From the Front Lines

I write this post from the cockpit of my Volvo which takes me around the country so often to see cigar shops. I've bonded with this car. I have many great memories in this car. It was our "family car" before we had a family car, taking our youngest son home from the hospital when he was born.

I have coffee and a cigar. My mind therefore can function.

I am, admittedly, a little scattered right now. My wife's brave, unexpected fight with cancer has taken her today to the operating room where she will undergo a massive procedure to remove her breast tumor, which she has named "Claude", and hopefully allow her to move on with her continuing happy, healthy life.

Every single thing in the universe points to the fact that everything is going to be okay. However, I could not shake the emotions when I kissed her on the forehead before the doctors rolled her into anesthesia about an hour ago.

I'm learning very quickly that you never know someone's true value until you look losing them square in the face. Oh, that is not something that is ever been discussed or even on the table with her illness. However the mind does wander, especially when you're a control freak like myself.

I am utterly helpless in the face of Life, death, and the grace of God.

The fact of the matter is, as we talk about living non-disposable, the most valuable things in our lives are the people with whom we surround ourselves. The ideas of sickness and pain strip us of our false impressions of self, and only expose our innate human selfishness.

Watching my wife bravely fight inspires me to live for that which is important. The day-to-day living with those whom we love, I believe, should drive us, no, propel us to be greater, to be smarter, and to be non-disposable ourselves. 

Each and every single waking moment.

This journey is an unexpected one. It is the unexpected which changes us the most.

Strength and the Non-Disposable

On September 23rd, 1999 I pulled off the ballsiest act I have ever imagined.

There I was, 19 year old fashion-tragic and overweight. Complete the look with bug eyed glasses, sideburns, and cargo pants that just said "still recovering from grunge" I went for it. Underneath the tree in a park near our college campus, next to the redhead of my dreams, while at the time we were just friends, I went for it and kissed her.

She kissed me back.

We've been together ever since.

 Since then, we've made money, and lost money. We rented apartments, and bought houses. We've changed jobs, and raised children.

And while all of that was well and good, and granted, I know that it's rare for a couple to get married these days at 21 years old and still be together 13 years later, but all of the things that we have done to me seem pretty normal. That is, what we have done is what a married couple should do in terms of life experience.

My wife is a beautiful, intelligent, Ozark Mountain redhead. Naturally this means that she wants to kill me 90% of the time.

And all of that is why I have put off this post for quite a while knowing that it had to come.

As of about two weeks ago, we found out that my wife has breast cancer.

At 34 years old, with no family history whatsoever my wife has breast cancer. It's still tough to say, or look at the phrase.

I never really realized how weird people get when it comes to cancer. Many people are just fine, and very supportive and we deeply appreciate that. There are also the ones who give you the wispy "we'll always remember you" look at every opportunity. It's simply bizarre. There is no countdown on my wife.

I was having a very interesting conversation recently with a work contact who I consider a friend, regarding this concept of life being non-disposable. He referred to it as living for the eternal. He also considered it a real, true mark of a man. We were both remarking about how you never know how life takes one occurrence to better you for the next, and with Nikki's cancer I believe this to be true. Six months ago I started thinking about living non-disposable, not really knowing where it was going to go or why I found this appealing. However, now as I look at my beautiful bride who's about to go through the toughest fight of her entire life, I know exactly why I was perhaps even led to begin thinking this way.

Because she needs it. My entire family needs it.

I have been selfish. I have been braggadocious. I have been haughty. I have been detached. All in the chase for quick fixes, and short term wins.

Now, as I look into the beautiful blue eyes of my fighter redhead, I see every reason in the world to think about the eternal for she and my boys. Not because the end is near, rather, the exact opposite. We are just at the beginning, of something quite spectacular.

Nikki is going to defeat cancer with positivity and our shared sense of humor. When we're done, who knows where she's going to go.

I know however the future is bright, and for that future, I choose to live.

Old Leather Bags, part 2

I'm a firm believer that the external can mold the internal. That is, not all change starts from the inside. Sometimes, you've just got to do it till you are it.

I remembered looking at the blade and feeling the permanence...the solidity. I wanted my boys to have that long after I was gone. It wasn't about a razor mind you, rather, the idea of investing long term in the valuable and durable was such a glorious affront to the "turn and burn" culture in which we live at the moment. "Cheap and easy" as it were, is neither after all.

Before moving forward, it behooves me to point out that I am not in any way a deadbeat or absent father. I tried to be, as much as possible, extremely involved in the life of my boys and wife. Spending half of my month on the road makes that difficult sometimes, but I am very active about it. The issue is, I am not purposeful. I do not have a plan. I "father by feel" most of the time, like a man walking through a completely dark room with nothing but a stick.

