happy first week of the new year. guess this is the year i write something. (but probably not this.)
Every time I comb my hair I think of my father.
Every time I get a hair cut I think of my grandfather. (On my mother's side. Until I was 8 or so, he was the one who cut our hair for us. On his porch. While we sat in a barber's chair he kept there...that to this day I'm not sure where he got it.. or what happened to it.)
Every time I have ice cream I think of my grandfather (Dad's side, this time) because my mother always kept a picture of me as a kid - a random shot of the two of us - with me hating the ice cream cone he had just bought for me and me trying to hand it back to him.
...But every time I comb my hair I think of my father.
He's the one who taught me to wet the comb when I needed to.
He's the one who taught me to make sure the part was straight. (Comb forward first, then make the part from there.)
These aren't things that you're born knowing. Like breathing or stretching or relaxing. But things that you have to be taught that define you as a man. Part of the countless little things that you stumble into teaching someone else at some point - your brother, your cousin, your nephew (hopefully), your wife... for some reason - that you don't realize until the moment you're teaching them that YOU had to BE taught. The daily things that you do today that for the first decade of your life you didn't do.
Like holding the door. Like taking off your hat when you walk into a home. Like saying 'Please' and 'Thank you' and 'Ma'am' and 'Sir.'
Like not letting anyone read your shit until it's been re-worked and polished into something chewable instead of this
huge
goddamn
unintentional lump
that you're throwing at them.
Every time I get a hair cut I think of my grandfather. (On my mother's side. Until I was 8 or so, he was the one who cut our hair for us. On his porch. While we sat in a barber's chair he kept there...that to this day I'm not sure where he got it.. or what happened to it.)
Every time I have ice cream I think of my grandfather (Dad's side, this time) because my mother always kept a picture of me as a kid - a random shot of the two of us - with me hating the ice cream cone he had just bought for me and me trying to hand it back to him.
...But every time I comb my hair I think of my father.
He's the one who taught me to wet the comb when I needed to.
He's the one who taught me to make sure the part was straight. (Comb forward first, then make the part from there.)
These aren't things that you're born knowing. Like breathing or stretching or relaxing. But things that you have to be taught that define you as a man. Part of the countless little things that you stumble into teaching someone else at some point - your brother, your cousin, your nephew (hopefully), your wife... for some reason - that you don't realize until the moment you're teaching them that YOU had to BE taught. The daily things that you do today that for the first decade of your life you didn't do.
Like holding the door. Like taking off your hat when you walk into a home. Like saying 'Please' and 'Thank you' and 'Ma'am' and 'Sir.'
Like not letting anyone read your shit until it's been re-worked and polished into something chewable instead of this
huge
goddamn
unintentional lump
that you're throwing at them.