For the next twenty minutes, she repeatedly tossed her hair backward whenever she adjusted her position, checked her phone, or turned to address her followers.
Every time, the same thing happened.
Her hair landed on my tray table, brushed my shoulder, or fell across my armrest.
Each time I asked her to move it, she offered a different excuse.
Finally, she turned around and studied my short silver hair.
“When was the last time you had hair like mine?” she asked. “Fifty years ago?”
I looked at her calmly.
“My hair was quite lovely during the Reagan administration.”
She laughed.
“That’s ancient history!”
Perhaps it was.
But I had lived long enough to understand something Brittany had not yet learned: being young is not the same thing as being wise, and looking beautiful is not the same thing as being beautiful.
I had raised three children, worked for decades, buried my husband, and learned how to keep going through grief that sometimes felt heavier than the world itself.
