I still lived freely, or willfully like a young woman, like I was in my twenties.

I clearly remember that in my childhood, my mother used to complain to her three children: “You are all bad kids, make me worry so much! Look—nobody at my age has so much grey hair as I do!”

My mother’s words made me feel guilty and sad: On the one hand I didn’t want to admit that my mother was getting older; on the other hand, I blamed myself: That I wasn’t a good child and failed to satisfy my mother—her grey hair was the proof of my sins. This guilty feeling stayed with me throughout my entire childhood, teen hood, and my twenties. Then, inevitably, I entered my thirties, and one day I went to a hair salon. The person who took care of my hair that day was a new and a young man, he chatted: “Wow, you got grey hair at the back of your head!”

“Oh? Could you please help me pull it off?” I replied simply.

“Sorry miss, I can’t. A lot of them! It would take me a whole day to do so. Let me just try to trim as much of them as possible.”

I accepted his suggestion; but in my mind I felt slightly offended: He must have exaggerated the situation—how could my grey hair grow only at the back while I seldom found them elsewhere? And no one ever told me about this before. He must be exaggerating.

Soon after, I visited my parents in my hometown and met my cousins. To my surprise, every cousin I met from my mother’s side had a dramatic amount of grey hair considering their relatively young age. So do my two siblings. Therefore, I started to realize there must be a some kind of gene carried in my mother’s family which would cause early grey hair, and inescapably we all inherited it. So that young man in the hair salon was innocent; he was right—I wasn’t told before by his other coworkers perhaps because they were smart enough to keep their silence. 

Since I figured out the grey hair issue, I felt much more relieved: My mother didn’t tell us the truth; most likely she even didn’t know the truth because she wasn’t an educated woman. In her mind, grey hair could ONLY be caused by stress and hardship in life; since she had nobody whom she could complain about openly, as her children, we had to take the blame and carry the baggage.

Fair or not, it’s hard to define. The knot was untied. Thanks to my mother’s genes, again, as I inherited her very thick hair, the grey ones weren’t that noticeable. 

Time flew. At the age of thirty-seven, I began to notice that my hair got significantly thinner. I think it finally reached its hilltop; from then on, everyday would be downhill. That year was the pandemic year; sequestering in the apartment in Brooklyn and without knowing the future of the world like most of us, in several months my hair shrank from a handful to less than half size. Everyday looking at the pile of my fallen hair, I felt a bit scared, and worried that perhaps one day I would lose all my hair.

Of course it didn’t happen; at least not yet. Now holding my braid in my hand, it fits only about one third of my grasp or even less. I used to have thick long braid; I used to buy men’s hats in L since women’s were too small for me—those circumstances are not the case anymore. Suppose if we could skip that pandemic, would it prolong the life span of my hair? 

But one thing, no doubt, I am unavoidably getting older. Aging well? I hope so. Though my mixed grey hair doesn’t look as fresh as when they were all dark, and my braid is no more at its fullest, I accept that this is just the nature of life. Like the trees—they sprout in spring and shed their leaves in autumn. Even ever-greens have their time to lose their leaves. 

No-one can deny the changes of season. I am now in one of the best seasons of the year, and one of the best years in my life, I should do more, think more, and forge more of myself. 

I think I won’t dye my hair; I would rather be watching it slowly and certainly become all grey one day like a tree turning yellow. So that version of me, grey headed and still younger looking face, should be very interesting. I look forward to it.

Eight of the ten saffron bulbs which I planted one and a half months ago sprouted; very likely they will be flowering this fall, and I can collect their stigmas for tea and cooking. The freesia bulbs I planted in early May also sent out twelve scouts to test the climate here. I shall protect them well in winter so I can see their delicate, fragrant blossoms again next April…

There are so many things happening; we see and are well aware of the shadows but, like plants, we should embrace the light and grow toward it.

Let me end my diary with a small poem I wrote a few weeks ago (in both English and Chinese):

“A person can feel blue, 

But not the earth. 

No matter whether it is cold or hot, 

Rain or shine, 

It always silently nourishes all the growing. 

Why are we often unhappy? 

Perhaps because we want too much, 

And never give enough.

一个人可以忧郁，

而大地不会。

无论寒暑，

不分晴雨，

它总是缄默地滋养着万物。

为什么我们总是不快乐？

或许是因为我们对所得总嫌不够，

而又锱铢必较我们的付出。”