Thursday 26 July 2018

#52Ancestors, Week 30, Colourful


Fire engine red, flaming red, red, ginger, orange, auburn, chestnut, strawberry-blond, pink

Shades of this hair colour run through my family, linked to the recessive gene MC1R. It is mostly in my maternal family.

Two of my cousins have it, my brother, my mother, her sister and both their maternal aunts and their mother too.

Going back further it seems to have been in my maternal great grandmother’s family, even in black and white photos you sense some of those cousins and siblings shared the gene.

I have a feeling that I have heard that my other maternal great grandmother also possessed these gloriously coloured locks.

I love it, I wish I had it. I hoped (long ago) when I was pregnant that if I had a girl – she would have it. But no. We do both have some “warmth” in our natural hair colour, so maybe it is still lurking their in our DNA.

Of course, with it, come freckles, fair skin, generalisations about temperament and flippant insinuations that “it’s because you’re a redhead”.

Maybe I will get it one day – out of a bottle. I can always go back to the dark side if it truly isn’t me.

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