A Smiling Young Widow

I somehow became the official hairdresser of our house, doing Frank’s haircuts and then Tom’s too. At first I was pretty against doing Tom’s. Frank has had some rough haircuts in the past so that was less scary to attempt, but Tom – well I told him fine I’d try it, but he had to keep his hat on all the time if it went really poorly! He told me just to shave it, but I was determined to at least try to make it look decent. I even gave Tom his pre-wedding haircut, it’s pretty crazy I agreed to do that! But I guess it was a pandemic… and he looked sharp if I do say so myself. Tom would always say “oh that’s good enough” when I was cutting it, like a little kid that had to be made to sit still in the chair and not touch his hair. Tom loved to tell people that him and Frank had the same groomer, and it did tend to happen that we’d have a haircut day where both my boys would get new doos.

Frank is sure missing Tom for haircut days now. To his credit Tom did join the team doing some of the buzzing and he would brush Frank, but his biggest role was in advocating for breaks. I gave Frank a haircut yesterday and I could just hear Tom’s voice, “Ok Les that’s enough, he wants a break” or “He looks great, I think it’s done”. For nail cutting time, Frank would go and try to hide with Tom from the big meanie with the clippers. I could do one or two nails and then Tom would chuckle, “Oh Les that’s enough for now. He doesn’t want to do it.” Frank knew who his ally was. Same thing for bath time, all of a sudden he’d be snuggled in on the couch with Tom laughing away as I tried to call our little buddy downstairs. (I did stop the haircut yesterday sooner than I would have thought done, listening to our Tom’s advice that it was good enough!)

I was thinking of the time Tom shaved his beard. He was supposed to do it for a mask fitting at work, and had been humming & hawwing about how serious everyone was about actually doing it. Then bam, one night his beard was gone and just a moustache remained. He walked into the kitchen all nonchalant. This was the first time I’d ever seen his chin! A baby face under there! I had friends over the next day and I remember us laughing about them not recognizing the guy that was walking up to our house. Tom loved that moustache, loved to talk about all the guys that were impressed by it (insert my eye roll!).

I got Tom to pose next to his grad photo, the other evidence we had of his shaven chin. (Anyone who stayed at our old place may have been treated to a viewing of this grad photo – when Tom moved in he was giving me a hard time about not hanging up his things, so I hung this behind the door in our spare bedroom. You didn’t see it until you closed the door to hop into bed. A cute high school Tom to send you off to sweet dreamland. In our current house, I once again got a hard time that the grad picture wasn’t part of the decor. I hung it up in the laundry room one weekend when Tom was away working – he was honoured to have it hanging up again, right by his favourite chore nonetheless!)

All the little reminders. All the little laughs. Nice to write some of them out and look at old pictures, to keep the stories alive.