I got my hair cut this morning. It had been 12 weeks since I'd seen Kim except for passing in the peanut butter aisle at WAL-MART early into this quarantine. Barbers were allowed to re-open last Friday in Texas and she's been swamped since. Kim cuts the hair of a good number of men in our congregation; Kevin, one of our elders, was in her chair when I arrived shortly before nine. She has an encyclopedic memory of the people who she's made look good over the decades. Kim moved here from South Korea forty years ago. She is brutally honest, unabashedly patriotic, and a really good barber to boot! I left with an excellent hair cut; after almost three months, anything would be an improvement. She always calls me young man. Just one more reason not to go anywhere else!
My brother, Dave, and I were born in New York and our folks moved us to York, Nebraska when I was four. There are vague memories of being in a Brooklyn barber shop but nothing specific at all. When we moved to York, our parents embarked on a cost cutting measure. They purchased a hair cutting kit, probably from a catalog, and embarked on their own salon of sorts. It was decided that Mom would be the barber and that lasted until midway through the first effort. I'm not sure if it was Dave or me who was the test case but Mom was not adept at her new job. From family oral history, the plot goes that halfway in, she burst into tears, called Dad who was at the office (a good ninety second walk away), and he came home and finished the job. From that hour on, I never went to a barber until I went to college and I'm fairly certain Dave or Scott, who came along three years later, did either. And Mom never again volunteered to cut our hair.
Here's the main thing I learned along the way of surviving boyhood. You never want your father to cut your hair when he's mad, particularly when he's angry with you. Truthfully, I think Dad became pretty good with the clippers although my brothers may disagree. Saving money was a big deal in the Hawley household so it definitely helped stretch the dollars. But I've never understood why our mother got so upset over a haircut. The funny thing is that I can remember ladies in our church coming to our house and Mom giving them perms, for free of course. The aroma of those chemicals was overwhelming! And Mom was good at anything she put her mind to so why not cutting our hair? Maybe because moms take things more personally, especially family matters. Luke 2:19 tells us Mary treasured all these things (about Jesus) in her heart. It doesn't say that about Joseph. I'm a lot more like Mom than Dad in terms of personality but it was easier for me to deal with Dad. I can't say that mothers care or love more than dads but I do think it's true mothers love and care differently. When our folks died and we were going through their things, guess what we found that Mom had kept? An envelope of VERY blonde hair from Scott's first hair cut, performed by Dad. Who would keep hair? Moms. Our mom. Maybe you or your mom. Maybe that's why Mother's Day comes before Father's Day. Maybe that's why we love our moms so much.
Applicable quote of the day:
The worse the haircut, the better the man.
John Green
God bless,
Steve
Luke 18:1
E-mail me at shawley@westburychristian.org
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