The Mohawk Incident: The Tale of an Accidental Haircut
“You have to promise not to yell.” This had my attention. Making me promise not to yell implies that it is bad and that I am going to be mad. Mad enough to yell. How can he ask me to make this promise to him without knowing what source of anger I am signing off on?
“And you can’t cry either.” Well, what can I do? He certainly had my attention. The sun was shining beautifully outside, so I should have awoken in a wonderful mood prepared for a great day. However, this wake up call certainly had me nervous. To be honest, I didn’t really want to know. The tone for the rest of the day had been set.
I got dressed and went upstairs. I did not know what to expect. I examined our living room. Nothing was broken and there were no horrible stains on the carpet. I went through the mental checklist of what and where to check. I could safely check off the living room. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary in the bathroom or the kitchen. Wait, where were my children? When I wake up in the morning, my children come running to greet me as if I had gone through with all my threats to run away for a vacation alone and was just returning. With the absence of their greetings, I became quite worried and headed towards their bedroom.
I felt like I was inside a movie. As I was approaching the door I could hear the frightful music that always plays in the background when the deformed monster is approaching his innocent and clueless victim. You know the music, the kind that sounds like a heartbeat set to Guns N Roses. I slowly opened the bedroom door and let out a scream. I could not believe my eyes. I was frozen with fear. My daughter had an inverted Mohawk!
“What happened to her?” I demanded.
Silence
“Well, what happened?”
“I thoughts she was here with me and then I saw her in the bathroom and when she came out she looked like this,” my husband was stumbling over his words. He thought she was with him?
“Look Mommy, Emily has pretty hair,” my daughter said proudly.
At that moment, I began to burst into tears. My daughter, soon to be four, is starting pre-school this year. She has orientation she has to go to. She has doctor appointments she needs to go to. She has pictures she needs to take. And she has an inverted Mohawk. Immediately my thoughts visualized the teasing she would receive. My daughter has an innocence about her that is rare, even in children. Mush of that has to do with the fact that she has only been around her siblings for the last two years. The to her two, she was an only child hanging out exclusively with me. I didn’t want her first experiences with kids her age to be experiences that would hurt her.
After gaining my composure, I examined my daughter’s masterpiece. Her hair was shoulder length. Now, her hair was shoulder length with a three inch by four inch piece missing from the top of her head. What possessed her to cut the top of her head I do not understand. I could see her cutting away the length. And I could handle that. But her new hairdo was bad. One thing to her credit, she wanted the top of her hair gone and it was gone. Cut to about a quarter of an inch! So bad, in fact that the only solution was to shave all of her hair. Yes, it really was that bad!
As my sister-in-law shaved her head, I pouted. My little girl. My beautiful little girl and my beautiful little girl’s hair. Gone. All gone. I kept telling myself that it would be nice and cool for the summer and that it would grow back. No matter how many times I told myself that, when I glanced at her with her newly bald head, my heart sank. At least with her bald head she resembled her father more.
My daughter became very self-conscience about her hair. She would continually ask me questions to reinforce that she was still beautiful and pretty and still a girl. To make her feel better, I did what any insane mother would do; I cut off all of my hair too. She loved it. Now she and Mommy both had short hair. After I had cut my hair off, she stopped asking if she was pretty and was now declaring how pretty her and Mommy were. Yes, I am a woman but trust me, as much as I like to hear compliments and may occasionally fish for them; I didn’t want them this bad.
After I saw the joy my daughter had to be like her mom, I reconsidered this whole hair thing. You know, my daughter taught me a lesson. It is just hair. It will grow back. It isn’t who I am or who she is. She also taught me what lengths that I will go to in order to ensure her happiness. And mine. Some call it insanity. I call it being a mom. And it really is much cooler in the summer.
