“Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair
Flow it, show it
Long as god can grow it
My hair…”
-From the musical “Hair”

Today is the day.

Today my sister joins the working world of cosmetologists and starts a job at a local salon cutting hair. She’s been grooving in beauty school for a couple years, just finished, and has sharpened up her shears and is ready to earn some green cutting hair.

Today is also the day that I take my daughter to have her aunt cut her hair. And pay money for it. Damn.

When my sister was in beauty school, I volunteered to be a model for the first ever hair cut she had to do. I wanted to show my support, I wanted to show I had faith in her, and I wanted to be there for her. I went to her school on a Saturday morning, and though the cut took a painfully LONG time, in the end, it was really a kick-ass cut – I mean, I got a tremendous amount of compliments on this cut, and I was very pleased with it.

So pleased was I, that several weeks later when I was due for a trim, I went back to Sis, asking her to just trim the edges. What resulted was a nightmare which I have managed to mostly block out where my sister got a bit carried away trying to create stacked layers for my naturally wavy/curly hair, and instead cut my hair gruesomely short. I kept a brave face until I got home and stood in front of my mirror. Then I cried like a baby… for days. My sister was mortified and felt horrible about it, so she came over to my house a few days later to even out the cut. It improved it a bit, but then we went to Target to get some headbands and scarves to try to perk it up, and on the way home she directed me to a restaurant which happened to be the site of my surprise 30th birthday party.

Fuck. Honestly, the last thing I wanted to do was see all of my close friends and family with a haircut that made me feel unattractive and icky. The next day, on my actual birthday, I went to a salon where this lovely gal fixed it up right, and I’ve been going to her ever since.

To be fair, my sister has completed over a year of schooling since then. She has also spent much time in the school’s little salon doing haircuts on real people and not just mannequins. I know that she’s improved and I know that I should trust her with my hair again, but… Y’all. I’m not ready.

Essentially, I’ve thrown my kids under the bus. My sister cuts their hair – and given that they both have this fine, straight hair, a cut for either of my girls is basically a straight cut along the bottom. Cake walk. I have let my sister dye my hair. I have let her wax my eyebrows. I’m just not ready to trust her with my hair yet. And I’m not sure when I’ll be ready. She seems to believe that I haven’t had anything done to my hair in the last year and a half, and to be honest, I’m not doing anything to dissuade her of that belief.

Now she’s entering the working world. The cuts that she did for my kids for free, I’ll now pay for (at least for a little while until she builds a clientele – I want my baby sister to earn some tips!), and at some point, I’ll have to break up with my current stylist (she knows it’s coming – she’s known since day 1 that my sister was in cosmetology school), and to be honest, I so so love my hair girl, that I don’t want to change. But it’s family, so… Sacrifices. I’d like to think that if my sister ever needed any PR or marketing work done, she’d call me instead of some random person… because we’re family.

Today, my kiddo is getting two inches cut from her hair and I’m going to support my sister as she joins the Real World. Gotta love it.