Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

I gave my 1-year-old son Isaac a hasty haircut the other night after his bath, and it shows. I am not a professional so it’s not pretty.

His bangs were in his pretty blue eyes, so I trimmed them up a bit, and that went ok. Then the hair hanging over his ears looked really shaggy to me next to the relatively neat bangs, so I snipped those locks, too. Turns out he’s kind of bald underneath the silky top layer of his blonde mop, so now his temples look kind of naked.

Soon the hair in the back looked really long, and suddenly my decisive scissors froze. I had no idea how to tackle what had somehow become a mullet. The end result is that he looks a little bit like Paul McCartney circa the “Say Say Say” era. He’s all business in the front, but he is definitely partying in the back.

I guess it’s time for him to make his first trip to see a barber like a big boy, but I can’t imagine he’ll sit still for it. He might be scared by the sound of the clippers or distracted by all the action in Sal’s Barber Shop in the Yorktowne Plaza Shopping Center on a Saturday. And oh my, he’s still just a baby – my baby, and seeing him on top of that booster seat in Sal’s chair would surely make me burst into tears in front of all the guys there.

I don’t remember getting this emotional on the cusp of my daughter’s first professional haircut. That could be because girlfriend didn’t have enough hair to even make it an issue until right before her second birthday. But Isaac was born with a flop of white blond hair that just keeps growing. For now, I think I’ll just keep giving him lousy haircuts. That way, he can stay a baby boy for just a little bit longer before I surrender his locks to the barber’s much more capable hands.