by Ellen Arnold
The woman in the YouTube video says to start a baseline at the nape of the neck and move toward the face. “Cut one section at a time, matching new cuts to the old, trying not to cut too much at once,” she cautions.
“Sit here while I get the scissors,” I tell my son, Aaron, gesturing a little nervously toward the kitchen chair. I tried to order new scissors from Amazon last week but they were all sold out or backordered for months. Six weeks into lockdown and everybody needs a haircut. So the dog grooming scissors will have to do.
Obediently, he folds his 6’2” frame into the kitchen chair. Even seated, his head is even with my chest. My God, when did he get so tall? I wonder. He was already taller than me, even taller than his father when he left for college, and he’s grown more since then. It never ceases to amaze me that this young man was once small enough to fit in my own body.
What I ask out loud is “When’s the last time you got your hair cut?,” with a laugh.
“I don’t know, Mom — Christmas?” Christmas was three months ago, the last time he was home from Clemson. Since then, his hair has been growing. It has always grown fast. When he was still living with us at home, in high school, he had to get a haircut every six weeks and even that seemed too infrequent. After months, it no longer has any shape or pattern that I can follow.
The woman in the video is cutting maybe half an inch. What I’m facing seems impossible. I separate the top layer of his damp hair, twist it into a loose ponytail and fasten it on top of his head with a clip. It falls in a curtain over his eyes, reaching past his nose to his mouth.
When he was much younger, the hair itself was very different, smooth and finely textured, like my own, but a lighter brown. His hair used to feel soft against my face when I held him in my lap, his little body warm and close. Sometimes I would bury my nose in the scents of Johnson’s baby shampoo, dirt, and childish sweat as we read The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Goodnight Moon, and that perennial favorite garbage truck adventure, I Stink! I remember his first haircut: the sudden shock of an older boy appearing where a toddler once was. Somewhere, packed away in his baby book there’s a silky brown lock, preserved with photos, birthday cards, immunization records.
The hair before me now is almost black, wild, thick, coarse, and out of control. And it isn’t going to cut itself.
“OK, look down so I can cut the back first.” My hands are shaking as I make the first cut, combing a layer of hair and holding clumsily it between the fingers of my left hand while wielding the scissors with my right. Then, using the first cut as a guide, I cut the next layer, then the next, working my way up and then across.
“I don’t know what this will look like,” I worry. “I’ve never cut anyone’s hair before.” It seems silly, but the prospect of failing in a truly horrible way looms, making me anxious.
“Well, I mean, it’s not like you can make it any worse, Mom,” Aaron’s laughing at me, but in a reassuring way. Oh, I’ve missed this good-natured teasing that happens between moms and their sons. “And besides, who would see it? It looks like I won’t be going back to classes in person this semester. And my internship doesn’t start for another month. There’s plenty of time for it to grow out if you mess it up.”
“All true. Plus, you already had your worst haircut ever – remember eighth grade?”
“Ahahaha! I remember that one. That took a whole year to grow out.”
Eighth grade, he made the junior varsity soccer team and went through the traditional hazing of having his head shaved by an older team member. Rumors floated during the weeks preceding the initiation. I imagined a brutal chase across the field, older boys tackling the younger ones, wrestling them into the locker room where they’d line up like so many pigs to be slaughtered. I wanted to forbid him to participate. I felt helpless, caught between the impulse to protect him and the recognition that there was nothing I could do. Even though the ritual seemed unnecessary and even dangerous, I had to let it happen. Interfering would have been the worst thing I could do; he needed to go through this alone to be accepted by the rest of the team.
In reality, the head-shaving rite of passage was all very good natured and friendly, civilized even, conducted by a good friend on the team who greeted him at the locker room door after their first home game with a wave of the electric Norelco shaver in his hand. Still, I felt an icy flash of fear as they disappeared into the locker room, out of my sight. When he reappeared, his boyish hair was gone. He was utterly bald except for a ragged patch left on the crown, like a yarmulke. And he was grinning broadly. As it turned out, my fears were exaggerated and misplaced.
Still, I never saw such an ugly haircut. His coach refused to let him play until we took him to a barber to have the rest of his head shaved. I don’t say it, but in my memory that was when his hair changed. When it grew back, it was utterly different. It became the thick, slightly curly, almost wiry mop that I am now trying to wrestle into some sort of respectable form.
After almost an hour, I’ve finished cutting the back hair, the floor is covered, and what I’ve done so far honestly doesn’t look half bad. The top simply follows the shape of the head. Combing the hair along the crown, I find a scar about an inch long and touch it gently, remembering the call from daycare, the rush to pick him up, the drive to the doctor’s office, the tears, and the stitches. There’s still a sinking feeling as I remember that day. Yet the injury itself healed beautifully. What seemed tragic at the time – a fall from the monkey bars — was simply a common childhood accident. I let the newly trimmed hair fall back and cover the scar, hardly noticeable now after almost 20 years. I wish I could have told my younger self it would end up just fine; he would be fine.
Once the top is done, it’s the front and sides that will pose the biggest challenge. His hair is dry now and starting to curl into waves again.
“Let’s take a break. Wet your hair down again and I’ll rewatch this part of the video. Then we can start again.”
The video makes it look easy and takes a total of 15 minutes. Here at home, cutting hair is much more complicated. It helps to repeat the instructions like a mantra: “Take it in sections. Match the new cuts to the old. Try not to cut too much at once.” I’m starting to think this is going to turn out OK.
When Aaron’s back in the chair and I start cutting again, there’s something calming about the repetitive movements, the quiet snipping sounds of the scissors, the smell of clean hair. It’s a welcome change from bad news and toilet paper shortages, the pressures of online classes and working from home. As I work, we talk about what he’s heard from his friends from school, what he’s looking forward to when he gets back, how his project is going in one class, and how the exam in another went. I almost tell him how I wish he could just stay here at home – classes are online anyway, he can just put the internship off another semester. But I don’t say it. I know he is already making a life for himself away from us.
“Almost done,” I say, snapping the scissors. “Take a look in the mirror and let me know what I need to fix.”
He comes back from the bathroom with a surprised smile on his face. “Looks pretty good actually! There’s something wrong around the ears but other than that I like it!”
He’s right, those ears are still shaggy. I make a few more decisive cuts, more confident now that total disaster seems unlikely. “Not bad if I do say so myself,” I say and take a final appraising look. My son, this strong, sweet, talented young man, looks back at me and gives me a little hug. He sweeps up the hair from the floor, and I put away the scissors.
Months later, Aaron’s back at Clemson, and the pandemic restrictions have loosened a little, though uncertainty is still all around us. I get the scissors out to trim the dogs, remembering that haircut, that rare moment of closeness in the middle of disease, isolation, distance, and fear. I start to cut, one section at a time.
Ellen Arnold teaches composition, children’s literature, and young adult literature at Coastal Carolina University. She lives in Conway, South Carolina.
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