Haircuts at home

I’m pretty sure my sister and I had plenty of fights growing up. With all that bickering, and considering how very different we are, I’m not quite sure how we managed to be such great friends. I’m sure there were lots of moments we wanted to pull each other’s hair - it was just the two of us after all, two siblings, only two years apart. And here we are, now in our mid-thirties during a pandemic, and I get to chop off my sister’s hair! (She asked me to!)

My sister has always had such beautiful, thick, jet-black hair. A few months ago though, the hair salons had to close and her hair was growing ridiculously long. It was getting too long and the ends were getting damaged. I have never cut anyone’s hair before, but since all she really needed was a chop, I thought I could just look up some YouTube videos to help me avoid completely ruining my sister’s hair.

I think my sister was really very brave to ask me, brave or desperate I should say! Seriously though, I may be the elder sister but I’m really proud to see how brave my sister has grown up to be. I recall how she would constantly cling to me as we were growing up. When we were early for school, I wouldn’t be able to leave her on her own, she’d ask me to stay and sit with her as she waited for her friends to arrive. Even through university, I would be the one picking her up and shuttling her to her dance classes. For the first 23 years of her life, we were inseparable and hardly ever apart from each other. Since I left home to study in Adelaide over ten years ago, her spirit grew tremendously and she taught me a lot about  strength and bravery. She’s travelled the world on her own, she’s experienced heartbreak, she’s found love, she’s looked after our parents, she’s an adoring Auntie to my daughter, and she’s a truly talented artist. We’ve taken different paths my sister and I, but life finds ways for us to circle back to each other every so often. My task recently was to trim her hair. I am happy to report, she was pleased with it.

You may be as different as the sun and the moon, but the same blood flows through both your hearts. You need her, as she needs you...George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones