Henry's hair is no longer the sweet blonde of babyhood nor the soft chestnut of childhood. It is a thick, brittle, espresso like mine turned when I turned 14. Typical of the other boys in his class, getting him to wash his hair is next to impossible. So it's a brown, curly, sticky mass on his head that just gets higher and rounder.
I told him today that Mom would cut his hair. Usually I take him to Miss Debbie at the Hair Cuttery in College Park. She has a specialty in cutting hair of students from our school. But I wanted to cut it.
Because you can cut curly hair on a boy badly and no one will notice. It just curls around.
Because I don't really have the energy or the cash to get him to the salon.
Because it just needs to get done.
The real reason I did it was to touch him. I just wanted to touch him and he's been resistant to that for a very long time and more so now as a tween. I just wanted him to sit still for one moment and let me touch him.
So I grabbed hunks of that dirty brown mess and clipped away. Moving around his head, my hand on his scalp, my fingers in his hair. Watching pieces fall. Running my fingers like a comb to see if the cut made any sort of sense. Touching my boy.
3 comments:
hmmm. yeah...
Sometimes you have to be creative to get close when they are teenagers. I wake up Christina for school every morning and hop in bed with her for a few minutes while are very tired eyes clear at the ungodly hour of 5:30 am. Okay, so we are half asleep, but that is a little bit of mom and daughter time!
I still think you should write a book about raising Henry. This is something that should be in it. It's eye-opening to read the unique perspective of a mama with an autistic child. Being his cousin I wish I could get one really good hug out of him. I wish I could hug him tight and communicate, "I love you" the same way we do with everyone else we love. But I know Henry wouldn't feel loved if I did that. I can't imagine how much more you, as his mom, crave that touch. Cutting his hair yourself was a cool solution.
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