I'm one of those women who prides herself on choosing breast over bottle, flip-flops over stilettos, Boca over beef.

I rarely wear makeup.

Most of my clothes are 100-percent cotton.

And unlike all three of my sisters, every one of my best friends and the lady at the convenience store where we buy milk, I have never considered highlighting or dyeing my hair.

Rather, I have always imagined myself one day like my 70-year-old friend Carol, a professor at a local liberal college, who wears a proud gray braid down her back.

But then every au naturel has to have her day of reckoning.

Mine came at my new hairdresser's a few days before Christmas, where I'd gone for a little trim in preparation for my niece's wedding.

"See any gray back there?" I asked casually as the hairdresser moved to the back of my head.

I already knew about the tiniest strands of gray framing my 51-year-old face on either side. As for the rest of my head, I was proud it had stayed the same mousy brown since puberty.

"I'd say you've got about 50 percent coverage back here," the hairdresser said.

"WHAT? Are you sure you're looking at the right head? Give me that hand mirror!"

The mirror lay bare the truth and called into question my values, my bragging rights and all those lies I told myself about Oil of Olay being a racket.

"But I'm going to a wedding! What am I going to do?"

"You could put in a few highlights, though that really wouldn't cover the gray," she explained. "Or you could completely cover the gray with color. Of course, then you'd have to watch for roots."

I was stunned: All those years of prideful self-actualization and I was having a real conversation about highlights, lowlights and roots.

I was also transfixed, caught up in the witness of a 24-year-old stylemaster with low-slung jeans, a stud in the upper-right quadrant of her nose and a palette of strands in her hand.

"Let's do it," I said.

Like millions of women before me -- 3 of 5 on any given day, according to the Cosmetic Toiletry and Fragrance Association -- I signed on the dotted line, making an appointment for the next afternoon for full medium ash brown coverage with dark blonde highlights. And I ran from the salon.

Ah, but it takes a village to dye one's hair, and I had 24 hours to gather in my community.

From my older sister whose hair is bottle black came: "You'll feel better about yourself if you do," and from my younger sister who empathizes with my Boca preference: "You might feel better about yourself if you don't."

From my middle sister, who emerged from the womb with a shock of gray in front: "You will be a disgrace to your Southern upbringing if you don't," and from my dearest friend, whose hair has been every color on the wheel: "You will never be able to stop once you start."

But the most dramatic, and the most effective, comment came from my 18-year-old son, whose father I dared not even query.

"Mom! You have always been your own person! You don't have to be one of those women! You can be who you want to be, just by being you! I like you the way you are! Just be yourself!"

I imagine the ramifications of dyeing one's hair lie somewhere between being one of "those women" and "A girl just wants to have fun," somewhere between falling slave to youth and beauty, and simply wanting to liven things up a bit.

What I had to do was make the decision that felt most like me, which I did: I canceled the appointment.

And then, a few days later, while thumbing through a book on the coffee table in my gynecologist's waiting room, I cemented my decision.

The book is "Wise Women," a pictorial celebrating the "beauty and power" of women ages 65 to 100. I turned each page to see those who have gone before me, some of them more famous than others, each of them draped in cloth and little else but their natural beauty, all of them with hair in varying shades of gray and white.

Along with their pictures were their words, including these from actress Marian Seldes, who was 73 at the time: "When I let my hair go gray, I felt an enormous freedom. All those years of having my hair dyed -- why do we do it?"

I barely had time to copy down the words in the little pocket notebook, where I write important things, before being taken back to the examination room.

There, we found the mysterious lumps.

"They're probably nothing, but let's get an ultrasound of your left breast just to be sure,' " she said.

It was an interminable three-day wait, during which my community was called on again. And then came the ultrasound and the happy words of the radiologist: "You do not have cancer, only benign cysts."

This was four days before Christmas.

And I had been firmly pronounced, defined and redefined.

I was a healthy and alive wife and mother, sister and friend, a loved and loving woman preparing to spend Christmas with my family, preparing to dance at my niece's wedding, preparing to raise my glass and ring in a new year -- every bit of it with a head full of hair that is healthy and alive, too, and just the loveliest, most blessed shade of mousy brown and gray.