smarter than a bag of hair

On Tuesday we took Squire Tuck to the doctor, where they determined that he is not brain dead. Sometimes I have trouble deciding whether I am more frustrated by American doctors ("Well, either your hearing loss is permanent or your hearing will come back sooner or later") or Czech doctors. As she fixed the funny hat to his head the nurse told him that he looked like "Little Red Riding Hood".

I told him how in high school and college when I had my hair super short people would call me "sir" and it's nothing to do with you and everything to do with them. And he heard that, I really think he did, but he also is seeing a summer of sweaty long hair stretch in front of him and he said, "When I come home from school today, I want you to cut my hair."

I was a bit sad about it, because his hair is beautiful and healthy and when he jumps up in the air it's the flowing California hair I will never have and part of the reason I used to shave my head: HA. Can't have it, never wanted it anyway. And I hate to think of him doing something because he's giving in to someone else's standards, or even just because he's tired of feeling like he has to justify his own. So it sort of hurt me to get the clippers out.

But on the other hand I absolutely understand the feeling that there are so many things you can't control, so many assumptions people will make no matter your best efforts, and so many times that you're so twisted up in your head that you don't even know whether your need for change is internal or external, but you know you need it and you need it now.

So he got in the tub and I got out the clippers and bzzzzt and it was all gone. We swept it up into a bag to take to the cottage, because human hair repels many critters and it may be nice for the birds, although I think we're late for this year. It's weird to see his skull shape again after a year of growing his hair. If he grows up into a bald man he'll have nothing to fear, as he really has a lovely cranium. His face looks so big, and a bit older, and he seems to have grown into my stubborn jawline in the last 12 months, too. He seems happy about it. I asked him if he worried he might regret it, and he was like: Mom. It is hair, it grows back.

I would maybe eventually like to be smart; not take every event as if it were laden with echoing meaning. I would maybe like to see each moment at its actual value. I would also like to get over this itchy feeling that if I shaved my hair off, I would somehow become as clear-headed as my son seems to me today.

 

Comments

[the patriarch]

Isn't that what women do to signal a Change? At least that's what they do in the movies.

We also cut one of our long-haired son's cascading mane. The middle kid. He has my big Irish noggin and looks like he'll topple over. I tell him we have such large heads in order to fit our large brains. The oldest has so much hair that my wife has to use thinning shears. Thinning shears!! What the fuck is that!? As my hair continues to recede like a wave on a beach, I long for thickening shears.