Excerpt from upcoming book.... Chapter 6 - "I Don't Think So..."

It’s the ninth day of the vipassana retreat. I have spoken no words, made no eye contact, nor have I so much as touched another living soul. I have sat still with the sensations in this body.  I have learned to visit the tightness in my neck and legs and be with it as it is not as I’d like it to be.  I take off the generous clothes that have  embraced me all day and slip into my favorite pink-and-white flowered nightgown faded and torn.  I gather my toothbrush and face wash, stored in my stark, barren single bed room, and I walk across the hallway to the bathroom.  There I prepare to retire for the evening.  It has been a long journey, worth it none-the-less. I look in the mirror and there she is.  The face I have seen reflected back to me for the past 41 years.  Ever changing, growing older for sure, but the same eyes staring back at me, the same soul.  I am humble and my ego is on sabbatical. I take the rubber band out of my hair and run my fingers down my skull to release the tension of the day.  Then, suddenly, I see. Can this be true?  My jaw drops, I furl my brow, getting as close as I can to the mirror in front of me.  I struggle, fade in and out of denial. They must be blonde. NO, it can’t be.  TWO FRIGGIN’ GRAY HAIRS.  Without giving it a second thought, I put my left hand on my left hip, stand up straight, cock my head to the right, curl my left upper lip, and break my hard earned silence with four of the most powerful words to ever leave my lips—“I DON’T THINK SO.” 

Up comes the right hand, finger and thumb in a serious tweezers like position and then—yank, yank—gone like yesterday.  What gray hair?

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