Aging sucks...

Gray hair does not define "old". My mother died at 63 and did not have gray hair and she didn't dye it. Like Pen said, people assumed she did. My SIL has had significant gray since she ws 18.

I am 45 and I am still POed that I had a hysterectomy and can't have more children. I would be very happy to have a couple more. Both of my grandmothers had their youngest at 40.

You can't let the world or the color of your hair define you.

I feel old but it is because I feel useless. No one needs me anymore.

I don't look forward to grandchildren because what everyone else says is so great about them I see as the worst part - you have to give them back!

Hair is definitely not an indicator of age. Dye 'em and forget 'em.

That is true, Survivor. My younger brother has had a full head of grey hair since he was, well, many years ago. However, he smoked alot of MJ and I have been told that it will turn you grey.

Sorry Bro.

Hal

As for the kids, I wish I had had a dozen or more.

Hal

If it werent for the migraines, I wouldnt ever want to give the kiddles back.
My almost 4 year old asks me if Grandma has headache....THAT makes me feel old
Her other "Nanny" is 10 years older than me, but has no migraines and more energy.
It isnt my age, its my situation....
The kids are great and I miss when mine were young..

If that were true Hal, more than my eyebrows would be grey.

The option to have more kids was taken from me when I was 30. Luckily I was ok with that as I had my 2 beautiful kids. NOW, I am surprised at how much I want that grandbaby. Now that Chris is married the chances are much greater that I will get one.

My daughter is staunchly against having any herself. She just doesn't like kids. But better to know you don't want any than to have them and then figure that out. Only people who want to do all the work of raising a child should have one. She'll make a great aunt cause she can give the darlings back.

I was noticing all the tendencies towards tying gray hair with age and was really glad to see that someone contradicted this. My Taiwanese sister started growing gray hair when she was 16 or 17, and she didn't do pot or anything else that might make her go gray. So she has had fun dying her black hair other colors, such as bright red or purple, that end up just having a slight tint of color to the already very black. You'd never know that she has quite a bit of gray hair.

As for grandkids, my parents are very eager to become grandparents. So much so that they have been adopting other people's children. They are now "Grandma and Grandpa" to my Mongolian best friend's son, who is just over 2 months old now. And when my Taiwanese sister was able to bring her kids here to the U.S., they were grandparents to her kids. But in her divisive divorce (which was really stigmatized in Taiwan; it was seen as such a disgrace for her to leave her abusive, cheating husband that her parents went behind her back to ask him to take her back!), her ex-husband has the kids. He is supposed to let Mindy have them twice a month, but he doesn't; she sees them only once a month, but because it was already so socially unacceptable to take him to court for divorce, her family won't support her in suing him now. And in Taiwan, a woman doesn't have the same rights as men. A former roommate of mine told me of a friend of hers in Taiwan who was beaten regularly and cheated on by her husband, but although her family all knew how badly hurt the woman was, they refused to support her divorce proceedings, and in Taiwan, a woman has to have at least one other witness in order to go forward with the suit. It's terrible!

But my brother is hoping to try to start having kids once they get back from Kenya. They didn't want Marina to have to deal with the flight and conditions in Kenya if she were pregnant, so they are waiting until after they get back mid-August to start trying.

I myself don't plan to have kids unless my migraines become significantly better because I wouldn't be able to take care of them. I can't handle being around kids for very long before I have to lie down because they both exhaust me and hurt my head with their loud volume. Besides, I don't want to pass on the gene that has made me the third generation to have the migraine constantly and at least the fourth to have it at all. My brother's kids will be playing roulette with their genes because although he doesn't have migraines, he could still have the gene that makes you prone to having them (and his laid-back personality caused him not to trigger that gene into activity), and his wife does have them fairly badly. It's kind of ironic that my brother had always dismissed my mom's and my migraines until he married a woman with bad ones, and now he is really understanding and caring.