Perhaps an Understatement
June 12th, 2026 by G.
Yesterday in the cool of the morning the Lovely One took me out to the back yard to cut my hair, despite her physical struggles.
It is a meditative thing, getting your hair cut.
It was her I was meditating on. Our courtship, early married life, children, struggles, the joys big and small, her grace in her current difficulties.
I said, “I like you.”
She said, “thanks.”
John Mansfield
June 12, 2026
A fond memory is my father having his hair cut by my mother. By the time I was a teen I preferred to get someone else to cut mine, but I liked seeing those occasions of them together.
Before I married I became entranced with a scene from “The Ballad of Gregario Cortez.” Cortez portrayed by Edward James Olmos has come home from days away working. Outside their house while children play around them, the wife trims him and shaves him. That scene and memories of my parents led me to buy a trimmer early in my marriage and ask my wife to learn how to cut my hair. The first results were not great, but over time she learned my head, asked for tips from other women, and did better for me than most barbers. She was much slower than a barber, which was a feature not a bug.
One Sunday when I was 17, my ward sustained a younger bishop. As is custom his wife was called on to speak in the sacrament meeting. She started off by explaining that she sometimes has her husband trim the ends of her hair even. He did that for her that morning, and he trimmed back far more than she wanted. She knew that she would be called on to speak that day, mostly about him, and she had the difficulty of doing that while irritated at him. Getting that out of the way over the pulpit seemed to free her to let it go and move on to what she wanted to say.