Good News and Bad

It was a beautiful, sunny August afternoon in southeast Alaska.  The sun glistened off the water.  There was a pleasant breeze and the air smelled like summer.  The chattering of birds and the sounds of children at play filled the air.  I’d been working outside in what I loosely refer to as “my garden.”  Our five-month-old twin babies were sleeping peacefully in their seats in the shade of the alder tree in our backyard. Kathryn, age 6, had ridden her bike over to a friend’s house to play for a while.  And Anna and Benson, ages 4 and 2 respectively, were over at Nancy’s.  

Our neighbor Nancy ran a daycare.  And Nancy’s was always a favorite place for our kids.  From the day we moved into that house our kids thought it was the greatest set-up in the world to live next to Nancy and have so many kids come to play every day.  There was always something interesting to do over at Nancy’s.

I was alone, kind of, enjoying the quiet afternoon.  There were rare moments anymore when I could relax and spend some time doing things I actually wanted to do.  I resisted the urge to turn on some music, deciding instead to listen to the quiet. I took another sip of my iced tea, checked on the babies again, and was getting ready to pull some weeds when the phone rang.

“Yeah, Ruth.  Nancy.”

I greeted her.

“Hey, good news and bad,” she continued.

“Okay,” I said hesitantly.  Bracing myself for the bad.

“The good news is that Anna has a great face for short bangs.” 

So the bad news would be that Anna now HAS short bangs? I wondered aloud.  

Laughing, Nancy said, “Yeah.  I’m sorry. I keep a dull, old pair of kid scissors around for art projects.  I never thought it was anything to even worry about.  But, when I went in to where Anna was playing there she was with a big chunk taken out of the middle of her bangs.  I’m sorry.”

I thanked her for warning me.  And as I went back outside I wondered just what our little, curly-haired, blond would look like with short bangs.

An hour or so later I saw Anna wandering home.  She was smiling, swinging her shoes in her hand, and it looked like maybe singing, as she walked barefoot along the sidewalk.  Her hair was wet from swimming in Nancy’s toddler pool.  And immediately I could see that right in the front her bangs had been completely cut off.  

Nancy was wrong.  Anna didn’t have short bangs, though they might have looked good on her.  Anna had no bangs.  She had cut off a chunk of her hair at the scalp.

As she walked through the front door her demeanor was transformed.  The  expression of carefree bliss after a long, happy, summer afternoon playing with friends instantly switched to a sad, repentant, maybe even grieving expression. She lowered her head, sucked in her lips, and looked up at me out of the tops of her big blue eyes, blinking slowly. 

After four years’ experience with this expression I found myself immune.

“What happened?” I asked casually.  “Have a run-in with a lawn mower?”

She shook her head sadly, blinking enough to get some tears started.  “No.”

“Well, so what happened?” 

“I don’t know,” she answered, with the slightest quiver in her bottom lip.  

Nice try.  

“You don’t know what happened to your bangs?” I pressed.   “They’re gone.  That’s what happened to them.  How did it happen?” 

“I don’t know,” she repeated.  “I was just playing at Nancy’s.  And this,” she motioned helplessly toward her hair, “happened.”

“And you don’t know how it happened,” I echoed in disbelief.

“Well, there was a pair of scissors there and…” she lowered her head again and looked at me sadly through the tops of her eyes.

“Did you cut them or did somebody else?” I asked for clarification.

“I did.”

“Why?”

 “I don’t know.  I thought it would look nice,” she finally admitted.

 “Okay.  And are you pretty clear now that it doesn’t look nice?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said quietly.  Although still not quite convincingly.

We went upstairs to the bathroom and I got out the haircutting scissors.  There was no way to fix the stubble in the very front.  But I thought maybe if I rounded out the rest of her bangs it would look a little less drastic than the long bang–no bang–long bang look she had going across her forehead.  I worked on it for a few minutes, slowly blending her “top hat” bangs into more of an “inverted U” look.  When I was finished it was still far from unnoticeable.  

That Sunday at church I noticed a small group of women gathered around Anna during coffee hour.  Anna was grinning and very animatedly telling a story which the group of women were riveted to.  They were all smiles.  Some were chuckling.  And nodding encouragingly.  I started to wander over that way.

A friend grabbed me by the arm before I got there.  Barely suppressing a laugh, she said, “So.  I heard the scoop.  Anna’s telling everybody that her mom cut her hair!  Nice job!”

As it turned out, Anna loved her new bangs.  And actually the look kind of fit her personality.  Cute, but unconventional, and you’re never really sure what she’ll do next so stay on your toes and try to keep a visual on her at all times.

I guess Nancy was right.  Anna does have a great face for short bangs.  And that’s the good news.