Rafa's first haircut

There are some moments in parenting that arrive quietly, without fuss, yet somehow carry the weight of entire generations. Rafa’s first haircut was one of those moments.

To adults, a haircut is a forgettable errand squeezed between tasks. But for a child—especially a three-year-old discovering the world with wide eyes and wiggly shoulders—it’s an event. A sensory explosion. A ticklish, giggle-inducing, slightly suspicious experience delivered one tiny snip at a time.

The moment the barber’s comb grazed Rafa’s neck, his whole body jolted like a startled squirrel. He scrunched his shoulders, tried not to laugh, tried even harder to look serious… and failed gloriously.

I watched him twist and wiggle, squeal and protest, laugh and plead for “less tickles please,” all at once. And just like that, I was thrown back in time—to my own childhood, sitting in a similar chair, bargaining with a barber who probably thought I was made of feathers.

Adults don’t remember this sensation. Somewhere along the way, life desensitises us. We stop noticing how a haircut feels. We forget the gentle tickle of the scissors behind the ear. We forget how strange and funny it all is when you’re tiny and everything is new.

But watching Rafa brought it all roaring back. It was like opening a small door in my memory—one that had been closed for decades.

And it made me think about the world our kids are growing up in.

Everything moves so fast now. The pace, the technology, the expectations. Kids experience life differently than we did as millennials—more stimulation, more information, more everything. And as parents, we sometimes feel a bit ill-equipped, as if we’re carrying old maps into a new country.

So we do what humans have always done. We go back to our roots. We pull out old memories, old traditions, old sensibilities—not to keep them stuck in time, but to anchor our kids in something steady. Something real. Something that reminds them where they come from.

And sometimes, that anchor is as simple as a haircut.

A tiny boy trying not to laugh while a pair of scissors tickle his neck. A parent watching, half amused, half emotional. A moment being lived for the first time by him… and for the second time by me, through him.

That’s the funny thing about life. Everything is lived once, then lived again as a memory. And in the end, what we carry forward—what our children will one day pass down—are not the perfectly planned milestones but the soft, ordinary moments stitched between them.

Rafa’s first haircut reminded me of something beautifully simple:

Happiness is a memory lived. And so the real work of parenting is to create as many good ones as we can—tiny, joyful, ticklish ones—that echo forward through generations long after the hair on the floor has been swept away.