At the young age of nine, Utah schoolgirl Isabella Pieri lost her mom.
Isabella’s mom was suffering from a rare disease that took her life after years of fighting. She left her husband Philip and daughter Isabella behind.
Philip had two challenges, dealing with the loss of his love and raising a young girl all by himself.
There are millions of people who are handling single parenthood, and it can be especially challenging to raise a child of the opposite gender. For Philip, it was difficult to manage the small, everyday tasks, like choosing something for Isabella to wear, or styling her hair every morning.
Isabella’s hair was something he finds difficult to deal with, so he cut it all off. “He gave me a crew cut,” she told NBC News.
Two years later, Isabella’s hair had grown back. She started making a simple ponytail, but still missed the touch of a mother’s hands who could style her hair a different way now and then.
One day she saw her school bus driver, Tracy Dean, fixing a classmate’s braids. She approached Tracy and asked if she could put braids in her hair. “I could tell she was struggling with her hair,” said Dean.
Dean has four children and has worked as a bus driver for the Alpine School District for 10 years. She also has a daughter the same age as Isabella. She found no problem in styling the young girl’s hair, and it soon became a routine for the two of them. “We usually do two French braids first and once in a while she just wants one braid. I also taught her how to brush her hair.”
Dean loves her job and takes it as her duty to take care of every one of the kids on the school bus. But there was a special reason she took up her role in Isabella’s life with such love and care.
Seven years earlier, Dean faced the same ordeal with her health. She has undergone treatment for breast cancer. When she was battling the disease, she always thought about what it would mean to leave her husband and four children behind: “Who is going to take care of my little ones?” She saw the same thing happening to a girl the same age as her daughter. So, she decided to take care of her.
When dad Philip heard about the Dean’s kind act, he was touched: “She didn’t have to step up. When she stepped up, I was amazed.” Dean said the hairstyling was no big deal and has simply become a part of her morning.
Isabella has now found that mother loves that she was missing for two years, and looks forward to her daily hairstyle before school. “It makes me excited for the next day, to see what she does,” said Isabella.
Dean understood dad Philip’s situation easily: “You know, that’s what moms do. They do their kids’ hair.”
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