Sibling Rivalry

Meet my Grandma Stokes.  Do you see that full head of beautiful, white hair? She used a bit of bluing when she washed it to keep it from looking dingy.

Grandma Fronk was younger in this picture than Grandma Stokes was in hers.  Still, do you see the distinguished looking gray hair?  

When I was five years old, I spent a week with Grandma Fronk in her little tiny apartment in Ogden.  The quiet, the immaculate little home, the canary, the morning sun shining through the front room window, and the solitude was a driving force in my life.  By the end of that week, I had formed by life's ambition: to be old.  More specifically, my ambition was to be old like Grandma.  Now I can be even more specific than that and say I want to be old like the ideal I formed of Grandma.

It has been a long time since I was five years old. That life-altering week happened in 1957.  The life I have lived in the interim is a case study of bad choices.  If anyone has earned gray hair, it is I.  Really.

Eldest sister is quite gray.  She has ten years on me, so even though I'm envious, I accept it.  

Next sister is only three years ahead of me.  We have always done everything together, but she has very callously grown a head of salt and pepper hair with no consideration to my feelings at all.  In retaliation (retaliation is called for here) I am posting a most charming photo of her and her dratted gray hair.

Baby sister, however, chaps my arse.  Seven, count em!, seven years YOUNGER than I am, and she has as much gray as Elder Sister who is 18 years older!  Again, this deserves a good photo to display her charms.

Then there's me.  I started life as a blondy, and I think it was my downfall.  Sisters all had very dark hair like The Mother.  I have gray hairs, and actually, there are quite a few.  My hair color (never adjusted in my life, except once 25 years ago for highlights) camouflage the white ones.  Hmph.

It could be worse, I suppose.  I could be bald.