I have to start with a warning...this blog may be a little emotional for some of you. Get some tissue and hunker down. This is real life at its most brutal.
I walked in from my meeting yesterday to find a couple members of my family looking a little sheepish. "What's going on?" I asked innocently enough. "H. got a little haircut" my husband answered...and I kid you not, my heart stopped beating.
Turns out my little M. was giving everyone a little "beauty" treatment in the bathroom. First he had brushed my husband's hair and escorted him into the living room and put him down for a nap. A few minutes later J. came screeching into the room shouting, "M. just got a pair of scissors and went back into the bathroom and locked the door." By the time my husband got the door opened, the damage was done. M. had been brushing her hair with one of my round brushes and H.'s hair had become hopelessly tangled. So he immediately solved the problem as any 4-year old would and went to get a pair of scissors to cut the brush out. I sat on the chair and listened to the story in sheer horror. J. came in carrying a bag FILLED with curly blond hair. H. came in a moment later to show me her "haircut" in the back and I got up off the chair, walked into my bedroom, shut the door, and cried.
OK, it is just hair. It will grow back. She really needed a haircut anyway. But the truth of the matter is that I wasn't quite ready to have my hand forced in the matter. He cut a good little chunk out of the back of her hair right against the scalp so there really is no haircut that is going to disguise the situation. It was heartbreaking to me. I've seen this day coming ever since I put those curls up in their first little whale spout on top of her head but I wasn't ready for it. I guess to me it represented a little piece of her childhood gone that I won't ever get back. Her curls are growing out and she is changing physically every single day, right before our eyes. Seeing that chunk gone reminded me that there are moments of who she is right now that are passing and gone forever. I really am not trying to be overdramatic about a silly thing but it was a really hard moment for me.
Today H. and I went to my friend's house for her first haircut. H. was SO excited! She loved the chair that could grow tall, the special fish cape, and the mirror she could smile at herself in. She explained to my friend that she wanted "Snow White" hair (short hair), not Sleeping Beauty hair (long) and when she was all done being primped, she got out of the chair, gave me a big smile and said, "Now I have short hair like you!"
Her hair is not that short. It is shoulder length and looks really cute on her. I didn't shed a tear today and felt happy at the joy she gleaned during her "first haircut" experience. But tonight I took down the bag filled with golden curls and looked at them for a few moments. And then I went in and gave my great big grown up princess a kiss good night!
15 comments:
Oh, the inevitable!
I love the comment you made to me earlier today: "It's just not fair for an older kid to have that kind of control over a younger kid. She didn't even have a choice." No truer words were spoken by an OLDEST CHILD to a YOUNGER CHILD...welcome to my world! :)
And to illustrate that point: I cut Emily's hair with pinking sheers...who else got a hair cut from an older sibling?
Oh the memories...Do you remember that one presidency meeting at my house...I was scattered, tense and on the verge of tears, when Ella had taken a HUGE chunk out of her newly coiffed shoulder-length- Jennifer Aniston haircut I was so proud of?!! Then how she blamed Kyson, and I lit into him so hard he actually apologized for it, though he had done nothing wrong?!!
Yes..it will grow...But I still cringe at the photos of the aftermath, and the short bob that came because of it..!
I cut my own hair, my dolls' hair and all of my younger brother's fine blond locks on his first birthday. I don't know what possessed me.
I want to cry for you. I know how much you love(d) her hair. Poor Chris - he must have HATED breaking that news to you. At first I thought you were going to say that he took her to get a haircut without telling you. THAT would have been crazy.
I think I avoided under-age haircuts as a child. How did I manage that? I did cut my own bangs in junior high. They were about 1/2 an inch long and UGLY!
sniff, sniff. I can just imagine. I want to see a picture of her new haircut..
OK, I feel the tears for you but embrace it!! This is like the two years that I didn't smile because I had braces and now I wonder, what did I really look like back then? So I try hard now to not care if kids have bruises or cuts for pictures...hair may be crazy, clothes may be ugly, scowls may be present but we will always remember exactly what life was like at that precise moment. I need a picture for visualization...I'm sure she makes a gorgeous Snow White.
oh amy this is Kim Allsup from the old lakeside 9th ward...I found your site by googling Ganel-Lyn's name. I ran into her this summer in Provo and she told be about the magazine..that is so fun. It's great to see you and your cute family.....I put you as one of my favs so i'll read ya later....
Kim
oh my goodness! that is so sad! i have always wanted natural curly hair! and what i want to know is what did you do for the puishment?
Ohhhhh! I feel the pain. LL cut S's hair and then put liquid hand soap in it to try and cover it up-- didn't work. In High School I had really long hair and a kid put duct tape right over the top of my head. My mom spent two hours peeling my hair carefully out of the sticky tape so it wouldn't rip or have to be cut. (that karma for having cut all my younger sibling's hair when we were little...)
Okay, no one had hair like H unless it was you when you were little. I think you gave yourself your first haircut....and yours was longer than H's. Then there was Carrie who cut Ab's and Emma's several times, and Ab cut off her long blonde pony tail once....yeah, it is a fact of childhood....sigh, I am thinking of H's beautiful curls. We need a picture.
Julie and Jared once had an argument while they were cutting my hair. I lost the argument by default and learned that my hair was very important to my mother when she returned from grocery shopping. I was in seventh grade at the time, and when I went to school the next day, no one noticed that there was a zigzag on one side of my head and a series of scissor marks down the back side.
I love your blog page - I'll have to get some advice from you on how to do this...
I heard your story about H's hair at school 2 days ago, but it was great to get the blow by blow. I'm there too, with Ja's do from two weeks ago. I'm dreading having to use retakes for his school pictures just because he didn't turn in his money to the photographer...sigh. But what do you expect of kindergarteners?!
Ah... Oh goodness..
Wow, that looks like it could be you 20 years ago! She looks just like you! My sons hair definitely looks like he did it himself, but alas, no, I am the one who got crazy with the clippers. Shhh don' tell!
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