I had no idea where to start, but I knew I must.

Not a day after finding my great-grandfather's razor my wife wanted to go to Target with me and the boys. Normally, I would dread such trips but since I've started being on the road more, I really look forward to any time that I have with my family.

Then it occurred to me, randomly, in soccer mom hell.

I needed a real razor... hey, do it till you are it...right?

I told my wife that I would had to go check something out, and grabbed the hand of my oldest son. I was honestly skeptical that they would have anything interesting, as this was Target. We got to the aisle, looked around, and sure enough, there it was.

A safety razor, brush, bowl, and soap.

None of which I had a clue how to use.

I may have looked like a 34 year old man, but I felt like a 4 year old girl.

One of the benefits to our modern times however is that, in the past, one would have to take a long walk of shame to a worker at the store and ask them "how do I use this?" Thus, outing them as the neophyte that they are.

Google however, makes everyone brilliant. If you have a blog on top of that, well, that's double expert points.

I purchased the package, and went home. The razor was a small, turn to open safety razor. Nothing spectacular, but it gleamed in the light and just looked....right.

"This is my razor...there are many like it, but this one is mine."

I am completely and utterly ridiculous, I know.

After web searching for quite a while how to use all this stuff, I found it to be quite easy. I found that I got a better shave than before, and it cost me about a a nickel per day, as opposed to a dollar. The "old-fashioned" and permanent made completely modern sense, and further more, my son couldn't get enough of it. Pretty soon, he had his own and was on his way to "shaving" with me some mornings.

In a culture now where the very word "plastic" denotes fake, and the real stuff is destroying our world, I felt like I had taken one small step for myself, and a giant leap for my family.

Yes, it took longer, but it was worth it. It was real...substantial even. You could feel the weight of craftsmanship as opposed to the cheapness of haste. I want to live that way for my boys. I do not wish to just be the guy that sired them. My desire is to live so that they may tangibly feel me with them long after I'm fertilizer.

I smoke pure tobacco. I drive a non-flashy, reliable car, and now, I had a real razor. I had no idea that my new morning ritual would become such a metaphor for life, and how my new found philosophy would be so impactful to me so quickly. What started as a curiosity has now become a philosophy.

But I'll save that for the next update.

Old Leather Bags

So this entire idea started with our bathroom cupboard.

Spending as much time on the road as I do, my wife sees my absence as opportunity to organize. Now she does a beyond fantastic job of keeping our home neat and tidy. She's not a stay at home mom. She's our home manager. She's professional. She's surgical.

She's also not unlike hurricane Katrina when she gets on a mission to clean. No one stands a chance against her.

I have a certain, shall we say, "structure" to my chaos. What looks like total anarchy to Mrs. McIntyre usually strikes me as organized, because I know where everything is located. That is, in my youth I appreciated function over form, and old habits die hard. Needless to say, when I was informed that our bathroom was getting overhauled while I was on the road, I was alarmed. It would not be the first time that my beautiful chaos was disturbed by the dogged determination of my beautiful redhead.

Upon arriving home, as I unpacked my bags and went straight to the bathroom to survey the damage. My wife had installed an entire shelving system on two sides of the bathroom, with items organized by usage. Yes, it sounds insane to the cluttered but it truly was impressive. Of course my main concern was locating all the things that I needed for my day, so I started rummaging through. At that moment is when this began.

While going through the cavity underneath the sink, I noticed an old leather bag in the back corner. It was weathered and stiff from age. Honestly, I had forgotten what it contained so I reached in, retrieved it, and sat it atop the counter. I carefully moved the old zipper until it opened up and looked inside. There, inside the old bag were two items - my great grandfather's old straight razor, still in the case, and his obituary that my mother, his grand-daughter, had laminated.

J.W. Woodward was a stocky man sporting a crew cut all his days. By the time that I was old enough to remember going up to South Carolina to spend the summers with him and his wife Debbie, the crew cut had turned white. He laughed almost all the time, ate grits and butter every morning, and smothered them in bacon and eggs. He raised chickens, trophy beagles, and tropical birds. I remember getting my butt kicked on their front lawn as a child playing football at Christmas. At that time, I was much younger, and easy pickings. Their house was always full of laughter, good food, and I still remember it fondly even though I didn't see them all the time. He loved his family, always dressed well, and one thing for certain… You never sat in his chair.

