I am at the salon, coaxing tangles out of my daughter’s golden mane with a hot-pink comb that’s missing one tooth.

Her hair has been a key part of her identity since the day she was born, with a mass of brown locks that turned blond soon after she took her first steps. She has visited the hairdresser several times, always insisting on "just a trim."

I sense something might be different today.

It has been that kind of summer. Maybe it’s because there’s a baby in the house now, but all of a sudden my 7-year-old seems so big and so old. She still calls me Mommy or Mama, but she puts on her own Band-Aids. She still likes to be tucked in, but she’s tall enough to get ice cubes out of the freezer, independent enough to make her own breakfast, smart enough to add up her own Yahtzee score.

On a recent camping trip, she packed a pink "Girls Varsity" sports bra — and her favorite stuffed horse. At swimming lessons, she learned to kneel-dive into the deep end and swim the length of the pool. Yet it seems like just last year she was teetering on the edge, knees bent, refusing to jump in without holding my hand.

———

The hairdresser’s name is Cindy. She’s what Abby calls a "girly-girl," all eyelashes and accessories. She is finishing another customer’s hairdo when Abby announces, "I want to get my hair cut short."

I’m not surprised, because she has mentioned this before. I just wasn’t sure she’d go through with it.

"I don’t think Mommy will let you do that," Cindy says, but I tell her it’s up to Abby. And Abby says she’s positive she wants shoulder-length hair.

"Oh, this is exciting!" says Cindy, when she realizes Abby is serious. I should have brought my camera, like I did when she got her first professional haircut, legs dangling from a smock decorated with cartoon animals. But I’m not prepared this time.

Abby stands in front of the full-length mirror, chin up, shoulders back. She’s wearing her first new back-to-school outfit — a short-sleeved purple top and a flowered skirt — with pink flip-flops and a summer tan.

Cindy divides the hair hanging down Abby’s back into two ponytails, fastening each with a dark-brown rubber band. She has a camera for times like this. She snaps a "before" picture, then hands it to me and picks up the scissors.

"Ready, Mom?" Cindy asks, and I say that I am, although really I’m still trying to decide whether to go vertical or horizontal. I look through the viewfinder, hear one snip and then another. I’m clicking the shutter when the 13-inch ponytails fall free.

I gasp. It’s an instant transformation. Abby reaches back, feels the fresh, bouncy ends just above her shoulders. Cindy has already banded the two ponytails into one, is saying something about plastic bags and wigs and kids with no hair. I’m holding back tears I wasn’t prepared for.

In the chair, Abby beams at her reflection as Cindy shapes and fluffs and sprays, then holds a mirror behind Abby’s head. Her eyes widen and she draws in a quick breath, then smiles and can’t seem to stop.

She holds the ponytail all the way home. I put it in a Ziploc bag while she twirls around and tells her dad about Locks of Love, an organization that provides hairpieces to children with long-term hair loss. She seems as excited about giving away her hair as she is about her new look.

After Abby is asleep, I take the ponytail out of the bag and hold it up, marveling at the way it falls into a little-girl curl. I run my finger across the two nubs at the top. They’re a deep brown that turns to gold when the light hits at an angle; soft and a little bristly, like a severed velvet rope. I think of all the time I’ve spent with these locks, lathering and brushing, combing and braiding — time I will no longer have, now that she doesn’t need me to do her hair.

I replay the moment when the ponytails were cut loose. It is frozen in my mind, stuck there with the image of a little girl with long braids and tear-stained cheeks, craning her neck to see the door over the kindergarten cubbies.

We will send the hair to Locks of Love, soon. But I’m not ready to part with it quite yet.

Lisa Miller is a freelance writer who lives in Oneonta. She can be reached at lisamiller44@hotmail.com.