He stopped
shaving for a moment to look at the man in the mirror. He touched his face now
so full of wrinkles the razor has a hard time trying to find a clean spot to
shave. He still used his fathers’ straight razor which he kept after his death.
It took some real skill to shave and not slice your throat open with a straight
razor. He also had the leather strap for sharpening the long blade which he had
hung on a hook decades ago where it remains today. Next to that strap sits a
bowl and in it a pair of scissors that his mom used to cut everybody in the family’s
hair. She just put the bowl on your head and used the scissors to cut the hair
that hung out of the bowl. It’s the way things were done back then when money
was very tight, and vanity wasn’t heard of. He recalls getting his first proper
haircut when he was eighteen years old and going off to find work in the city.
That didn’t work out to well and he came back home to mom and her bowl. As he
looked into that mirror with the old man looking back he knew where his heart was,
and it wasn’t in no big city. He was a country boy doing country boy things.
Can’t count
the bales of hay he pitched off the fork or the endless rows of corn he
gathered for winter feed. He can’t and probably never will understand why
the prettiest gal in town agreed to be his wife, but she did and gave him three
children that bore their way into his heart and soul. He wasn’t a very
religious man, but he knew God was real and that on more than one occasion he
heard him praying for a sick child or a damaged crop. He knew if he lived a
good life he would be rewarded that was in cement. He went back to shaving his
wrinkled face not caring about the places he missed his grandson would let him
know and both would get a good laugh holding onto each other as they headed for
the family meal.www.facebook.com/mikeoconnor-author
www.michaeloconnorwriter.com
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