2019-07-09 - Turning Unopened Pages (A memory of my Grandfather)
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I pour steaming hot water from the tap into the bowl. I
wash my face, fully, using a facial cleanser, taking time to
luxuriate in the experience.
When I was a child, as many children do, I occasionally visited
my grandparents. My grandmother was the sterotypical gramma from
dozens of cultures. Fussing in the kitchen, often religiously
preparing food, never stopping in her movements. My grandfather,
probably also fitting some stereotypes, was the complete opposite.
I always see him sitting in his chair, in a part of the room where
he could not see the television. I remember that device vividly.
Black and white, when you turned it on it sat there for what seemed
like hours, before a white dot appeared, a dot which, if you were
lucky, resolved into a picture. Black and white. This was a novelty
to me, I think it was even something of a novelty to my parents. My
grandfather would barely look at the thing, sitting silently in his
chair, back ramrod straight, not touching the cushion. Silently he
sits, in my memories.
I wash off the cleanser, and embark on the second stage.
Working the lather, painting it onto my beard, passing back and
forth, a mantra of its own experience.
He must not always have sat in that chair, for I remember, dimly
down through the years, days when we did other things. Like the
day he made me a milk float (his words). I remember him taking
the cream soda from some crevice in the kitchen, solemnly pouring
some into a wide cut glass, then taking the ice-cream, laboriously
scraping out a scoop, which he gingerly deposited in the soda. He
pushed it to me, and he watched with delight as I enthusiastically
ate and drank and giggled. He had never had this as a child, he
told me, this was something he had discovered as an adult, after he
met my gramma. He shone that day, my grandfather, in ways I never
saw before.
When the lather is good and ready, tickling the hairs now
descending from my nose, I bring out the razor. A Merkur,
bought for me by my children this past December, an improvement
on that cheap plastic device I’d been using. I check the
edge, like a shochet his hallaf as the slightest
imperfection can ruin the skin.
I remember talking with him, in days long past, asking him
questions, being rebuffed by the pains of his memories. He lived
a life, my grandfather, a life marked by fear, by conflict, by
terror which came in the night and took loved ones from family and
home and safety. A life which began anew, time after time, yet was
always pursued by the same concerns. He would not, could not speak
of those to a child, for fear that I would never again find the
blessing of sleep. As I grew older, he did speak, and I listened,
and I learned.
Slowly I pass the blade across my face. Down twice, up once,
no more, no less. The aim is to reduce, the aim is to convince
the hair to leave with the blade, to allow the weight of the
razor to do the necessary, to take away what is not needed
without effort, chastening the skin.
He told me of men he had served with, men he had hidden with, men
who had died. Other men who had died by his design, or by his gun,
or by his hand. He told me of the days spent in flight, of the days
spent in waiting, of the days spent in fear of reprisals or of
attack. And he told me of the fleeting moments of real terror, the
breathlessness of adrenaline, the reckless anticipation of death.
He would speak, haltingly at first, but later with passion, and
not the passion of glory, but the passion of pain and loss. The
unending knowledge of lives taken, the ceaseless turmoil it creates
and the bitter emptiness of the nights which follow.
This is something I had to learn. Raised on a diet of two
blade, three blades, more, lubricating strips and gewgaws of
advertising spiel, like most men my age, hinged supports which
contour to the face and strike as a furious cohort on the
battleground of that face. I had stopped shaving entirely, as
my weak and sensitive skin rebelled against such traducements.
Those years where I sat and listened were short. Guided by those
same impulses of youth, I fled from his truths. This sad and angry
old man who sat in his chair. I abandoned his wisdom and his
pain, I made excuses when we visited, I never made time for his
company. I walked away from him, walked away to the siren songs
of my companions and their own visions of great deeds yet to do.
The earnest simplicity of the lies we all believed in, the lie of
comfort and the lie of glory, the lies that all nations breed in
their young.
There is an art to the double-edged safety razor, one born of
the lived knowledge of nicks and cuts and angry redness. I came
back to this art slowly, first using a disposable single blade
razor, informed by some media piece about avoiding irritation.
I learned the shape of my face, the pattern of my hair, the
places where it runs unseen in patterns unknown. This was a new
experience, knowing my own face. I bring the thing to an end,
checking those spots I have learned demand particular
attention.
I came back to him, just before the end. I sat with him in his
hospital room. We talked of milk floats and we talked of the things
we had spent the last years not talking of. He was cold by the
window, I argued with a nurse so that he was moved. He lay there
in the bed, quiet now, happier in the warmer room. He said he was
tired, and he thanked me for coming, thanked me for listening. I
told him I would return in the morning, and he kissed me goodbye.
I did return the next morning. To a white room with a white bundle
on a white bed. No more wisdom. No more pain. No more nightmares.
No more.
I pass the alum over any snags, I rub my face clean and, like
some dandy of old, I apply some moisturising balm.
I sat that day in the darkened house, the quiet murmuring sounds
of my family and their visitors below. I sat in his bathroom, and
in my hands I held his razor and his alum stone. His razor was a
beautiful thing, more beautiful than any I’ve seen despite its
simple nature: steel, gunmetal gray and aged, the top opened like
a butterfly’s wings on a flower. I cried, and I wept, and I held
those tokens of a life lived, a life I had spurned for so many
wasted days.
I stop. I look at myself in the mirror, a reflection of my
grandfather. I have his eyes, I am told, blue chased with
steel. I remember him now, every time I do this. This simple
act of remembrance, a prayer in form unlike any other, a
memory, a hope. A practice, an effort to turn those unopened
pages. I honour him in a way he would have approved, silently,
stoic. A memory that serves its own importance.
> May peace come to bless our lives. Let us work to create peace
> here on earth for all people. And let us say, Shalom.
