At three o'clock in the morning, I was still looking through the photo album on my phone.
The child had just fallen asleep and his face was red.
Suddenly I came across that hot search - "Don't throw away your baby's fetal hair."
The pictures posted below are made into brushes and pendants.
As I watched, tears came down.
Not pretentious.
I suddenly thought of my mother.
A while ago, she returned to her hometown and rummaged through the depths of the cabinet to find a rusty iron box. In the rusty iron box, there was a small bunch of yellow hairs wrapped in red cloth. The hairs were as thin as spider silk.
She said, you shaved it off when you were full moon, and now there is only a little bit left. She said it so lightly, but when I held it, it was like holding a mountain.
It turns out that Chinese people never say "I love you" when it comes to love.
Stones, copper coins, red eggs, the "unreasonable" things of the older generation
In ancient times, hair was shaved 24 days after the birth of a son and 20 days after the birth of a daughter.
Why hold on to the days?
No one can tell.
Probably like the twenty-four solar terms, I always feel that everything has its time.
The head shaving ceremony takes place in the delivery room and is not visible to anyone.
Put 12 pebbles, 12 copper coins, and 12 red eggs in the basin.
12 is perfection, a year, and a cycle of earthly branches.
The shaved hair should be thrown on the roof - being high above others means that the child will succeed in the future.
Then roll the red egg on the bald head three times.
Rolling will cause disaster, rolling will be difficult, and rolling will be unlucky.
Spread with egg yolk and green onion juice.
Onions are smart, but what about egg yolks?
It may be a yellow future, like millet or gold.
Ridiculous?
absurd.
Is it cute?
so cute.
It was the tenderness of an era without B-ultrasound and prenatal education.
They put all their fears and expectations into these "unreasonable" actions.
Thinking about it now, those ceremonies were the earliest "Wishing Fountain".
### Pens, paintings, knives, pendants, the "deformation of fetal hair" of modern parents
In today's babies, the fetal hair has a new place to go.
The most artistic one is the fetal hair brush.
It existed in the Tang Dynasty, and it was called "Taifa Brush".
It has been preserved for a long time. After more than a thousand years, the poet Qi Ji once wrote: "The inner hair is thin and the outer hair is thin, and the green clothes are newly cut and tightly bound." To this day, we still insist on using the same and exactly the same method to embed those few soft hairs into the bamboo tubes.
The most tear-jerking thing is the lanugo painting.
I saw a mother in Xiaohongshu. She spent three days using tweezers to paste the fetal hair into a calf-like shape.
She said the baby was born in the year of Ox.
Halfway through applying it, my hands were shaking because my hair was too short and too soft.
But when it was finally framed and hung on the wall, the painting was alive.
There are also lanugo pendants.
It doesn’t matter if you have less hair.
I have a friend whose child's hair was so thin that she could count the strands. She saved a handful of the sparse hair, then stuffed the handful of hair into a glass pendant and sealed it.
Wear it around your neck, close to your chest, closest to your heart.
The most hard-core one is the Taiwanese actress Ke Yirou.
Her husband, a Japanese chef, actually brought his son's fetal hair to Japan and incorporated it into a sushi knife.
The child's name is engraved on the blade.
Every time I cut sashimi, it’s like holding my son’s head—no, it’s his hair.
This picture is a bit funny, but if you think about it carefully, it is very touching.
The knife is a murder weapon, but because of the fetal hair, it becomes a family heirloom.
### Why do you have to keep this hair?
Have you asked yourself?
Why?
Because children grow up too fast.
Yesterday I was holding it in my arms, but today I carried my schoolbag to school.
I was still bald yesterday, but today my hairline has receded.
We cannot keep time, so we want to keep the "evidence" of time.
Lanugo is the only thing brought out of the mother's womb that can be cut without pain.
The umbilical cord will dry up, the footprints will fade, and only the hair will survive for thousands of years.
Some people say that fetal hair wards off evil spirits.
I don’t believe in ghosts and gods, but I believe love can ward off evil spirits.
Every time I see that tuft of hair, I remember what he looked like when he was just born, wrinkled and red, like a little old man.
The anxiety, joy, and confusion at that time were all sealed in these few filaments.
This is the original "blockchain" - immutable and forever traceable.
Do it yourself, clumsy love is the most precious
In fact, you don’t have to find a store.
I see a lot of mothers doing it themselves.
Buy a photo frame, buy a piece of cardboard, and use glue to spell the word "peace" from the lanugo.
It's all crooked, bald in some places and thick in others.
But so what?
Others are placed in transparent pocket watches and hung in cars.
Every time I look down at a red light, the corners of my mouth turn up.
What’s even more amazing is to put the lanugo and deciduous teeth together.
When the child turns eighteen, give it to him.
Tell him: Look, this is the way you came.
### Finally, let me talk about myself
It's late at night.
The child turned over and held the corner of my clothes with his little hands.
I gently opened the drawer and took out the small cloth bag that I had hidden for several months.
Inside was his lanugo, which was thin, yellow, and shimmered under the light.
I haven't decided what to do yet.
A writing brush?
Too formal.
Pendant?
Too much mother.
knife?
My family does not open a Japanese restaurant.
Maybe just keep it, just keep it.
Take it out and look at it occasionally and have a giggle.
I hope he will grow up, I hope he will be rebellious, I hope he will leave home, I hope he will remember me when he is flipping through the photo album on his phone late one night, and then I will hand him this little piece of hair.
Tell him:
You see, you have grown up little by little since you were young.
You see, how much your mother loved you back then.
Does your baby still have fetal hair?
Is it stuffed under the box, or is it made into something weird?
Leave it to dry in the comment area so that I can check it out and see what form these tiny and sharp protrusions take on under the influence of temperature.
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