Hair

It all started before they were born, in the delivery room. "I see blond hair! Lots of it!" my doctor said as Max was crowning. Sure enough, she was right. The nurses swept him away to monitor his labored breathing, but he came back to my room a half an hour later with a faux hawk. Ty's hair was just a touch darker and shorter, and he got some kind of flat-bangs-hair-do too. You can just imagine what kind of shape I was in by that time, helpless. It wasn't me who started this fire.

I could even go back further, and tell you it is in their DNA. When I met their father he had long hair too, and it was always almost personified, an entity of it's own, very important to him. When we cut it big, it was all the way down his back and more than a decade of his life, all neatly stored by strand, recorded like rings of a tree. I have straw for hair. So what do I know? Except, on my two lovely boys, it only made sense that I should let it grow.


We get two very different reactions from those outside of our inner family. Either they hate the boys long hair, or they love it. Either they look like girls, or we should never cut it. Either we are a disgraceful white trash family, or a bunch of unpicked wildflowers. I don't think too much about what other people say, although I have tried to teach Max to speak up for himself with the line, "I am a boy, silly!" He never does though, so I have to interrupt the "Hello pretty ladies!" with "Actually, they are boys. They just have pretty hair. That's all." I guess it is just one of those things that some people can't see; the possibility of something out of their normal thought processes, their stereotype, exists, two little boys with hair that rivals any girl their age. How surprised people are to find my sons growing so beautifully and free, when their own idea of those subjects were not thoughtful enough to include them. How much beauty those people must miss in this lifetime. Regardless of all that, I think, we have come to the end of an era.

Ty wants a hair cut. Max does not.

When we took Ty up to the doctor alone last week, Max was terrified that we were actually taking him away to have his hair cut. Upon returning home, the first words out of his mouth were "You didn't cut Ty's hair!?" He was worried because Ty has said it very clearly several times recently, he wants a hair cut, "not short, but medium, like Daddy's," which is just starting to curl onto his shoulders now. Max has said it a million times, no hair cut, no way, no how, never! Up until now, Max has always spoken for both of them on the matter. Ty couldn't express his thoughts and feelings about something like wanting a hair cut, so we simply trusted Max's voice as the next best thing. If there is one thing that Max is good at saying, it is the word no. But now Ty can say yes, and you better believe I will honor that.

I have no idea what will happen. Ty may change his mind when we get there, and he realizes that the process is quite sensory rich. It is going to take some prep work, which we have already started, to get him as prepared as possible. He just accepted a doctor's touch, so I am not sure if this is just what he needs to take the next step in conquering his fears, or if it will all be too much. Then again, maybe Max will give up some of his rebellious ways, and join his brother, with a hair cut too. I tend to think of Max as the leader of the two, but Ty is always surprising us, and he often gets out ahead of Max when we least expect it. I have a feeling either way though, that these two will continue to surprise us all, growing more beautiful and free, with or with out the long hair as a symbol. Those kinds of things are deeper anyway, down from your Rebel Soul.

And just for good times...