This is the day my hairdresser asked me if I am 30

Behold, ladies of certain ages, let us rejoice! Let us clank our glasses and toll the bells merrily on high! For this is the day a relative stranger mistook me for ten years younger than I am.

OK, nine. Possibly seven.

Whatever. It is a major age difference. It is the span of Jay-Z to Beyonce. It is one-and-a-half Suri Cruises. It is more than the time I was married. It is a lot.

[This photo was taken specifically to text to Mommyfriend, pre-haircut, who asked what a good hair day for elderly folk look like. No no no, of course not. She just wanted to know how jungle-wild I let my bangs get before I have someone tell me I am pretty and then let them take a machete to them.]

At least it is when the calendar officially reads that this is the year that you (which means me) will turn 40.

For.Ty. I know! I can barely believe it myself. Although my young son is doing all he can to make it as real as possible. I mentioned the name of a friend the other day and he casually asked how old that person is.

"Oh, she is my age," I said back, not even noticing the barbed wire and hanging net and claw-tooth rusty metal contraption I was walking into.

"So she's 40?" He said it smoothly but quickly, with a smirk resting confidently at the left side of his mouth.

Sneaky little one-digiter! His day will come! That's what I thought vengefully about my offspring in the moment. And in the next moment realized that when he does get his 40-decade comeuppance, I will be 72.

Seven.Ty.Two. That made 40 seem very spring-chickeny. Maybe even chick-like. For a second anyway.

I distinctly remember the year my own mother turned 40. I thought she was ancient. Of course, I was 15 and had a hundred-thousand opinions about who and what my mother was. Now when I see pictures of her from that birthday, I'm taken aback by her gorgeous, glowing skin and thick, curly blond-streaked hair cropped around her face.

I also remember when her best friend turned 40 a few years later. I was astonished that they could overcome the chasm that is three or four years age difference to be close and I wondered if it depressed my mom that she was so much older than 40 by the time her friend reached that pinnacle. All those feelings are framed by a little song my mom made up for her friend, who she often wrote parodies with for teacher work functions and parties and on random Thursday nights, and the theme of the whole event, which was, "Lordy, Lordy, Linda's 40."

In the years since, my brother and I have sung that little line nearly every time my mom has mentioned Linda in front of us. We've texted it to each other and telepathically communicated that bit of our childhood across brainwaves and restaurants at the very hint of this friend or those times.

Now, of course, he's turned the phrase on me. All I can hear in my head when my own kid tortures me about my age is, "Lordy, Lordy, Jessie's 40." It doesn't seem right.

Or, it didn't until I went a newish hairdresser over the weekend. She's a lovely woman who cannotpossiblybebutprobablyis almost 50. She's a single mama who has built up a beautiful salon in the heart of the city, who has gorgeous red curls that fall down her back and a slight figure wrapped in pretty metallic tops and huggy little sweaters. I think she is fabulous. She's also very understanding that I'd need a stand-in stylist while I wait out the three months it took me to book an appointment with my regular hair maven and has taken me on as a winter client.

On my first visit, she asked me all about my situation with Lil E's dad, nodded compassionately, offered kind words of advice. She told me all about her boyfriend who lives in Alaska part-time and teenage daughter who is full of angst while she matched up shades of hair dye and trimmed my bangs.

"Are you 30?!," she blurted out this time as I sat in her chair. She was combing through my hair, trying to decide what exact shade my roots should be colored. "Or 32 -- tops, right?"

I stared back at her, waiting for the punchline.

She looked at me in the mirror with a kind look that really said, "WELL?!"

"You're 30 years old then?" She reiterated it.

I laughed.

"You're kidding, right?" I said at our reflection.

"NO! You are not older than 32." She was serious. I couldn't believe it. She was really serious.

I told her my age. She dropped her comb. I'm not kidding! The nice lady who examines heads for a living, the one with the scissors in hand, was stunned. She repeated "no way" at least seven times (OK, three).

And then she started to giggle a muffled little knowing laugh.

"I was going to say..." she paused here to prep me, "that for 30 years old, you sure do have a lot of silver hair."

