Xavier's First Hair Cut
Greetings to everyone.
Today was an unseasonably warm January day. Cloudless skies and low seventies temperatures. Rebecca had windows open around the house to help draw in some outdoor freshness and clear away some closed-up winter stale.
Xavier's hair (at last) has grown too long. Just this past Saturday, the waiter at White Fence Farms called him a girl. His hair length wasn't helping his cause.
His hair hung in his face, half way down the bridge of his nose. He often pushed it aside or attempted to blow it out of his eyes with a juicy PFFT. The back of his head had dozens of tentacles of hair so knotted, the only hope of untangling them was to just give up and snip them off. We had planned January for his first hair cut, and today we took him to a barber.
We chose a true barber rather than some chain stylist or children's stylist (yes, there are shops which specialize in styling children's hair, from the very young and up; of course, the price for such specialization is high—very high!) I wanted a barber mostly because I think it a more manly thing for one's first hair cut.
I had found just the shop a few months back, a place called "Barney's". Owned by a man named Barney, who has cut hair out of the same place for forty years. It was an authentic barber shop. A red-striped white pole; old, worn leather chairs with ash trays built into the arms; older men cutting hair; the clipped hair of the day's customers before us littering the floor; and cash not in a central till, but in a drawer at each station.
Our appointment was at 4:00 PM, an hour before closing time. Our barber was not Barney, but (ironically) the one lady barber—Lindsey, who has worked there nearly 20 years.
So, how did our little man do? He did not fuss nor cry. He was, in general, not grabby, and he sat quite still in Daddy's lap after getting used to the comb and the spray of water on his head. Lindsey took it slow so as not to put Xavier off, or in any way give him a reason to fear and cry. He spent much of his time watching another barber cut the man's hair in the next seat over.
He sat on Dad's lap instead of in the seat by himself. He is still too small to sit in the chair on his own. Also, having Dad in the chair with him made him feel secure. He did not like the spritzing of the water to wet his hair, but Lindsey squirted his hand to let him get used to the spray. Xavier decided he could live with it and only made faces as his hair was wet down.
Lindsey thought to dress only Dad in a cape to keep clean his clothes. But Dad said, "No. Part of the whole first hair cut experience is wearing the cape." So a small cape was found for Xavier to dress in.
Lindsey asked Rebecca (the official photographer of the event) if she wanted to keep any of his hair for his baby book. Rebecca said no. However, after the hair cut was finished and Dad stood from the chair, there lay a large, long lock of Xavier's hair in the seat. Rebecca decided she wanted to keep a lock after all, so we collected that hair into an envelope.
Throughout the sitting, Xavier got rotated on Daddy's leg. Sometimes he faced forward. Sometimes he faced Daddy. It made things much easier for the barber to work and Xavier fidgeted less. The whole experience was non-traumatic. I told Rebecca and the others in the shop "I'm not sure how I feel about his calmness. I'm almost disappointed we didn't capture the iconic shot of tears streaming down his sad little face."
So, this was Xavier's first hair cut. Rather than head home to turkey sandwiches, we walked across the parking lot to one of our favored pizza places and celebrated. Xavier ecstatically joined the celebration by drinking his first bottle of chocolate milk (real whole milk, not formula). His jury is out on the chocolate milk experience. After dinner, we headed for the park to let Xavier run and play.