The Hair Up There

Last night, I gave Katie her first haircut.

Before I get demands for before and after photos or a blow-by-blow description of the grand event, let me clarify. I didn’t give her bangs, or trim off inches of length. All I did was cut off her annoying little rat tail, the one remnant of her newborn hair that stubbornly refused to fall out with the rest of its kind.

Why did I do it? For one thing, because it ruined the line of the rest of her hair, kept getting stuck in her collar, was straight next to the rest of her cute curls, and was the only part of her hair long enough to actually get tangled. But the other reason is that it just reminded me too much of the bad hairstyles that ran rampant when I was growing up.

I was born in 1968, which meant that I spent my younger childhood in the fashion black hole of the 70s, when hair was long, straight, and limp, and I spent my more fashion-conscious years of high school and college in the 80s, when the popular styles were big hair, bigger bangs, spiral perms, mohawks – and rat tails. At the time, we all (myself included) thought they were totally cool and fashionable. I recall a classmate with beautiful thick curly hair who cut it crazy short but grew a braided rat tail that by graduation must have been 18 inches long. Boy was I jealous of her coolness.

My own hairstyles were rarely the height of fashion, even at the time. I had a pixie cut as a toddler, long straight hair in my early childhood that I cut off into a Dorothy Hamill cut in first grade, grew it long again with bangs and the occasional disastrous home perm, cut it all off again in 7^th grade, somehow ended up with a few tragic femullets through junior high and high school, and eventually settled into a semi-fashionable short cut all through college. I think my wildest hair thought was a passing desire in 9^th grade to dye a single lock of hair on the side of my head magenta –my mother, to her dying day, was convinced that I had wanted to dye my entire head of hair magenta.

My 1976 school picture: the long hair years, just prior to the one trendy haircut I ever had, the Dorothy Hamill

It makes me wonder what horrific hairstyles my kids will come up with over the years. My husband probably doesn’t agree, but hair cuts and colors aren’t a hill I care to die on. Hair grows back, after all, unlike, say, piercings and tattoos. No matter what a girl does to her hair, it can’t be overly revealing or sexualized. No matter what a boy does to his hair, it can’t be anything that can’t be remedied with a razor (or a hat). The most unfortunate haircut in the world won't lead to infections or hepatitis. The worst result of a hair tragedy (whether accidental or by choice) is a class or yearbook photo. And don’t we all have those anyway?

My 1983 (failed) attempt at 80s big hair

So it Katie wants to grow her rat tail back someday, so be it. And if Ryan was to chop off his glorious curls into a Mohawk or a flattop, that’s his choice. I’ll be standing by with the camera.

Give Me a Head with Hair

I managed to put it off for an entire year, but it was finally time for Ryan to get his first haircut. I think the thing that made me want to put it off was the fear that he’d suddenly go from looking like a baby to looking like a little boy. But since he’s so big he already looks pretty grown up, so how much older could he look? So we decided it was time.

I was concerned that he’d be too squirmy, so we waited until nearly naptime when he was pretty mellow, and we brought a nice warm bottle with us to keep him occupied and distracted. We brought him to Supercuts and there was no-one else waiting, so while we waited for one of the girls to finish the client she was working on, we let Ryan play in the waiting area and we took a few “before” shots:

I stroked his soft curls one last time, tucked the long strands behind his ears, and told myself that I’d save a few locks for his baby book. And then it was time to sit in The Chair. We knew he’d never sit still on his own, so I put him in my lap and we both got capes. His was much cooler than mine – it had elephants and monkeys and giraffes on it. Mine just said “Supercuts”.

He was interested enough in both his bottle and his own reflection that he was pretty cooperative at first. I was quite surprised that he didn’t try to crane his head around to see the comb and the shiny scissors that this strange woman kept waving around his head. But he was content to just sit and let her work – until the hairdresser at the station directly behind us turned on her blow dryer.

Ryan and a blow dryer are like a moth and a flame: he can’t take his attention away from it. So with Rosemary’s help, I managed to get him into a position where he could see the dryer and the hairdresser could still get at his head. When that got too difficult, Herb had the brilliant idea of turning on the hairdryer at our hairdresser’s station so his attention was focused ahead again. (Let’s all hope Ryan gets his brains from his dad.)

The hairdresser had to do a fair amount of chasing him around, but she was both patient and deft and miraculously finished the job without stabbing Ryan, me, or herself.

And there was my big little boy, looking indeed like a big little boy and not like a little baby. I miss the softness of those baby curls, but I love seeing my big boy with his big boy haircut showing off all his big boy skills, like walking and rolling a ball and opening doors and playing with trucks. His new big boy look reminds me that he’s not a little baby any more, and that I need to let him be more independent and make his own mistakes and learn from them. It reminds me that he can fall on his face or bonk himself in the head or drop something on his toes and he’ll be okay even though he cries. And hopefully he’ll remember and be careful the next time. But if he isn’t, I’ll be there to tell him he’s okay and encourage him to try again. Because that’s what big boys do.