A couple months ago, somewhat out of the blue, I had a small awakening.
I decided to shave the way my father did on every morning of his life — a slow and careful ritual performed at the bathroom sink, facing himself in the mirror.
Sounds a bit silly, I know. But rather than shave quickly in the shower with a disposable razor as I’d done since college, purely in the interest of saving time and getting on to work, life and whatever else the day held, it occurred to me that my dad might have been on to something important.
As a little kid in the late 1950s, you see, I sometimes sat on the closed toilet seat chatting with him as he performed his morning shaving routine. I have no memory of things we talked about, but do remember how he sometimes hummed (badly, I must note — the result of a natural tin ear) and once recited a ditty I recall to this day.
“Between the cradle and the grave, Jimmy, lies but a haircut and a shave.”
For years, I thought this bit of mortal whimsy was original with him, an adman with a poet’s heart, only to learn that it was really something he picked up from an old Burgess Meredith film.
No matter. His shaving routine utterly enthralled me. He began by filling the sink with steaming hot water and washing his face, holding a hot cloth against his skin. Next, he would pat his face dry with a towel and apply shaving cream in a slow, circular motion with a soft-bristled brush from a mug of soap he’d worked into a lather. I can still hear the faint swipe of his razor as it did its job.
As he aged, he abandoned the brush and mug in favor of an aerosol can of shaving cream, simply for convenience. But he never gave up his old-style “safety” razor that he used till the end of his days.
Watching him shave almost felt like observing a holy act. And maybe to him, it was.
During our final trip to England and Scotland in 1995, we had nine wonderful days of golf and intimate conversations. My dad’s cancer had returned, and he didn’t have long to live, but to look at him go at that moment you never would have guessed it.
During one of our last evenings in St Andrews, I remarked how curious it was that he still used his old-fashioned “safety” razor.
He smiled and explained, “With this kind of razor you must take your time. I always found shaving a good moment to look at the old fellow in the mirror and ask myself, so who are you? And what small thing can you do today for someone in this big and troubled world?”
I wasn’t the least bit surprised to hear him say this. My nickname for my dad — as I’ve mentioned before — was “Opti the Mystic,” owing to his knack for doing small acts of kindness for strangers. With several mates from the Sunday School class he moderated for a couple decades, for example, he helped establish a feeding ministry that is going strong to this day.
Another time, as I recounted in my book Final Rounds, he picked me up from guitar practice with a depressed and drunken Santa in his car. He’d found the poor man wandering around his office’s empty parking lot, threatening to shoot himself during the holidays. We took him to a local diner and fed him a good meal so he could sober up a bit. Then, we drove him home to his tiny house on the east side of town. As he got out of our car, Opti discreetly slipped him a $50 bill and suggested that he buy his wife something nice for Christmas. The man thanked my dad, looked at me and growled, “You’re [effing] lucky, kid, to have an old man like this, a real Southern gentleman. Merry Christmas.”
I was indeed. But frankly, it wasn’t always easy having a dad who cheerfully spoke to everyone he met and never seemed to lose his cool in any situation. Another time, I came home from college to find that my mom had impulsively given 10 grand out of their savings to a “needy young woman” at the Colonial grocery store. I was incredulous and wondered why she did this, pointing out that the woman was probably just a con artist.
“Because your father would have done the same thing,” she calmly answered.
“True,” Opti chipped with a wry smile. “Just not that much.”
As we sipped an expensive brandy Winston Churchill had reportedly preferred during the war on that distant night in Scotland, I reminded him of the famous Colonial store giveaway and the good laugh we shared over it for years.
The story brought home to me how much I was going to miss this very good man. He then told me something that raised a big lump to my throat.
“When your granddad was dying, he asked me to give him a proper shave so he would look presentable when he met his maker.”
My late grandfather — whose name, Walter, I share — was a simple working man of the outdoors who probably only darkened the doorway of a church a few times in his life. Yet he wanted to meet his maker clean-shaven.
“So, I gave him a nice, slow shave. He even asked for a bit of spice aftershave. It made him happy. He died peacefully a day or so later.”
We sipped our brandy in silence. “Maybe someday,” Opti remarked, almost as a second thought, “you can do the same for me.”
By this point, I could barely speak. I simply nodded.
Five months later, on a sleety March night, I did just that.
Which may explain why, as I approach the age Opti was when we made our journey together, the idea of carefully shaving in front of the bathroom mirror suddenly seemed like a good thing to do in these days of such social turmoil and chaos.
And so, for my birthday this month, I gave myself a new chrome Harry’s razor and took up the slow shaving ritual I’ve known about since I was knee-high to a bathroom sink.
Most mornings, I now find myself facing the man in the mirror, asking what small thing can I do today to makes someone’s life a little better?
It’s only a start. I’m nowhere near Opti’s level of grace yet. But I find myself frequently smiling in the grocery store and offering kind words to complete strangers. I’m even driving with greater courtesy in traffic.
Someday, hopefully many years from now, I may need to ask my son or daughter to give me a slow, final shave before I meet my maker.
Or maybe I’ll ask my brand-new granddaughter to handle the job when she’s grown up a bit.
Whoever it is, the man in the mirror will be deeply, and forever, grateful.
