I can't believe Naomi experienced what every female will experience at one time in her life if not several times. She is so young, only six!
I had put the girls to bed and thought that was it for the night. Soon after, I hear Bethany's uncertain voice say, "Mommy?"
"Bethany, what are you doing out of bed?!"
"Om, well, Naomi is crying..."
"About what?"
"om, I don't know..."
Thoughts raced through my mind as I sighed my exhausted sigh that I sigh on a regular basis. She's had water, I kissed her good night, Brian kissed her good night, she couldn't have gotten hurt just lying in bed...what in the world?
Pretty soon Naomi shows up with a pink, swollen face and after managing to get her explanation out burst into uncontrollable sobs.
"I wish...I wouldn't have...got-...gotten...my hair cut today!!" This statement was followed by great heaving and tears. "It's not past my waist anymore!" More heaving and sobbing and trying to catch her breath. I was flooded with sympathy and patience because I too have felt the same way she was feeling. As I consoled her with the fact that, "the average person's hair grows six inches a year, honey" I felt a special bond with her I had never experienced before. I was consoling her with words I had used many a time to console myself, my girlfriends, even my mother.
Is there anything worse to a woman than a haircut she regrets? Once I barely made it out of the salon before the weeping flooded my scrunched up face. I had to go into the bathroom of an adjoining coffee shop to call Brian and tell him in sobs, "it's gone...it's all gone...my hair is gone..." I'm sure he was really imagining some scary images after these statements, and his voice showed it as he carefully said, "uh, what do you mean it's...gone?"
Remember Little Women, when Joe cut off "her one beauty" as Amy so tactfully put it. It felt so familiar as she waited until night to sob into her pillow. What is it about the night after "the cut?" Is it lying in the quiet, stillness of our beds when the reality sinks in that we have cut off for many of us, "our one beauty?" I guess a woman's hair IS her glory and even at six, leaving bits and pieces of your glory on the salon floor can be quite devastating...
(By the way, not to worry, her hair is still plenty long! It's right at her waist, but three inches missing feels like twelve inches to the one missing it.)