His chair was an ugly one… If I'm remembering correctly, it was bright yellow, 1960s vinyl. One did not sit in his chair because next to said chair was a police scanner radio, which he monitored nonstop. In retrospect I believe that it was as much nosiness as it was concern for the community, but either way you didn't question it.  J.W. Woodward was a man. A strong man.

And in my hand was the key to his day.

The razor was sharp like new, with very little rust spotting. Out of curiosity, I took it in brushed it lightly against my face and it went through the stubble like a hot knife through butter. It felt like I was holding Excalibur in my hands.... The stories that this blade could tell. This simple straight razor, from "Dixie Mfg Co., Union City, GA" had traversed the face of this well-respected man for the majority of his life. Almost like a dutiful servant standing by from day today observing every story that it could possibly experience.

Grandpa's razor in advertising.

Then, I glanced over for no real reason at all to my drawer in the sink. Almost as if the universe was mocking me, my eyes went straight...to the cartridges.

There they were in all of their glory. Tiny plastic toys in the shadow of the samurais blade, these cartridges stared at my great-grandfather's straight razor in nothing less than pure and total shame. I had always thought of shaving as something to get through while you're waking up. To J.W. Woodward, it was the experience through which the pump of his day was primed.

And that was how this idea was born.

As I sat there reading his obituary, and looking at the old razor, I went down memory lane for a while and remembered all the summers spent with him and his family. They were all great times, which would've been completely forgotten in this moment had it not been for my discovering this old blade. Then it occurred to me, what if it had been thrown away? What if this beautiful piece had just been discarded in the trash after an old man had been laid to rest?

That was the ultimate destination for every one of those crappy plastic cartridges in my drawer, but I knew that I did not want it to be the destination for my sons' memories of me.

So I took action.


(More tomorrow. Time to get to work.)

On Trends and Manhood

I get a lot of thinking done when I’m mowing the yard.

It’s rather bizarre, but I can’t complain. There is a certain humility that descends on a man when he realizes that he’s at his most introspective when covered in dirt and grass trimmings. 

Today marks the beginning a of a new project. Where will it go? I’m quite unsure. To be honest, this journey begins without the end in mind. 

It is the definition of an exploratory mission. Let’s go, shall we?

I see an incipient movement of manhood today. A movement where “man” as he is is groping for a definition for himself, amidst shifting definitive criteria. In a nutshell, we’re trying to find ourselves after almost four decades in the wilderness. 

Who is “man?” What does he look like? How does he smell? What does he wear? How does he talk? Do real men all have huge Phil Robertson beards? Is it more than that? 

If you ask many sections of modernity, their response will be a quick smirk, perhaps a joke about man’s ineptitudes, emasculating man once again from his essence and nature back to the 1980’s Al Bundy model with whom we’ve all grown accustomed. The slobbish dolt more interested in watching the game than winning it.

Men, we’ve allowed ourselves to be non-essential. We have abdicated our seats. We have allowed the very identity of a man to become disposable. 

Disposable: [dih-spoh-zuh-buh l]adjective: designed for or capable of being thrown away after being used or used up:

How easy it is to go disposable. Use it, abuse it, throw it away. Buy it cheap, over and over again. Rinse, repeat, trash. I believe this mentality speaks to our souls, and permeates the way we view ourselves and those around us. Our neighbors have become non-essential. Our legacies, disposable. 

It’s our own faults too, collectively. It takes training and education to become a man, and from the absence of many modern fathers to the downright evil displayed by the worst of our gender we find ourselves lost. 

The true man in America is a diaspora, scattered to the four corners. 

I will very clearly and upfront say, that I am not an expert. I’m raising two young men as I type this, and I guess I’m doing this only because I wish for them to have the foundation that I only absorbed through osmosis during my formative years. I am making the choice to be intentional and purposeful about the cultivation of the manhood of the generation following this one. I have, and will continue to, make mistakes. 

It is however my fundamental belief that man is out there, and we must find ourselves together for that next generation’s sake. It is my fundamental belief that we learn through how we live, and how we do things day to day. That is, our spirits are changed by the activities of our minds. It is my fundamental belief that man is there, in the non-disposable.

It is my goal that this site become part journal, and part manifesto. A manifesto for the more permanent… the non-disposable lifestyle that I’m aspiring to live. This is not a site just for men, rather, it is a movement that I hope will help woman to understand how they are an integral, irreplaceable part of man’s identity and purpose. 

It was my original idea to start all of this as a book. I decided to blog it because I’m wanting your feedback. As we go through this journey together, I want to know where I’m off-base. This is a process through which I’m trying to better myself and maybe serve a few along the way.

I hope you’ll join me. 

• Sep 23, 2014 8:24 am
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