Patterns

In yesterday's post about hobbies, I mentioned a "pattern" in my life. That reminded me of one of those little insignificant incidents that only a mother would store up in her heart.


Tim was in kindergarten, and, as a part of the math curriculum, his teacher, Mrs. B., was teaching a unit on patterns. You know . . . red-blue-yellow; red-blue-yellow; or 2-4-4-6; 2-4-4-6. That kind of thing. Tim was really getting into it, and was finding patterns everywhere around the house - in the wallpaper, the fireplace bricks, and the keys on the piano, to name a few.


So, in the midst of this pattern phase, I happened to take both boys to the barber for a haircut. Chris went first, then Tim. Tim was small for his age, so the big barber chair would have swallowed him up except for the board that the barber put across the arms for him to sit on. Chris and I sat in the black leather seats along the wall, waiting and watching, as the barber shaped up Tim's thick, shiny dark-brown hair with his comb and scissors. Tim hadn't said a word until he piped up with, "That's a pattern!" The barber stopped cutting and looked at him, wondering what he meant; and I looked in the direction Tim was facing, to see what pattern he had found. I saw none. "Where do you see a pattern, Tim?" I asked.


He pointed to his head and said, "Comb, comb, cut; comb, comb, cut."