2019-07-09 - Turning Unopened Pages (A memory of my Grandfather) ---------------------------------------------------------------- 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.