That winter, when my son was four, he finally agreed to go to a barber shop. Before that, I’d always trimmed his hair at home with scissors. It always came out crooked, his bangs permanently slanted. He didn’t care, but the last time his preschool took a class photo, I saw him sitting in the front row with hair that looked like it had been chewed on — while the little girl next to him had hair so neat it practically shone.
That week I made an appointment at Great Clips. Right before we left, he changed his mind. He said he wasn’t going. I told him we already had the appointment. He said, “Then you go get your hair cut. I’m not.” We stood in the hallway for five minutes. He sat on the step in his jacket, arms wrapped around his knees.
I didn’t pull him. I knelt down and said, “Okay, Mom will just take you to look. No cutting. Just look.” He thought about it, then stood up and took my hand.
At the shop, I sat in a plastic chair. He stood next to me, watching someone else get their hair cut. The barber was a round woman with a comb hanging around her neck. When the customer finished and left, she turned to him and asked, “Are you getting a cut, buddy?” He didn’t answer. He looked at me. I said it was fine if he didn’t. He thought for another moment, then climbed into the chair himself.
The clippers buzzed and his shoulders tensed up. The barber ran them over the back of his head, and he flinched, but he didn’t move away. Dark little hairs fell onto the white cape, piling up in tiny clumps. He watched in the mirror as his hair got shorter and shorter, his mouth shut, his hands fiddling with each other on his knees. When the clippers got near his ear, he tilted his head. The barber said “hold still,” and he stopped.
I leaned forward slightly in my chair but didn’t stand up. He caught my eye in the mirror, and I caught his. We looked at each other that way for one second. Then he looked away and stared at the tip of his nose.
When it was done, the barber brushed the loose hairs off his neck with a sponge. He scrunched up his shoulders and laughed — because it tickled. That was the first time he’d smiled since we walked in.
I paid. He waited by the door, touching the back of his head over and over. In the car, he didn’t say anything, but he kept looking at himself in the rearview mirror, turning this way and that.
When we got home, he ran into the bathroom, climbed onto his little stool, and stared at himself in the mirror for a long time. I stood in the doorway. He touched his short bangs, then the spot behind his ear, and suddenly turned to look at me.
He said, “Mom, my neck feels cold.”
I said yeah, it’ll feel that way until new hair grows in.
That night when he washed his hair, the water ran down his neck and he said, “It’s cold again.” I stood there with a towel, didn’t say anything, and waited for him to finish.
Later, I put that class photo in our album, but I never showed it to anyone. In that picture, his hair was neat, his bangs straight — a stranger’s child. But every day I still saw him come out of the bath with wet hair sticking up, touching the back of his head.
The moment he touched his head outside the barber shop stayed with me for a long time.
