When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
I have always loved the poem, “Warning”, by Jenny Joseph, which is often referred to by its first line: “When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple.” It’s a manifesto of sorts, which Joseph wrote when she was only 29 years old. (She lived to age 85, and as it turns out, never wore purple at all, as she detested it.)
“When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.”
In “Warning”, which you can read in full here, Joseph says that when she is old, she will do things to “make up for the sobriety of my youth”. The poem is included in Joseph’s Selected Poems.
I get that. As Bob Dylan sang in “My Back Pages”, “Ah, but I was so much older then; I’m younger than that now.”
I am not yet old, or not officially old, or perhaps there is no such thing as old after all, but I am ditching some of that sobriety (attitude, not alcohol), and wearing purple in my hair.
My purple is a semi-permanent dye applied in the salon, but if you want to give it a go yourself (and be able to just wash it right out again), you could try this temporary Manic Panic purple.
It feels like an outward manifestation of an inner change. Like leveling up, raising my vibration, and releasing some things that no longer serve me. Because energetically, “I was so much older then—I’m younger than that now.”
I am truly embracing my gray and my purple, my age and my youth, my logical and my intuitive, energetic side.
It’s all part of my personal alchemy, a word defined as “a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation or combination.” I’ll have more of that, please.
As spring becomes more certain and we turn toward summer and the United States starts to turn the corner on this virus, we will be able to mix with one another a bit more. I’m looking forward to having my daughter visit without us all needing masks, and to traveling to see my parents now that they (and we) are fully vaccinated.
How about you? I’d love for you to drop a comment and let me know!
