It’s true what they say; when you lose the trust, you lose the relationship. One of my biggest fears in life is that I will one day lose my daughters’ trust, just as my Mother lost mine.
I already know that I will lie to them, mislead them, intentionally deceive. I will tell them their trumpet playing sounds like Louis Armstrong when it sounds like a foghorn; encourage them to keep blowing until my ears bleed. I will tell them Santa is real. I will tell them to pay full attention to a coach or teacher I know is spouting nothing but bullshit. I will tell them their book reports are of life- altering importance. I will tell them they look pretty when they think they do, but don’t.
It’s all small potatoes, I know. It’s what we all do, and hope our little lies and deceptions are done in the right way, for the right reasons. When, and if they are, they will maintain or even strengthen our relationships. The wrong ways, however, the little mistakes, can eat away at trust, dissolve it like coke on rusty nickels. A lot of relationships are damaged this way- gradually fizzing out over time.
With my Mother and me it was the opposite. Our trust was shot to hell in a single day, a single hour, a single moment. Just like that. I was 7, and I had long red hair. One day, my Mom said she wanted to give it a trim, cut off the split ends. I didn’t know what split ends were, but I agreed, and was excited over the prospect, as a haircut meant individual attention, a real hot commodity in a house of 5 kids. She put a chair by the window in her bedroom, and I watched the world outside while she snipped. When she was finished, she brought me to the mirror. I screamed. My hair had reached halfway down my back. She cut it to just above my ears. Dorothy Hamill. Wow. Had I adorable elfin features, or a delicate, bird-like bone structure, I might have been able to pull the look off. I don’t, and couldn’t. To add insult, I’d just gotten large, unflattering glasses. Staring back at me in the mirror was funny looking boy. I sobbed for 3 days straight, and mourned my hair forever.
My Mom yelled, then ignored, then insisted for the next two decades (and still), that there was no lie or deception- that all she did was cut off the split ends, which were apparently 12-14 inches long. It’s embarrassing to say that I was so devastated over something as insignificant as a haircut, but I was. I felt like my trust in my Mother had been shattered after that, and once the trust was gone, so was the relationship. In the years that followed, we never regained what we had lost. Long after the haircut was forgotten, the hurt and distrust still grew because we kept feeding it with our actions.
Now that I’m a Mother, I find myself making excuses for my own. She had 5 kids; she was tired. It was the year my parents extremely bitter divorce was finalized, she obviously had a lot on her mind. Maybe she was fatigued and overwhelmed- maybe she didn’t intend to cut it all off, maybe she just got distracted.
The truth is, until right around my 30th birthday, I hadn’t thought about the haircut in many years, and I didn’t realize until then how much it had affected me. I’ve never had long hair since. I’ve always followed a pattern where I let my hair grow out to below my chin, or at most, my shoulders, then I panic and have it chopped off. I didn’t even realize I was doing it until I had twins and no time for haircuts and I burst into tears one day, telling my husband my hair had reached my shoulders and I had to get it chopped IMMEDIATELY. He just looked at me, puzzled, and said, “Why? It looks great- I really like it long.” Then the whole haircut story came tumbling out of me, ending with- “and I’ve never had long hair since.” My husband gave me the same puzzled look again and said, “Then why don’t you just grow it out now?” So, I’ve never had long hair since…until now. It is long now- for me, anyway. The longest it’s been since the age of 7. And I have split ends too- big ones, and I don’t care a bit. I’m going back to my Mother’s house in a few months for a long visit, with my long hair, and split ends, and 2 beautiful babies. I hope she doesn’t notice my hair. I hope she notices my parenting. I hope it makes her proud. I hope we can start over. I hope it’s never too late to grow out your hair, or to rebuild trust.
