I thumbed through a photo album of my son’s baby pictures, trying to think of something to write as a birthday post for him. His birthday is later this week.
In the album, I found two photographs taken by a photographer at Hallmark Cards when my son was almost a year old. A month or so before the pictures were taken, I had seen a solicitation in the company’s daily employee newsletter, The Noon News, asking employees if they knew babies of around a year old for a photo shoot. There were a few other specifications that I cannot now recall, though I do remember that as I ticked through them, my son met all the prerequisites. Except there must have been one issue, because I remember calling the Photography Department to ask if it mattered that my baby couldn’t walk yet. “No,” the lady I talked to assured me, “the photographers can work with him sitting.”
So on the scheduled afternoon, I picked my son up at his daycare provider’s home and brought him back to Hallmark to be photographed. I signed a model release on his behalf. I knew about model releases, because as one of the company’s lawyers I had helped to update Hallmark’s model release form a year or two earlier. By signing it, I gave away the rights to my son’s image on any photographs taken that day.
The photographer posed my son, clad only in a diaper, and gave him a yellow plastic telephone to play with. An old-fashioned phone of the ilk that is only rarely seen these days—rotary dial and a cord from phone to receiver. Young son played with the phone, and the photographer shot picture after picture.
I was later given a copy of two of the shots the photographer took, and I have kept them in my photo album. I think they are adorable, but as far as I know Hallmark never used any pictures of my son on greeting cards or other products, so apparently my child wasn’t as photogenic as I thought he was. I would like to use the photos on this blog post, but because I signed away all rights to them, I shouldn’t.
I am fairly confident that this modeling session took place very shortly before my son’s first birthday, so probably in January 1983. The reason I am so confident is that in the Hallmark shots his hair is wispy around his face and a little longish over ears and neck. It had not yet been cut.
About a week before his first birthday, he got his first haircut. That I have a photo of, and I can use that picture. After all, I took it.
But it isn’t nearly as good a shot as the pictures the Hallmark photographer sent me. After all, that photographer was a professional.
All this reminded me of another haircut story involving my son.
This one involves a scarf. When we were in New York for his wedding last October, I saw a picture of my son with his hair tied back in a scarf (like a durag). I told my daughter-in-law I had another scarf story to tell her, and this is it.
Many years ago, when my son was in college, his sister was about to be confirmed in our church. He was her sponsor, and he came home for the weekend to attend the ceremony. My parents were also visiting, and they had arrived at our house before my son did.
I picked my son up from the airport. I confess I almost didn’t recognize him when he got off the plane. His thick brown hair was hanging past his ears, longer than I had ever seen it—longer than before he had his first haircut by far. And he had it tied back in a bandanna, something I had never seen him do before.
I thought he looked awful, but I hugged him and kept my mouth shut. I knew hair could change, and it wasn’t the end of the world if I thought my college boy’s hair was too long. Besides, my husband would hate it more than I did, and I’d let him be the one to say something.
We got back to our house and walked in the door. My mother came into the room to greet her grandson, took one look at him, and blurted out, “You look so pretty!”
I am absolutely certain that was her honest first reaction, and it was more effective than anything I could have said to him.
Within an hour, he left the house for the barbershop, and he came home with reasonably styled hair. I probably have a picture somewhere of him at the confirmation ceremony (after the haircut), but it’s buried in a box, so we’ll stick with his first haircut picture for this post.
When has one story you’ve told led you to remember another . . . and another?
