Rebirth

The day after my Father died, my Brother sent me a text:

Are you shaving your head today?

You see, when my Dad was sick I said that I was going to let my hair grow until he died.  Then I would cut it short.  Chris and I were having a conversation months ago and he said he was thinking about buzzing his head and might do that after Dad died.  Then I said I'd buzz mine if he buzzed his.  Just like Chocolate and Peanut Butter--two ideas that go great together. 

My Dad died around 4 PM on Monday, July 23rd.  My Brother texted me at 10:43 AM on Tuesday, July 24th.

ME: I haven't thought about it yet.  Are you?
CHRIS: Yeah, I think so.
ME: Let me know when you're doing it.  I'll go to the barber shop.

I knew that if I was going to shave my head, I would have to do it at the barber shop where we used to get our hair cut as kids.  When I was seven, my Dad took Chris and I to the barber shop to get our summer cuts.  He told the barber to buzz our heads.  I had no idea what that meant.  When I realized that it meant that we would have no hair, I started crying.  I cried all the way home.  And I wore a sailor hat the whole summer.

It was the beginning of my Father disappointing me.  It was the first time I had really seen what my face looks like.  And it was the start of me learning to accessorize.

Chris was going to do it between 12 and 2.  So I decided that I would do it between 12 and 2.  My Mother thought it was a horrendous idea.

I went to the barber shop.  It looked exactly like I remember with the cheap wood paneling, the TV on in the background.  I think as a kid it was always turned onto "The People's Court" with Judge Wapner.  When I walked in it was "The People's Court" with Judge Marilyn Someone.  The only barber in the shop at the moment, a Filipino guy, was finishing up with a customer.  I looked at the Price List:

Haircut $10
Military Cut $11
Fohawk/Mohawk $11
Shave $8

Yes it said FOhawk instead of FAUXhawk.  This is the kind of establishment I was in.  Given the present company, I wouldn't have been surprised if it was listed as PHOhawk, which still would have been mispronounced and served with a bowl of soup.  It would have been an interesting promotion, although the establishment didn't look clean enough to eat in. 

Anyway, it was a deal.  I think it was $6 when I was a kid and that was a LONG time ago.  Tuition and Room and Board at my undergrad college had tripled since I went there and that wasn't as long ago as the last time I had a haircut in this place.

I also saw that there was a spot for a guy named Danny (which is my Dad's name, but not the point...well, maybe the point...that's just not where I was going with this).  Danny was a guy who had worked there when I was a kid and who had cut my hair several times.  That was the connective tissue I guess.  But Danny wasn't there (and for the record, neither was my Dad, but that might be connecting too many dots).

I was up.  I sat in the chair.  No booster seat needed this time.  The Barber asked me what I wanted done.  I told him I wanted a buzz cut.  He looked at me with WIDE EYES, kind of like Mickey Rooney's terrible racist character in Breakfast at Tiffany's.  He was looking at my long hair.  I don't know if he was sophisticated to appreciate the layers and the texturizing that went into it.  I don't know if he admired the precision in the cut and how wonderfully it had grown out. 

Are you sure?

He looked at me like he wasn't going to do it.  So I had to say to him:

Yeah.  I want to cut it all off.  You see, my Dad just died yesterday and my Brother and I said that we would shave our heads after he passed away.  He lives in Portland, my brother, and he's cutting his hair right now.  This is the barber shop that we used to go to as kids, so I thought it was apropos that that I come here to get it cut, in the same chair I used to sit in as a kid.  Kind of symbolic, you know?

There was that wide eyed look again.

Ok.  What setting do you want?

I told him I wanted it set at a 1.  At this point, I thought I'd have to catch one of his eyeballs as it flew across the room from the pressure of so much shock in such a concentrated amount of time. 

You sure?  That's short.  You don't want it like me?  This is a 3.

Since I didn't have a polite way to say that no, I didn't want to look like a horrible extra from "Good Morning Vietnam," I said:

No.  A one will be fine.

Still skeptical, he set it at a 1 and gave me a preview in a small spot at the side of my head.  I nodded.  He proceded to shave me hair off.  The first thing I noticed as the breeze on half of my head as he shaved my hair off.  The breeze makes it sound so romantic, but I'm sure it was the loud air conditioner that was drowning out my thoughts and Judge Millian (I just remembered her name, Judge Marilyn Millian). 

There was a kid who was hanging around watching my every move.  I don't know who he was, someone's kid or the shop mascot.  He looked like a little Mexican Gollum.

But the air on my hair took me back to my childhood.  It's like I was shedding myself and going back to that kid, to some part of my true nature.  There was a mirror directly opposite of me so I could see myself as he was buzzing my hair off.  It looked a bit too short, but it looked good.  I wanted it to be shocking.  I wanted it to be stark.

This guy spent something like 15 minutes working on me.  He was very precise.  I thought it would just be "A one...a two-hoo, a three.  CRUNCH.  A three"...like the owl in those old Toostie Pops commercials I used to watch as a kid.  But this was much more delicate than that.  I wanted to tip the guy big when I was done.  I handed him a twenty and he gave me back ten.  When I tried to offer him a tip, he refused.  I shouldn't have been surprised since I had given him that whole story and basically guilted him into shaving my hair.  It was his way of offering his condolences.  I appreciated it.

I walked out of there a different person.  I drove back to my Mom's house and she scrunched her face.  I don't think she loved it.  And she wanted to know again if my Brother was going to do it too.  I sent a pic to Chris and didn't hear from him for several hours.  But eventually I did and he had done it too.  Another sign for how close we were as brothers.

When we were kids, people said we didn't look alike at all.  We looked like we were related, more like cousins.  Nowadays, people say we look very much alike.  We don't see it. But with the buzzed heads, maybe that resemblance is even more pronounced. 

I love the fact that Chris and I both decided to make a similar gesture to acknowledge our Dad's death.  Even though we're 1500 miles apart, in that moment, we felt like we were standing right next to each other.  So just for that moment, it was exactly the right thing to do.  A fitting tribute to my Dad, only cemented by the fact that I went to our childhood barber shop.

Then I chatted with my friend Susan.  She said it felt very spiritual to her.  A shedding of the skin.  I realized that my Father had shed his earthly body, so it felt like I had to take something off as well.  My friend Dave supported that thought.  It felt like it had an ancestral vibe to it.  It also had a feeling of rebirth.  And actually, my Father's family are Buddhists, even though he was raised as a Catholic.  I did have a very monk like quality.

Then I looked in the mirror and I didn't recognize myself, which seemed fitting because I had just had an experience which had changed me forever.  Gone was the pretty child and here was a bit of an austere man.  I have talked about how I had grown into being my Father's son through this experience and looking at myself now, it seemed like that had manifested itself.

The reaction to my shaved head has been universally good.  I have been identified by my hair for so long.  Other people really like my long hair more than I do.  I do have good hair, but it is such an identifying trait that it's nice to be rid of it for a while.

But I have to go back to how light I feel and I can feel everything on the top of my head: the sun, the wind, the water from the showers I take.  I feel more connected.  I don't have hair to hide behind or to desensitize me.  I am experience everything throughout my body as it happens to me.  I'm unguarded.  I look like a soldier.  And that's exactly the way I want to walk through this next part of my life.

There's a saying that you tell people how you want to be treated.  I think you also show them.  Sometimes through your actions, but also sometimes through the image of yourself that you present to them.  And this is a new image.  Unrecognizable from the person they saw before.

A rebirth.