This real-life article appeared in Today’s Contra-Costa Times May 3, 2008
Mother-Son bonding
Opportunities exist - they’re just different

REAL LIFE

By Laura Shumaker

FOR THE FIRST time in two years, my 14-year-old Son John was getting a real haircut, a buzz cut, for the part of Daddy Warbucks in the school play. He is the Youngest of my three sons and like every boy his age, he has been wearing his sandy blond hair long, bushy, fashionably messy, and he loves it that way.
I miss the short hair, I miss seeing his eyes, but most of all, I miss trips to the barber.
When you are the mother of three boys, you don’t go out to lunch with them unless you find a place that their friends would never go, and you don’t go shopping, but you do go to the barber, and our mother/son haircut ritual has been a small but consistent bonding event. We started at the shop with the merry-go-round pony chairs, and then graduated to the real barber, Sixto, when my oldest son was about 10. Sixto’s is a guy’s paradise with private jokes and mind-teasing riddles, just sit there and smile, relishing the sight and sounds of boys being boys. Then, with short haircuts and clean slates, my sons and I talk over an ice cream cone before the ride home.
But all at once, it seemed, John’s older brothers went off to college, long hair came back in style, and trips to Sixto ceased.
The day of the prescribed haircut was not jolly like the old days when short hair was cool. John rode silently beside me, arms folded, looking frostily out the window. I was flooded with the memory of myself at 14 — white-blonde pigtails and eyelashes, a nose too big for my face, and braces too big for my mouth. I was fascinated with 14-year-old boys back then. They seemed mysterious and
worldly, yet when I was near them, all I could do was giggle uncontrollably

But the son sitting beside me, who fared better in the looks department than I
had at his age, was not so mysterious. He was just a boy who missed his brothers now, more than ever, and was about to shed the hair that made him a part of his middle-school pack. His hair defined him — the guitar player, the funny and friendly guy, the skateboarder and the ladies man.

When we arrived at the barber shop, John’s tortured expression gave way to a face-breaking smile as Sixto and his staff welcomed him with applause and slaps on the back.
“Welcome back, buddy;” he said, whipping out a black plastic drape; “Looks like we’ve got to give that helmet of yours a little style!” John explained the reason for his visit while Sixto nodded sympathetically, and then suggested a plan of action.
“We’ll do it in steps,” he said. “Let’s start with a mullet,” and large clumps of hair fell with applause and laughter from everyone in the shop, including John.
“Do you have your cell phone, Mom?” John said, ‘We’ve got to take pictures of this!” The sandy tufts kept falling off, and after a while, when his hair was very short but not yet a buzz, John stopped laughing, and looked a little sick. Sixto drew back the razor.
“You just ask the guy in charge of the play if this is short enough,” he said, “and
if isn’t, you come back and I’ll take care of you.” He put gel on John’s bangs, making the most of this traumatic situation, and stood back.

I couldn’t believe how different John looked. I hadn’t seen his eyebrows in such a long time. They had filled out considerably and were outright manly, He was manly. My baby was a man.
“You know who you look like?” Sixto said, “That guy in the ‘Gladiator,’ Russell Crowe!” John beamed, and having gotten into the spirit of it all, he got up and took a bow. Then the two of us were off for the ice cream, laughing at the pictures of the haircut on my cell phone. Sitting across from him, it hit me: There wouldn’t be too many more haircuts before John would follow his brothers off to college.
Where did the time go? Had it really been 15 years since I convinced my husband that we should have one more child?
“We’re going for a girl!” I told my mother, jumping up and down. “I love my boys, but let’s face it: Daughters stay closer to their moms through life. We’re proof of that.”
“I’d be so happy for you if you had a girl,” she said, ‘but three boys would be nice, too. I’ve always thought of you as a mother of boys.” At the time, I thought she was just bracing me for disappointment. She, I was convinced would be the first one to say “I knew it!” when the baby girl was born.
But now, as I sit across from the third boy, who is busy texting his older brothers with pictures of the haircut. I think my mother meant what she said.
And she was right.

Laura Shumaker lives in Lafayette and is a contributor to “Something That Matters” (Harwood Press, 20(17) by the Wednesday Writers of Oakland, California (www.wednesdaywriters.com ) Proceeds benefit the Carol Ann Read Breast Health Center at the Alta Bates Summit hospital in Oakland.

I too struggled to teach my younger one, my son Tamil - however he has learnt it now after my daughter and I decided to speak to him only if he spoke in Tamil. But in his case - he knows the language but finds it easier to speak in English or Hindi (Mumbai ishtyle)!