Someone once wrote that they were not born a redhead but born to be a redhead. Some of us were fortunate enough to be both.
We remained that way until mother nature and our father's genes (or so I believed) colluded to force our hairline to retreat in early adulthood and disappear completely by the time we left our twenties. There is something semi-Masonic about being a redhead. The actress Julianne Moore has mentioned how we tend to notice each other and 'notice our identity'. It's a club, a tribe, a minority. A ginger group, of sorts. Baldness never bothered me, but I was crushed by no longer being a redhead. Ginger. Of course there are greater losses, but these came later, and others will come later still. Long after the loss of youth, hair, looks and loved ones comes the loss of faculties, mobility and independence. And when it comes to pain and illness there is an argument that redheads feel it more than your average mousey blonde, strawberry blonde,…