I remember the day my dad taught me how to shave.

For him to take the time to instruct me about anything was so unusual that

even while we stood there at the sink, I thought I'd remember it.

I wanted to remember it. I wanted it to mean something. Like like with some sort of boy becomes a man right of

passage for that kind of sentimentality is more my personality than my dad's a daddy

felt anything of the kind I still think about it some mornings when I shave, decades

later. I remember every part of his instructions that I had to wet my face down with hot water to soften the barely existent facial hair, which, you know, were not the kind of men's whiskers that needed softening so I wondered if he knew what he was talking about.

He showed me how to hold a razor, the length of the strokes. When it came time to

demonstrate the actual shaving he realized he couldn't actually do it from the front. He needed

to stand behind me and then reach up to my face at the same

angle that he was used to shaving his own face with. So he got in back of me and sort of reached his

arms up around me, close and intimate,

while he did that, which was unusual.

He was a conscientious dad, a worried dad, a caring dad,

but we never had much physical contact.

It stands out most about this memory,

is how few I have that are like it,

of him actually teaching me something, taking the time to impart some

kind of lesson about the world. To get this kind of focused attention of him was rare.

He grew up without a dad. And he did his best, but he didn't have much

feeling for what a son might want or might get from a father. Day to day, his mind didn't seem to be on me or my sisters at all, but on his job.

He was an accountant, stressed out, working long hours at the firm he started.

...