„Bring the scissors”, I will cut your hair, said Peter. Terka is thrilled. Because she will have a shorter hair, exactly as she wished. Petr had always cut our girls’ hair. He started with our first born Anna, then continued with Klarka who’s hair turned blond like her father’s. Our third daughter Terka took cutting hair by her father as a given. I do not know why Peter got down to it after all and why we have never thought about going to a hairdresser. It was not necessary. The trust between a father and a daughter that it will turn out well was always there. It was the same for all our girls, completely natural. Regardless of the fact that he would ask them if they wish “a pot haircut”, as we say.
Change of a hairstyle is big deal for a girl. Hair is a girls’ wonder and cutting it too much or too little could make them cry. Not only girls. Not long time ago, my mum Eva was crying where she went to a hairdresser and a new haircut was not what she hoped for. Maybe it was a change she wasn’t expecting.
I am also going to bring scissors today. Nobody has asked for them and will not ask for them anymore. I wish to hear that voice that called me sometimes to bring them to him. I wish it so much. I only know that I have to take them now. Those garden scissors that are never sharp. There were always two or three of them together with some garden gloves in a green drawer in the kitchen, close to the glass door, in the unfinished part of our house. This door leads to the garden. Garden is asking for a care. It is March. Everything is upside down. Scissors are lost, both the one for the garden and the other one. Reason and force to look for them are lost too. Petr is not here. I cannot ask him. This fact permeates every part of my body. Each fold, each muscle, each tear. I can’t find energy to look for better scissors. I gave up. Sun and friend Jaroušek, who knows how to use garden scissors, persuaded me to start. I have asked him.
Since Peter passed away, I have to hold things about which I only knew that they are in the house and where they are stored. We have divided our tasks. I made a snack for the gardener. I did not want a sun to brainwash him. I liked that he takes some rest at the right moment. Than we called for girls to catch the moment together. For his part, he came back every while to ask where do I want to plant an apple tree, daffodils and crocuses. I was never brought up to take care of a garden. I was brought up to read books. The garden was my reading room where I laid in a colourful hammock with red and orange strips by the fire place and observed my gardener and made estimates of time for this common break. I would tell him about stories in the books and Peter would tell me about what has grown up in the garden. Just goofing around, one may say.
Even if I would prefer to hide away and cry for a half day, I will not do so. Jaroušek, our common friend, and his wife Janinka, are around and will advise me. This is my first lesson and I am determined to take care of the garden and other stuff. To learn how to prune fruit trees or current, how to take care of everything around here. I do not care about the proper horticultural terminology. This year will be god damn hard.
Jaroušek seems to me like an amateur hairdresser. He knows how to work with scissors but I am not sure if our almond tree should be cut in the same way as the apple tree and the peach tree. I have learnt that a small branch should be cut under or below the bud, I am not sure. To find a trunk in the middle and cut off everything which grows to the tree crown and would not have enough light. A current seems to agree. And I have no other choice but keep trying. It will be a trial and error, as everything else this year. We will see how it will turn out in the garden. Peter, observe it and if it would be wrong, make a sign. I will be holding the garden scissor more often. I have to learn so much. Or to put it differently – I WISH to learn it all because I want to sit with my girls in the shadow of the almond trees and know that we made it.
Geneva, 8.3.2020