Pandemic Journal: An Entry on Cutting Your Son’s Hair (and the Lilac Bush)

Outside my window this morning, the wind stirs the lilac bush. Yesterday, I cut back the spent blooms and got a little carried away with trimming. I try not to feel annoyed at myself as I take in the bush’s newfound stubbiness. I will probably pay the price of less blooms next year, but I hope it will make the bush more productive in the long run. Like a lot of overzealous but underexperienced gardeners, I chopped first, then Googled after. Most instructions recommended not to trim more than one third of the larger branches back at a time. My lilac is over twenty years old—I planted it shortly after we moved into this house twenty-four years ago. Despite yearly minimal clippings, it had grown long and lanky, with several thick, old-wood branches that only flowered on the very top. It needed a haircut. Only, I should have read first about the proper way and time of year to do this. Oh, well, I think to myself. If next year is a meager year for the blooms, there will always be the next. One thing we can always count on is the forgiving quality of mother nature. No matter how much we mess up, she just keeps giving back. Until she doesn’t.

It’s just a whisper in my mind, but I muse a minute about all the images of nature reclaiming her wildness that have crossed my newsfeed lately. The national forests more hospitable to wildlife in the absence of tourists, the reduction of smog and pollution in large cities due to decreased automobile traffic, untamed and untrimmed abundance taking over once neatly manicured spaces. What are we learning about better caring for our world during the quarantine? I sigh and turn back toward the breakfast dishes. Lately, I’ve been amazed at the amount of time I spend standing at the kitchen sink.

It’s the three of us now—four, if you count the dog. And she most assuredly counts, seeing as how, some days, her soft fur and wet nose are the only things that quiet the mind. Our youngest son is quarantining at home with us, finishing his college courses online in a makeshift office set up in his childhood bedroom. There have been some tense moments, having a young adult under the roof. My husband and I had gotten used to the empty nest, after all. Funny how one extra person adds so much more. More time at the kitchen sink, more laundry, more clutter and dirt tracked over just-cleaned floors. More walks in the woods and late-night rummy games. More cooking together and lingering at the table. “I feel like I’ve been given a chance to watch you grow again,” I told him, just the other day. Ordinarily, he would be miles away, griping about class assignments, struggling to establish an exercise routine, taking off for moody walks around the neighborhood in the middle of the night … with someone else. The gift of watching him maneuver through this particular place he is in sometimes feels like a tiny light inside my chest. Perhaps this is what it feels like to parent a grown-up, and something about these unusual circumstances, this forced proximity, feels auspicious.

After losing his daughter Susy to meningitis, Mark Twain famously compared her death to a housefire. “It will be years before the talk of lost essentials is complete, and not till then can he know the magnitude of his disaster.” It will take years to process all that has been lost to this COVID 19 pandemic. The damage to the global economy is made real in our small community by permanent closures of beloved small business, friends struggling to pay bills due to lay-offs and loss of work, neighbors unable to get needed medical attention due to changes in the healthcare system related to COVID 19 issues. And not least of all, the loss of lives.

I think about Mark Twain and his loss as I arrange a bouquet of lilacs on the kitchen table—the last clippings of bloom rescued from the highest branch. With my role in physical trauma care, I’ve worked for many years helping people sort through a myriad of losses. I would argue that with great loss, there is almost always something gained. Some gifts of this season, like some losses, will be small, almost imperceptible, until the sympathetic hand of time opens to reveal their bloom. Efforts to heal and better steward our natural resources, sustainable economic developments, greater investment of time in family and loved ones … these, the immediate changes that only ripen with time. Other gifts will be more immediate, like the soft feel of my son’s hair under my fingers. And I wonder, when all this is over, will we allow ourselves to be changed?

When, During Quarantine, Your 21 Year-old Son Asks You to Cut His Hair

try not to show surprise
at his casual confidence that
you can do this thing;

at the way he offers
himself so willingly after
all these years of bucking
the guide of your hands;

pretend to know
what you’re doing

let yourself get lost
in how sweet and natural
it feels to touch his head—
this scalp you used to shampoo
and run soft bristles over.

run your fingers through his
thick hair, snip the ends with
the same scissors you used when
he was 18 months old and
sat on the kitchen counter for
his first haircut, a misshaped
terry cloth towel draped over
his tiny shoulders …

the years fall away like bits
of hair collecting on the
floor at his feet. remember?
the white-blonde strands of
baby years? soft as oft-rubbed
silk; so fine.

comb up each section, cautiously
trim a little at a time; the only
sound his breath and yours, mingling
with the soft friction of moving
shears. you know how particular he is
about his hair.

pretend to know
what you’re doing

do not show surprise that
he seems to feel safe under
your hands, inside these walls,
under this sky, in this world
that is spinning out of control.

hair, you tell him, is like
nature: forgiving. it always
grows back. But you still try
to do a good job, leave your
mark of love on him—an
uneven patch of hair behind
his ear.

Photo by Lindspetrol, Creative Commons via Flickr. Post by Laura Boggess.

• Author
• Recent Posts

Follow Laura

Laura Boggess

Laura Boggess is happiest in a place with no walls. Give her a bed of grass and a blanket-sky and she will dream deep in wonder. But a good story takes her to that place too. And a poem? Even better. She's the author of Waiting for Neruda's Memoirs and Mildred's Garden, both titles in T. S. Poetry Press's Poetry Club Series.

Follow Laura

Latest posts by Laura Boggess (see all)

• Year of the Monarch—A Visit to Craik-Patton House - September 18, 2024
• Year of the Monarch: Butterfly Dreams - March 20, 2024
• Year of the Monarch: Harvesting and Planting Milkweed Seeds - November 15, 2023