coiffed

One of the female Children has been dithering for a few weeks about that terrifying topic - hair cuts. This particular Child has had long hair since it was five and first started growing it out. Once a year it would get impatient and decide it was NEVER going to have super-duper long hair, grab a pair of scissors and lop off its mane at just below shoulder length. But short hair? Really truly short hair? Not since it was in kindergarten.

This particular Child inherited my hair - curly when its short, frightening tendency to frizzy when long unless cossetted and pampered and (often) pleaded with to JUST BEHAVE. So hair cuts are a serious matter. In my opinion the whole thing should go like this: a) consider getting hair cut. Like, for several months b) get to point of irritation with current hair enough to look at a few styles online c) get further to point of thinking about maybe actually making an appointment d) repeat a-c with small variations in amount of whining vs amount of dithering e) gird up loins and make appointment f) remember what happened last time hair was cut short - DISASTER, suffer massive panic attack, cancel appointment and sigh with relief that while hair is unmanageably long there are such things as hair ties in the world and they are good.

Child clearly had not read the manual. It thought about a hair cut, it looked up a few things and then it hopped itself off and had the darn hair lopped off! It arranged to have its long, long hair donated to Locks of Love and without even a sideways glance at mandatory Hair Cutting Fear it waved goodbye to 14 or so inches. And - and here's where reality is genuinely stretched - it looks FABULOUS. Sweet and darling and pretty and everything - and frighteningly older. Child even admits that this is true, admits it to the point that yesterday it allowed me to take pictures of it. From the front. Without putting its hands in the way, or ducking at the last minute (leaving me with fourteen shots of very blurred top-of-Child-head). It even smiled.

One more note. The Male sibling had been warned that this Child was thinking about lopping off its hair. When it came back home the Male looked blandly in the Child's eyes and began telling a long, long, LONG involved story about its afternoon. Finally the Child and I, exasperated, pointed meaningfully at the new do. The Male looked at us calmly, said, "Oh, yes I noticed. So, ANYway..."

The Female sibling had no warning at all, came home that evening, began telling a long involved story about its day, glanced over at the short-haired Child stopped completely mouth agape and said, "but you look so BEAUTIFUL! And it's so CUTE and it's... and... and..."

We never did hear what happened to the Female sibling, but I can tell you all about what the Male did.