When Chas was a day old, asleep in my arms, I ran my fingers through his strawberry hair and furrowed my brow, wondering where the hell his red hair came from. Neither Damon nor I have red hair. Luckily, Chas has the Sicore nose (read: funky nose that only Sicores have, both in appearance and ability, capable of detecting fabric softener within a one mile radius), so I rested knowing I wouldn’t have to prove paternity. But the red hair had me completely perplexed, and a little worried, too; Damon has always made fun of redheads and freckles, and it appeared we’d managed to spawn little orphan Annie.
But months passed, and Chas’ hair changed. Some babies lose their hair, but Chas only grew more of it. The red paled to a towhead blonde, like Damon’s childhood hair. And while the front half of his crown grew straight, the back half grew wavy and wild. With each day, whether brushed or not, it began to tease itself into little blonde dreadlocks, and to this day it would appear that Chas, even ten minutes after having his hair combed, looks like he just got out of bed, or maybe scrubbed the bathtub with his head.
Everybody seems to love this head of hair as much as he does; in fact, Chas will grin and tousle his hair after I brush it, just to prove I’m ineffective. He loves his hair like a loose tooth, eager to reward compliments with Bruce Lee-inspired side kicks and leaps off of chairs, which make the gold dreads bounce and fly. “I wish I had hair like that!” is an acceptable compliment, less creepy than “I want your HAIR!” Perhaps the one person who would never tire of seeing Chas’ proud display in light of these gestures, besides Chas himself, is Damon; Damon, in all honesty, would actually love to have Chas’ hair. Which, every time I hear him say it, kind of makes me cringe. I always wonder how Chas perceives this strange compliment, being a three year-old and not entirely versed in the full play of our language.
So it happened last night, at dinner, while the four of us were in a booth waiting for our food and talking about the day, that Chas’ hair was catching the falling beams of sunset in a glorious flaxen halo. While he could have asked Chas to pass the chopsticks, or the soy sauce, Damon was stunned by the vision before him, and instead he asked,
“Chas, can I have your hair?”
Chas bashfully tucked his chin into his chest and grinned at Damon, telling him “Nooooooo, daddy, you can’t have my hair!” and I sat there before my empty place setting, looking for my chopsticks and wondering why it always feels to me like Damon’s asking him, “Chas, can I have your spleen?”
But I smiled instead, and before I had the chance to ask Chas to pass the chopsticks, I looked up to find Chas reaching across the table to Damon, stretched beyond the limits of love, grinning and holding in his stout little hand a rather large lock of fine golden hair.
“Here you go, daddy.”