More Than Hair

I woke up and, for a second, I forgot. Then it hit me like a jolt of lightning—a sudden, gut-wrenching panic. Today is the day. Today, I’m cutting my hair.

My son had stayed the night so he could be there for it. As I went to wake him, this little ball of dread was sitting in the pit of my stomach. But when I opened his door, he looked up at me, his eyes still sleepy, and the first thing he said (after letting out a ginormous yawn) was, "It's your haircut day!"

He was beaming. Pure, unadulterated excitement. And just like that, the dread vanished. His excitement became my excitement. The "why" behind the whole thing was standing right in front of me, and suddenly, I was perfectly fine.

When I sat in that chair at the salon, the gut-check feeling came back for just a second. Wow, I thought, I haven't been in this seat in a while. The stylist asked what we were doing, and I heard myself say the words, "It's all coming off."

She looked at me in the mirror, a little shocked. "Really? All of it?"

"Every bit," I said. The words felt final. She smiled, reassured me it was a great decision, a great donation, and got to work.

First, she sectioned my hair off into four separate braids. We all had a good laugh because, for a minute, I looked like a dead ringer for Snoop Dogg from the early nineties. It was a moment of levity right before the point of no return.

She picked up the buzz clippers. The sound filled the room.

"Last chance," she said.

My son was standing right there, watching. I looked at him, took a breath, and said, "Let's do it."

As the clippers buzzed through that first braid, his eyes went wide. It was this incredible mix of pure excitement and total disbelief. He was watching the "rockstar dad" he'd always known literally disappear in front of him. And then, as the first ponytail of my old life fell away, he looked right at me, smiled, and gave me a thumbs up.

It'll be okay, Dad.

That’s all it took. That was the whole point.

The rest is just details. We cut off over 12 inches of a past I was ready to let go of, and bundled it up to become a gift of hope for a child at Wigs for Kids. We took a piece of the old armor and turned it into a shield for someone else.

But the real story, the part that matters, is that simple thumbs up. In that moment, I realized the truth about my son. He's the kind of kid who doesn't care what we're doing or where we are, as long as we get our time together. He doesn't care what my hair looks like. He doesn't need a rockstar. He just needs his dad.

He saw the shield come off, and all he cared about was the man who was left. And for the first time in a long time, that feels like more than enough.