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16 Jul

Hey There, Delilah

This is Jasper:

jibby-needs-a-trim

Jasper needs a haircut, or so I’m told. I don’t want to cut his hair. I firmly, emphatically, passionately do not want to cut his hair. Because the moment that I cut his hair, he will turn into a little boy. I know this. The moment that his floppy, fluffy, messy baby locks are shorn, he will lose all of his babyness and turn immediately into the toddler that I know he is but am resisting acknowledging. My heart plummets, plummets, into my heels when I think of this. I cannot stand it. I want him – need him – to be a baby for just a little while longer.

Which, I suppose, is a kind of Delilah-complex in reverse. I want to keep him small and needy and dependent by not cutting his hair. Cutting his hair will effect a transformation – and a kind of empowerment, if we consider the advancing development of small children as empowering to children, which, as any parent who has found him or herself collapsed on the living room floor while their child runs circles around them knows is absolutely the case – that I cannot bear – cannot yet bear – to witness. And this, I know, is cowardly, and unfair to Jasper, who is rattling the chains of his footie jammies and his binky and his mop of hair and demanding, demanding, to be BIG. To be BOY.

I need to let him, don’t I?

So do I cut his hair, or hang on a little longer? I so want to hang on a little longer. But… I should cut it, right?

Right?

This shit is hard.

(Props to Katie for the beautiful pic, shot on our road-trip at the Hat Creek Ranch in BC.)

(I still need help explaining death to the girl. And dinosaurs. And the relationship of dinosaurs to God. HALP.)