Today was the day we decided to cut each other’s hair, or to be precise it was the day Dylan suggested to us that having watched our local barber for the past twenty years or so, he was confident he could do a reasonable job. I’ve learned to trust this belief in his own abilities and his confidence to do things that we might otherwise be doubtful to undertake.
The best evidence of this, from my perspective, was his decision to do a controlled free-fall jump off the Stratosphere Tower in Nevada for his seventeenth birthday. We’d been on a long trip through the South West, visiting National Parks and spending time on the four corners area and we’d arrived just before we were to return home. Gwyn and I were apprehensive so we got him there early for the jump, expecting lots of safety prep etc. However, he suggested we eat first as we had plenty of time, ate a huge meal against our advice, got the lift up and jumped from 855 feet.
Cutting hair seemed a fairly safe option.
As is turns out he’s good at it, although I wasn’t his first ever hair cut. Gwyn and I came downstairs one morning when he was five or six to find he’d cut the dog’s hair.
Our dog, an otherwise grumpy Jack Russell cross, was sat in the middle of the lounge with a circle of black and white hair around him and Dylan was still studiously trimming the ruff of hair around his neck. I’d rarely seen the dog, who was otherwise quite fierce, look so thoroughly humbled as a small child gave him his ‘summer cut’.
After I’d gone first Joel was next for the clippers, and then returned the favour for Dylan.
So a quiet day, new haircuts and trying to avoid the news until the evening. Joel’s rigged up a speaker to amplify the applause at 8pm. I also managed a short hobble around to Gwyn’s mum whose birthday it was today. As per instructions we left her present on the back patio and stayed a safe distance away, despite her not having ventured out for some weeks now. We’re protecting each other, but it still feels sad and we miss the physical presence of friends and family, perhaps that’s why cutting each other’s hair seemed so enjoyable.
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