I will pause here for you to process. Because that's when my radiant, youthful beauty went completely down the drain with the apparent bucket-loads of chemicals it takes to make me appear somewhat presentable to people in my age-bracket.

SILVER. She said silver, friends.

I am a 39-year-old woman with silver hair. And before you feed me any of this bullshit about how fabulous women with silver hair look, let me say once again that I AM ONLY 39. My grandmother was one of those ladies with beautiful silver hair. BUT SHE WAS 103. I am 0.37th that age.

I knew that under all this I was gray. I found my first gray hair when I was 26. I see the roots that look like cloud formations around my forehead. I am aware of why my mother got blond streaks well before she was 40 herself. Gray, I get. Gray, I can live with. Gray, I can cover. But silver? Oh, goodness, silver.

That amazing compliment about my agelessness was shot to hell by one single silver bullet, right there in the salon. I should have just slumped over in the chair and met my maker with the plastic poncho billoowing around me.

I still have a few months to come to terms with it all. Until then, my child's mouth is taped shut and the word "Lordy" is banned for a 30-foot perimeter around me. For these last precious days, I will just have to be a 39-year-old lady, who is a decade younger on the outside and 64 years older at the roots.

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The last one

I don't love doing dishes. I really do not like standing in front of this corner sink, where I inevitably am doused by the faucet right at the belly when I load and unload water bottles and plastic plates and coffee cups into the dishwasher. I'm not a fan of the smell of this pine-scented holiday-edition dishsoap I got in a big, goopy, beat-up package of cleaning products to review.

But every evening when I stand right there to tidy up the kitchen, every morning when I fill up the filter with eight scoops of coffee, every time I rinse a dish, I smile.

It's because of that round, red scrubber right there among the brushes and sponges. I smile because of that few yards of red netting knotted and worked into a tightly bound circle meant to scrub pots and vegetables and stains and even the bottoms of shoes.

My grandmother made them. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of them. She crotcheted them until her hands were red and raw. She made big shopping bags full of them even after her arthritic fingers popped out of the joint when she held the needles too long. She made them even though the netting wore at her beautifully kept, long nails until they cracked.

My grandmother made these scrubbers mostly for the winter bazaar at her church, where they were bundled into groups of five, tied with a ribbon, labeled with her name and sold to raise funds for the women's group. But she also tenderly offered them as gifts, laced them into packages for people who requested them, and was sure to choose colors that she knew would match your kitchen or were your very favorite shades.

When I got married, she made every member of the bridal party scrubbers in my wedding colors. She gave me black and white scrubbers just for the newlyweds. I tucked those scrubbers into the beaded clutch purse I bought for her to match the velvet dress she wore that evening. Those are more of a keepsake to me from that day than nearly anything else. They were turned and tied and tucked into my shower gift with such love.

When my grandmother died, my mother passed out much of the scrubber stash she had left at the memorial service. I got a few that my mother picked from the pile that she knew matched my kitchen.

That red one right there? It's the last one left, save the bride and groom scrubbers packed away. I use it -- it's the best way to get the baked on stuff out and the stubborn stuff up. But I don't put the elbow grease into it that I know my grandmother would have and would have nodded at me in expectation if she was standing next to me while I washed those pans in my sink. I just don't want that scrubber to be all used up yet. It's a small thing -- a thing meant to be worn out -- but it's a thing full of so much.

I have other objects and heirlooms from my grandmother meant to be cuddled up to and hung up and use to bake pies and angel food cakes, and I cherish all those ways I feel and see her in my home. That last scrubber, though, works at me like it does on a skillet, getting under all the tough stuff to the shiny part where I can see my grandmother's hands clearly, doing her own daily tasks, standing at the sink next to me, handing me soapy dishes to rinse and dry.

That scrubber -- it's so her. And I love it sitting right there, reminding me that the work is also the love, that the pain of making something simple is worth it, that what we do with our hands lasts so much longer than we ever know.

