My father and I had a secret ritual, which began before I can remember, and finally came to an end, as was right and necessary, when I was about 11 or 12. I stumbled upon the ritual; it was of my making, but my father was complicit, and I like to believe he valued it as much as I did. It was how he told me he loved me, other than his occasional grabbing of my upper arms and saying through clenched teeth “Flesh of my flesh! Blood of my blood! BONE OF MY BONE!” while shaking me with just enough force and with his eyes gleaming to let me know it was a game. It was indeed better than his parentally crazed shaking, because it also showed me that he trusted me to see his limitations. His vulnerabilities. His steady and sure plodding. His humanity. And it was how I told him that I adored him more than I feared him, which was plenty.
I understood from about the age of 4 or 5 that my father was a cop. Not one of those college educated officers who now fill the ranks of New York’s Finest and put in just enough time to earn a pension and become a genuine part of the fraternity. He was a cop for 31 years, and saw all his peers disappear into the safety of department administration, building construction, or shop ownership, while he continued to walk his beat and the neighborhood around him continued to break down a little more each day. But as I had no real understanding until I was much older of what he did day in and day out, or that being a cop in the South Bronx required being some kind of always, thought just barely, restrained powerful force, I wasn’t afraid of my father because he was a tough cop. No, I was afraid of my father because, cop or no, he was indeed, for some reason I could not comprehend, a barely but always restrained powerful force, and that force was rage. He was a man of few words, and most of those were explosive, passionate, impatient, menacing, or, suddenly, unpredictably and almost unnervingly jolly. He was a man who took things in quietly, but let things out noisily. He was someone I had to watch closely to know whether he would be receptive to my approach, my question, my hand on his knee. He was someone, I learned early, who tolerated no inconvenience or any conversation that lasted more than a few sentences. I vaguely understood the way a 5 year old can that my father was in constant battle for his soul. His overbearing and vulgar parents, the streets, the dangers of his job, required him to be hard boiled. But he didn’t want to be hard boiled. He was Ferdinand the Bull. He wanted to sit under the cork tree and smell the flowers, or, in his case, read a book and smoke his pipe. He wanted to dance a rhumba with his wife or play his violin by ear, laugh at something silly or recite lines from Cyrano de Bergerac. And more than anything else, he wanted not to have to steel himself everyday for the bullfight.
My earliest memories of watching my father shave consisted of me standing quietly by the door of our small bathroom, knowing not to say a word or else risk banishment. I was able to pretend that I was simply waiting for my turn to use the bathroom, the cub ceding to the protector of the pride. I watched with my big eyes, as my father moistened his shaving brush and whipped it around deftly in the yellow-white mug until I could see a creamy foam form on the bristles. I watched as he rubbed the foam all over his face, and then took a single-edged razor to his face. My father shaved up, against the grain of his stubble, causing that scraping sound which to my young mind only proved how tough and brave he really was. And when he was done, had rinsed whatever thin strips of soap remained, had patted his face with a towel, he poured some strange green liquid from a bottle into his hands, slapped it on his face (the sounds of the slaps further proof he could take it, take it all), and grimaced from what I surmised was the same sting I felt when my mother daubed my cuts with alcohol. I knew I was watching something ancient. Private. Sacred, even. He was our warrior putting on his game face. Risking cuts, and stings and sometimes having to paste on little pieces of tissue to stem the bleeding, all so he could go out to do what he had to do. I could feel the dread, wincing internally before I could even hear the scrape, scrape, scrape and the inevitable slapping, and smell the stinging green mystery tonic, whose only purpose seemed to signal the end of the ceremony. A sharp punctuation mark, accompanied on occasion by the intake of air through his clenched teeth, or, rarer still, offered for my benefit, to allay the solemn concern in my big eyes, the big and worried eyes of his most sensitive and soft-boiled daughter, a robust exhalation “Ahhh!”
When I was seven, we moved to a house in the suburbs. My parents suddenly had their own bathroom, and my sisters and I had ours. So, for a little while, no longer having a reason to invade the bathroom he was using or any excuse to stand and wait at the door, I forgot about my father’s shaving. But one day, seeking him out for some purpose, perhaps sent on an errand of information for my mother, I found him in his bathroom shaving, wearing his preferred sleeveless undershirt. And this is where our true ritual began. For though I had no pretext to remain, I did. I took my place sitting atop the closed toilet seat behind him and a little to one side, and silently began watching him once again. And my father looked at me in the mirror only long enough to catch my eye, to tell me without words that it was okay for me to remain in his bathroom, the place of his most private ablutions, grooming and thoughts, so that I could watch him shave. I was allowed into that private space. Because I was silent. Because I would know when it was time to leave. Because in my mute presence I commiserated with him about the unending source of stubble rising out of his face. Because I studied and took vicarious pride in his technique and acknowldeged how he persevered in his unflagging duty to shave, and, more than that, shave well. Because it reassured me. Because I left him alone in his thoughts.
Over the years, I would return frequently to my perch on the toilet, gliding in without a word, and gliding out again once the tonic was slapped on and the brush rinsed, squeezed and reshaped. Sometimes, very, very occasionally, I’d move closer to get a better vantage point, but only when I sensed he’d allow it. Regardless of my exact positioning, we both knew that his letting me watch was his way of saying he loved me, trusted me in this private space, this private occasion. Appreciated my solemnity and my softness. Would never intentionally try to toughen me up or pressure me to be hard boiled. And we both knew that my watching him was my way of saying that in those moments I was not afraid. I could see the man behind the rage. I could see and love my father. I never asked him if my sisters came to watch him. And I never talked with them about it or mentioned it to my mother. I wanted it to be something that belonged to my father and me alone. I wanted to be the only one he allowed in. The only one who knew how to be silent and appreciative of his daily commitment.
Eventually, of course, I stopped coming to watch him shave. I started growing into a woman, and could no longer be the adoring young girl. There was no one seminal event, no ceremonial last occasion. It just stopped somehow, and I didn’t actively think of it again for many years. I didn’t think of it again until almost 40 years later, when I had the opportunity to once again watch a grown man shave. You see, my husband of over 20 years kept a beard. Interestingly enough, his primary motivation for having one was so that he wouldn’t have to deal with the unrelenting tedium of shaving. I never had the opportunity to watch him shave, and I never even really thought about what I once so treasured… Except that having come across a display of men’s shaving items some years ago, I bought myself a bristle shaving brush on impulse, and told myself it would be great for my legs… And except that when I use my brush and get a head of lather, I feel a tinge of pride and silently think about how foolish all women are and most men, not to use one.
So, my husband and I no longer together, I fairly recently watched a new man shave. This man shaved down, with the grain, and he used cream out of a tube. But he also bragged with obvious relish about how he once let a barber of dubious reputation in a foreign country shave him with an old fashioned long-handled straight razor, so I sensed a true shaving enthusiast might lie within. And despite the cream out of the tube, which would require the far less elegant rubbing on with fingers, I felt the stirring of my delight and keen interest. I couldn’t tell if this was due to the fond memories I had of my father, or proof that here too, I was sharing in an exchange. Different, yes, but still admiring. Still loving and still unspoken.
I bought him a shaving brush.
