Not Ready Yet?!
By AV Board member Rochelle Lefkowitz
My mom always had gray hair. But every five weeks, since my mid-40s, I paid a stylist to color mine brown, with blonde or red highlights.
Why? If pressed, I’d confess I was just "not ready yet” to go gray. Sound familiar? “Not ready yet” is just how many in our broader community put off Ashby Village membership, despite knowing their answer to my question, “How old must you be to appreciate a world-class poet? Or to persuade your peers to vote for a state long term care benefit?”
“Not Ready Yet” for Ashby Village got me to dust off my skills. Having run a bicoastal social justice communications firm for 25 years before joining Ashby Village’s Board in 2015, I co-founded our Arts & Culture Series in 2017 and our ELDER ACTION interest group in 2018. Because you can’t create community the night before you need it.
Meanwhile, though, I wasn’t yet ready to look, well, older. I couldn’t be gray with a son still in college. Or in his graduation photos. Or at his wedding.
And then the pandemic came. I finally got the guts to go gray – in community! As did at least four other AV board members and many far-flung family and friends. Maybe even some of you, dear readers.
Soon after we shed in-person meetings for Zoom, I realized that what helped me look and feel young was not my brown hair, it was Ashby Village. Being on screens for hours each day with so many vital older adults in their ‘60s,’70s, ‘80s, ‘90s and beyond. Although we’re apart, we don’t feel alone.
Thanks to COVID 19, I feel grateful enough to be growing old and to start facing my fear of looking it. Turns out my gray hair gets nothing but compliments. And, as our Village begins to unlearn our systemic racism, I’m addressing my ageism, too.
So, no more “Hate that gray? Wash it away” for me. Instead, I’ll watch some new “Grace & Frankie” episodes on TV, where Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, in their early ‘80s, tackle taboos with wisdom and humor, and live rich, active lives together in their shared home.
Soon after meeting my first grandchild in Washington, DC this spring, I’ll turn 70! But first, I hope to go out beyond my yard again, distanced and masked, of course, to meet friends for coffee – and show off my silvery locks!
For 25 years, Rochelle ran Pro-Media Communications, the bicoastal, social justice communications firm with offices in New York City & Silicon Valley which she founded in 1986.
Pro-Media created and ran hundreds of local, state, national and global public education campaigns, representing hundreds of nonfiction authors, foundations and non-profits committed to progressive social change.
On the Ashby Village (AV) Board since 2015, Rochelle co-founded and co-chairs – along with AV Board Member Marcia Freedman - two community engagement AV programs, the Arts & Culture Series (2017) and ELDER ACTION interest group (2018), and serves on the AV Communications Committee.