It was bound to happen someday

I cried this evening, it started out as quiet tears and turned into deep sobbing for a couple of minutes after that. Now what, you ask, could possibly cause an extremely emotional pregnant woman to cry, besides a slight change in the weather, a puddle of mysterious liquid on the floor, the unexpected, read nauseating, smell of garlic when I open my fridge, any kind of disappointment, or thinking about what to cook for dinner? Since we all know I don’t cry without a VERY GOOD REASON these days, and the suspense is now killing you, here it is.

While I was on the phone happily accepting an invitation to a 1 year-olds birthday party, happily because I like his mom a lot, my children were being mysteriously quiet in the bathroom with the door closed. (I don’t know how my mommy instincts have become so deadened, but there were no flashing lights going off when they should have been.) When I was finished on the phone I called the Girl so I could brush her very snarled hair.

It was as I was brushing that I noticed the unusually short layer at the back of her head, where most of her hair now reaches to her shoulder blades, these strands were at above her neck. On the next brush through handfuls of hair came out in the comb. As I worked my way around to the front of her head I noticed the Boy watching us. Some how I managed to calmly ask him if he had used the scissors to cut her hair. He nodded and confessed, ”I did.” Continuing to comb I told him that it was now a no-no to use the scissors to cut his, or any other person’s hair without permission from now on. I surprised myself by how calm I was and how I realized he was just imitating what I do to his head all of the time and he didn’t know better.

Then I saw the extremely short, close-cropped little pieces of hair sticking up in a little even row right along her part line on the very top of her head, and I started to cry as more of her silky beautiful blond hair came away in my hand.

The boy, ever the little man, said, “Don’t cry mommy, it will grow back.”

To which I responded with tears rolling down my face, “But it took two years for it to get as long as it is, and now it’s all uneven and will take another two years just to look the way it looked before you cut it again.” And then I went into the bedroom and sobbed. And I feel silly now, but that it was perfectly normal for me to be sad though I don’t quite understand why.

So the girl will look a little bit goofy for a while, though I discovered that if I part the top different it’s not immediately visible, she just looks like she’s thinning prematurely. And part of me is impressed at the way my aspiring stylist son was able to cut such a straight line of hair at almost even lengths, like he’s learned something watching me. If we wanted to give her the shortest pixie cut ever I could have probably let him finish. She of course was a willing participant and feels no angst whatsoever over the loss of her “Petty hair”, I wonder how this will all play out in ten years or so. Will he be giving her regular short hair cuts as I inwardly sob, or will she be a girly girl after all and keep her lovely tresses long? It’s the end of an era for yet another child. I cried when the Boy first got his hair cut too though I planned on that happening.