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.
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