The Haircut

Emilia had never in her life had her haircut. This was not a conscious decision, just something we never got around to doing. Life was busy, having had two smaller children to deal with after her, it was low priority and dropped off the To Do list.

After a while it became her ‘thing,’ everyone would comment on the length of it, and we went past the point where cutting it would be insignificant.

It was often the source of battle between us, and the screams, as I attempted to brush and detangle, would reverberate around the neighbourhood. It truly sounded as if I was torturing her, not merely brushing her hair.

Washing it, drying it and re-plaiting it was quite an undertaking, and probably happened less often than it should. However, it never looked greasy and like a dog’s coat, was presumably conditioned by its natural oils. At least, that is my defence.

She was not always difficult about me doing it, and truth be told, when she was distracted by screen or book, I secretly quite enjoyed the ritual. It was therapeutic and deeply satisfying when it was done, and I could glide the brush through from root to tip, with the ends fanned out on the carpet where she sat.

I threatened to cut it all off many a time, when she shrieked her objections whilst I chased her round with a brush. Mark began to worry when she wore it loose, that it would get caught in an escalator or train door or something.

I got the idea for cutting her hair for charity, at a blood giving session. One of the male nurses there was going to cut and donate his hair and was collecting money for the Little Princess Trust. It was the first I had heard of it, and I thought it was a brilliant thing to do. I read there about how the charity collected the hair donations to give to a wig making company, who then supplied real hair wigs free of charge, to children suffering hair loss, either through cancer treatment or another condition. The charity was set up in memory of a little girl who sadly lost a short battle with cancer in 2005. The picture of the little girl, Hannah Tarplee, reminded me so much of my own two blonde girls, and I felt very moved by her story.

It was in the back of my mind for a while before I broached it with Emilia, but she is a kind girl and I knew she would want to help. We watched the videos together on the charity’s website so she had a real idea of the impact her cut hair would have on someone’s life.

As fond as she was of her crowning glory, at eight years old, we were getting to the point where her long hair was an obstacle to her independence. It would be so much better if she could manage it herself. She could wash it by herself, but would end up putting more tangles in, if she tried to brush it.

Her only fear was that no one would recognise her once she’d had it cut. We reassured her, this was fairly unlikely. Although I have to say, she isn’t so instantly recognisable in a crowd anymore, even for me, her own mother.

She came back from school one day saying “Mummy, I have to cut it now, I have told everyone in my class I am going to.”

We then set up the sponsorship site and set a date for the cut. We were staggered by how many friends and family contributed, the money kept going up and more and more people would enthuse about the whole idea.

Emilia was far cooler about it than I was. We had the haircut done at home. She was a little bit quiet during the cut and when the plait came off, but I think (unusually for the attention-seeking child that she is) that she was a bit overwhelmed with the focus on her. Mark was taking photos and film and her brothers and sister popped in and out to take a look. Our lovely hairdresser, Jemma, had brought her three secondary school age children with her, and with everything going on, Emilia was uncharacteristically shy.

Later that evening, she was swinging her shorter hair around (that by anyone else’s standards is still long) and trying every different style she could think of, bunches, half up, half down and doing her own pony-tails. It was a revelation, and she was thrilled. The plait of cut hair was wrapped tightly in tissue paper to be posted off to the Little Princess Trust and it was lovely to think that it would make a difference to someone.

Going into school the next morning was nerve-wracking for her, and she said she didn’t want to go. We obviously did, and when we got there, I unwrapped and showed the severed plait to her teacher and some of the class, while she clung onto me in embarrassment. She was crippled with self-consciousness and started to cry when I tried to leave.

This looked awful – I felt that it now appeared that I had forced my daughter into doing this charitable act, it was cut against her will, and she hated it and was mortified how it looked. This wasn’t the case at all, she just couldn’t handle the attention. I mumbled something about her liking it really, and ushered her into the cloakroom, where she continued to fuss. Ironically, the more upset she got at me leaving her, the more she drew attention to herself and the worse people stared. If she’d just got on with it, people would have barely batted an eyelid. People were nothing but nice about it.

It is all a bit of a ploy with her. After being all coy and not wanting people to notice it, the first thing she did at Brownies was to go up to Brown Owl and say “I’ve had my hair cut” and give her a twirl.

She was looking forward to the end of her swim lesson today, when she would be able to take down her hair and brush it out like the other girls.

This morning, I hurriedly stuffed her swimming costume into her bag together with a towel and what I thought was her faded, red, material swim hat, from the clean washing pile.

On my double check of her things, I discovered, it was actually a pair of my dark pink knickers. I chuckled to myself as I envisaged her lined up with the other children at the pool side with a pair of pants on her head.

Now that really would give her something to be embarrassed about.