Sentimental Cuttings

It was Little M's first haircut the other day. I hadn't intended for it to be, but was not surprised that she wanted a turn after Son.



Having not booked her proper time at the busy salon, and loving her natural untamed curls as they are, I didn't say "style her up!" as she clambered up onto the stool. Probably to the contrary I intimated it be more of a symbolic cutting.

Then I got wind of this idea to save a lock of her hair. I'm not usually sentimental in that way, and voiced as much to those in the eccentric salon, but once the gesture appeared on the ether I went with it. Gary the hairdresser snipped a pinch of golden hair, which we tried to solder together at one end with the beautician's nail varnish.


The beautician, I must tell you, has a most unusual setup. She works on the wrap-around veranda of the house, where the salon is based. You go off the street to a low never-locked gate (in itself unusual in a town where most such gates have long since been replaced by functional security). Up three stairs, onto the veranda, turn right, squeeze past the beautician heavily massaging someone's large back in the breeze, and then proceed round back into what seems like the backstage area of a drag show.

My kids enjoy it there. They seem quietly curious about it all and amuse themselves with the iPad or by making up a game with hair brushes or by responding to banter as they wait for Son's turn. What I love most is that Gary will fit us in for Son's school-regulation above-the-eyes trim when ever suits me.

But back to the memento of badly stuck together hair-of-two-year-old, I'm obviously so darn unsentimental that I've inadvertently thrown it away. De-cluttering my handbag I didn't remember I'd lovingly encased the lock in an old Woolworths till slip. You'd think I must have seen it coming, and I probably did as I folded the hair up in the scrap of paper, but I was thinking on my feet with a room of onlookers and no other solutions springing forth.

I did think it would be great for the memory book. It was to be the thing that would motivate me to fill the book in from 6-months onwards. For both Son and Little M. So behind I am, even our photo albums have paused at Son's second birthday shortly after Little M's birth. It's their best thing to page through the albums, seeing themselves as babies being held by all the people they love That should be motivation enough for me to get printing out photos again. And while I won't be bronzing their first shoes, the scrap book with first words and favorite first books (though no first lock of hair), will likely be as marvelous for them to page through later down the line.

So here's my undertaking to get to not put it off too much longer...

Love from gang land

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