Salt and pepper strands drifted to the bathroom floor as I finished up my dad’s haircut.
I’d never imagined that quarantine would lead me to cutting my dad’s hair with no more training than the couple of online tutorials I’d consumed that same afternoon. Yet there I was – shears, comb and spray bottle in hand, mumbling to myself: “Well, that’s a thing that happened.”
If my teenage self were watching, she would have been quite happy.
I’ve been interested in hair, makeup and “beauty” for almost as long as I can remember.
By the time I was 18, I could recognize the differences between a French braid and a Dutch braid at a glance.
I’ve become my family and friends’ go to “beauty advisor” – teaching my sister makeup tricks and explaining hair product types to my parents.
My first haircut experiment was on my own head.
My motivation was simple: I was a broke collegekid without the money to pay a professional hairstylist.
While it took several hours for me to finish snipping away, the result was not nearly as bad as I feared.
It helped that my hair was long, so I was attempting no more than a long-layered cut.
A little while later, my mom asked me to cut her hair.
The first time took me several hours. By the third time I cut her hair, I was done in barely over an hour and happy with the results.
Then COVID-19 happened and I got stuck in quarantine, and my dad, frustrated with his awkward half-grown out ‘do, asked me for a trim.
I was intimidated.
Shorter hairstyles like my dad’s are much more complicated than the basic layers that I do on myself or my mom.
But – after much deliberation, YouTube research, energetic googling, and avoiding the subject for as long as possible – I decided: yes, I would attempt this.
Surveying the results, it wasn’t the best in the back, especially courtesy of the fact that I was lacking trimmers so the whole cut had to be done solely with a pair of cheap shears. For an untrained first try – not too shabby.
Regardless of whether I’m attempting a men’s basic cut, or my mother’s lob, the part I enjoy most isn’t really about the style itself, it’s about the people.
Academic study has kept me busy and shut away from family and friends.
Taking the time to put down the computer, textbooks and to-do lists, in order to spend time with a loved one doing something simple for them – that’s something better than anything a professional cut could offer – though the results might not look quite as good.