Mommy's Grey Hair

In honor of Catherine Slusher White, who passed away on June 6, 2009. I love you Mommy.

I’m pretty sure that my brothers and I gave my grandmother all of her grey hair. The reason I say this is because she has told me so numerous times over the last forty one years.
The first time I distinctly remember her telling me this, I was ten years old. I had just fallen into the creek down the lane after trying to navigate the edge of the bridge with my bicycle. I had completely knocked the breath from my lungs. One of my brothers had run to get Mommy, our name for her since she raised us, and I came to myself to see her wading through the creek with a clear plastic bag over her head because she had been in the middle of coloring her hair. When she finally got to me and found that I had not broken anything she started yelling, “This is why I have to color my hair; you children are giving me grey hair.”
The next grey hairs were my brother’s fault. My youngest brother, Doug, use to love to stick “9-volt” batteries to his tongue. He loved that tingle that you got from the battery. One evening he decided that he could get a better tingle from the empty lamp socket. I swear, it knocked him about two feet away from the lamp. Of course, once again Mommy came running to the rescue, hollering for my papa to bring the car around. By the time she had picked Doug up from the floor and starting running towards the back of the house, he was screaming to the top of his lungs. When Papa realized that Doug was breathing and in no danger, he calmed Mommy down. Once again the line came out, “You children are giving me grey hair.”
The next time I remember giving Mommy grey hair was right after my twelfth birthday. I had been at School House Hill, which is where everyone hung out during the summer. The Catholic Church was having a neighborhood fair up there. Sister Teresa had asked me to run down to the bottom of the hill to the sister’s house and bring up some more 7-Up. I started down the hill in my usual helter-skelter way and of course, tripped going down. I picked myself up, brushed myself off and finished my errand. When I got back to the top of the hill and to Sister Teresa, she took one look at me and started screaming. I was covered in blood. I hadn’t even realized that I was hurt. When I had fallen, I must have thrown my hands out to catch myself. Apparently my right hand hit a piece of glass. I had opened a cut on my palm and wrist that was about three and a half inches long. One of the men at the fair was a doctor and grabbed a towel and bundled my hand up. I was put into a car and driven to my grandparents. Of course Mommy went right into panic mode, so my papa was the one who went to the hospital with me. Once we came home with twenty two brand new stitches, Mommy met us at the door with the now familiar line, “You children are giving me grey hair.”
My brother Dale was next in line in giving Mommy her grey hair. We use to have a wonderful, tall pine tree in the back yard. My brother’s and I had discovered that if you climbed to the top of the tree it would sway back and forth, which made it a really fun ride. On this day, Dale had climbed higher than any of us ever had. He really had the tree rocking. Unfortunately, the tree had had enough. After a loud snap, Dale and the top of the tree came crashing to the roof of the house. The top of the tree stayed on the roof, but Dale came rolling off and landed on the tank that held the oil for the furnace. Dale came away with a broken arm and a sore bottom from the switching that Mommy gave him. Of course, the whole time she was switching him, out came the famous line, “You children are giving me grey hair.”
The last grey hair incident that I recall, I was about sixteen years old. Some friends and I were out for Halloween. We had been saving eggs for months. We all snuck into the jungle, a wooded place than ran along the road. We ducked in behind some bushes and got our eggs ready. Here came our first car, and out came about six eggs. We threw as hard as we could and all six eggs hit the car. The driver slammed on his breaks and that was when we realized that we had thrown our eggs at Sherriff Bill Saylor. Everyone took off running through the jungle. Unfortunately, my clumsiness had not gotten better over the years, so down I went. Sherriff Saylor hauled me up by the seat of my pants and took me to his car. After having my ears blistered by him, he took me home and it was Mommy’s turn. Only Mommy didn’t blister my ears. She had another part of my anatomy to blister. The only thing you could hear above my crying was Mommy saying, “You children are giving me grey hair.”
There are so many more memories. My brothers and I laughingly refer to them as the “Grey Hair Memories”. We drag them out during family get togethers and share them with the next generation. The kids always love to hear these stories and always ask for more.
Twenty five years have passed since that last incident. Mommy now lives in a nursing home near me. I stop to see her every morning on my way to work. Some days she knows me and some days she doesn’t. Every once in a while, I will rub my hand across her now completely grey hair and whisper, “Thanks for the grey hair, Mommy”.