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Hot wheels and epiphanies: How to celebrate your divorce-iversary

The wonderful way the universe works is this: The day that my divorce was finalized falls over Epiphany.

The word itself defines that time in my life three years ago: A sudden realization of great truth.

The Christian feast day goes deeper: The arrival of the Magi to the infant Jesus, bearing gifts and beholding the revelation of this child as the son of God.

In some countries, it is recognized in concrete terms: The Holy Day of Obligation.

Others mark the time with what they hold was seen: The physical manifestation of belief.

I ponder this all in my heart with each passing year and take it as my own: Divorce-iversary.

Pardon me if that speaks sacrilege to you. Honestly, the shift from being married to being not took me to great spiritual depths. I love that the day my divorce was manifested on a stamped booklet of papers before a judge, 18 long and emotional months after a sudden realization of great truth, releasing all obligation, an unfolding of the hope I held tight, happened over Epiphany. What a gift.

So I celebrate.

There was a party and pedicures and cocktails. There was a quiet moment with the people I love most. This year, there is a car. A brand new, beautiful car.

This is me telling the car how beautiful she is.

This is me totally wigging out when she told me how pretty I am back. Alright, this is really me having a caniption that I wouldn't have to tow Big Red into the dealership by a rope and that I'd have free XM radio for a whole month AND locks that work without violating child labor laws.

Deciding I needed to bring glad tidings of new transportation was not a sudden realization. I've known it was time for over a year. But I decided to drive that mother into the ground to save some money and push back any chance of a spontaneous purchase that once nearly led me to buy a PT Cruiser. Vanilla white. Used.

Har, har. People, this is one of the funniest you can find if you search on "funny divorce bumper stickers." The second place one is up at the top of the post. Please, someone, make this change.

The car I was driving -- we took to calling her Big Red -- was not meant to be mine. My parents loaned it to me for "a while", which became a year, before I finally handed over the cash just to own it. I never loved it like it was my ride to freedom. I never even liked it. I just drove it, grateful to have a relatively easy solution to school pick-ups and drop-offs and little escapes out of town.

Big Red had been in fender benders, gotten scraped up, and survived a couple of real bruiser accidents. For some reason, snow snuck inside the car and the windows froze up on the inside every time the temperature dropped. Then the locks shorted out and Lil E became responsible for locking and unlocking my car door from the inside to spare me the embarrassment of leaning over the seats in front of the school kids and PTA and God every morning. It still had a cassette player. The steering wheel was strangely covered in a make-up -like film that could not be scrubbed away. Then came the clanking. It was something about a u-joint, maybe? I just know it only settled down between the speeds of 37 and 40, making it too easy for me to speed in my unlocked, mix-taped, icebox of a car.

I scrambled at the end of the year to make the car purchase happen, but schedules and holidays stepped in the way. The next free day to visit the dealership just happened to be that one day. It seemed right, it seemed good, it seemed like the time to move on.

And so after a lengthy journey through the hills and strip-mall-lined frontage roads of the suburbs, after negotiations and numbers dealt by fast-talking and cigarette-waving salesman,after conferring with my dad, I found just what I was looking for, tucked in the corner of a paved lot as the sun set over rows and rows of shiny compact sports utility vehicles.

There it was, black as the night sky with inviting leather seats bearing the sassiest red-threaded stitching. I'd been seeking Graphite Blue swathed in gray leather, even had a vision of a charcoal-colored car. But there was the one I was meant to find, on the night it seemed right to make an offering for it.

I said goodbye to Big Red, one of the very last representations of that time, of these years I have made my way toward a new life. It had taken me far -- many more than miles. I climbed into my new car -- sleek and shiny and fully-loaded -- ready to hit the road again.

Where will I go in this baby? I don't know yet. Maybe the thought will come to me suddenly one day. Or maybe I will just cruise along this year, taking my time and enjoying every bit of this gift.Especially the heated seats.

Yes, this side of divorce definitely deserves heated seats.

Look back:

• Finally, it's final
• The divorce-ibration
• One day I'll forget this day. Until then, I'll celebrate
• A funny thing happened on the way to the wedding website

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