A Cut Above

As many mothers do, I feel as though my boys are something special.  They are creative and smart and never cease to amaze me with their boundless energy.  Graham is a really calming influence and always wants to snuggle.  "Mommy, come snuggle me.  This pillow is scratchy and your tummy is soft and squishy."

Even when I spend several days feeling under the weather and coughing nonstop, I can always count on Cael to boost me up by saying, "Mommy, quit being sick.  You've been sick too long and I want some cookies."

He's a motivator, that one.

But just as much as I have come to expect great things from them, I have also come to expect the unexpected.  My kids don't commit the cliché offenses, like drawing on the walls (except that one time) or flushing things down the toilet (well, not recently).  So when Cael reached another problematic childhood milestone, I didn't see it coming.

Out at lunch with Joel last week, we noticed a small lock of Cael's curls on his coat, which I assumed had been severed by his zipper.  But throughout the meal we saw another, and another.  When we left the restaurant and a gust of wind forced a large tuft of hair to take flight, we got concerned.  Joel tousled Cael's hair and began pulling handfuls of blonde curls out, effectively removing a few years from the end of Daddy's life as he thought it was all falling out at the root.  Even the restaurant owner came rushing outside, wondering if our clearly near-death son was okay.  But I knew better.

I'm exceptional too.

"Cael, did you cut your hair with those scissors you had earlier?"

First came the denial, but I've learned how to see through that.  When Cael is truly innocent, his repeated cries of, "It wasn't me!  It really wasn't me!" show me that he wasn't at fault.  But when he is lying, the response is always the same.  "Mommy, I would never do that."

Clearly, he would.  And he did.

Further inspection proved that he had not only cut his hair, but he had nearly scalped himself in three separate spots.  I tried my best to employ the balding man's favorite comb-over move, but his ringlets bounced back into place and nothing I did could cover up the holes.  So we went to the sink and I did my best to even out his disheveled mop. 

"Mommy, I'm going to look funny at school.  I don't look like me now."

"Well, then I hope you remember how you feel so that you won't do this again.  When it's time for a haircut, I will take care of it, okay?"

"Okay."

I think we both learned a lesson.  Cael learned that cutting his hair with safety scissors and an unsteady hand leads to goofy stares and sideways glances. 

And I learned that, when it comes to my boys, anything is possible.