Stitching Little Stitches

Yesterday was haircut day for Paulina, our about to be five-year-old granddaughter who lives with us. Long hair is a lice magnet I’ve been told and we can’t have that. Especially with school starting and all the little heads.

I know my way around lice, nits, shampoos, the wicked little metal comb, all of it – ah, the riches of a long life, especially one that involved raising four kids and granddaughters showing up from foreign countries. So, wanting to avoid any more forays into the kingdom of lice, we went for a haircut yesterday.

There were mild protests, surprisingly mild since she seemed always to love her long, wild hair, never wanting it tied up or braided. Her mother told me this, “She just always wants her hair to be free,” and the hair really was part of Paulina’s identity as a sturdy, confident child.

“How about we get your hair cut like your mother’s?” I showed the picture my husband had snapped of her mother on a day at the hospital when they’d rolled her downstairs to the Starbucks. In the picture, her mom has bangs and shoulder length hair and she is smiling a wry smile and her sometimes dimple is showing. It was when we thought things would work out.

The woman at the haircut place was surprised we wanted to cut so much hair off. “You want four or five inches off?” I showed her the picture on my phone. “Yes, just like her mom.” And Paulina heard me, sat up straight in the chair, and smiled at herself in the mirror.

At the counter when we paid, Paulina told the nice woman that she wished she could have purple streaks in her hair. The lady said maybe when you’re older and gave her a sucker. And I felt like we had stitched something, like when Paulina made a tiny rip in her new pink sweater and I mended it with thread from a postage stamp-size sewing kit I’d kept in my purse forever and when I was done, it felt so mended.

That’s what it felt like leaving the hair salon yesterday. A bit mended. Stitched.