I was standing at the kitchen counter, doing dishes, I think. Emma Grace was coloring at the kitchen table.
Suddenly she got up from where she was working and crossed the room to the drawer where we keep the scissors. I did not turn to watch her; there was no need. She is six and a half. She knows where the scissors are. That she can access them is a fact I am comfortable with.
I heard the scissors at work. Slow movement, just a snip, maybe two. But the sound was distinctive: hair between the blades.
Sure enough, there it was. A large chunk cut right out of her bangs, the bangs that were supposed to be held back by a clip, the bangs that were in her eyes, the bangs that– because she said she wanted to– we have been trying to grow out for Some Time.
“They were in my eyes, Mom,” she said. “And anyways, we can just cut them all the way off, right up to here,” pointing to the top of her forehead.
Of course we can. That’s the alternative, isn’t it? to this painstaking process of growing out bangs. Just cut them All The Way Off.
Why didn’t I see this coming? Why haven’t I been waiting for it since, say, she was Ten Months Old?
I’ve been her mother for six and a half years now, and I Still don’t know what I’m doing.
