Peggy’s prompt—091010—whiskers

Whiskers on a man’s face is one of my earliest memories. My Pa, my Daddy’s father, would sit on an ottoman beside my grandmother’s chair, and hold me on his knee. And every so often, he’d gently rub his face against mine, and I would feel the raspy growth he’d acquired since morning. He never wore a beard, nor did my dad; I guess it was too hot in south Florida to wear a beard, but as commercial fishermen it must have seemed a real waste of time to shave every day. Anyhow, Pa would wiggle his cheek against mine, and I would say oooh, Pa, you’ve got wisters. That wasn’t the only word I mis-pronounced early on. I also remember saying chembley, for chimney. But back to whiskers. As a child, I assumed that every man shaved and thus had whiskers at the end of the day. Although there was a photograph of my grandmother’s Pa and Ma at the head of my Pa’s bed and he had a long beard down the front of his suit, I never gave a thought to the fact that present day men could also have long beards, if they just didn’t shave every day.

Shaving whiskers seems to be one of those things that children observe with great interest when they see their Daddys doing it. One of Jonathan’s first “accidents” was when he was between one and two, and he tried to shave his cheek with his Dad’s razor, leaving two parallel bleeding lines on his smooth little face. On the other hand, he never seemed to notice that I shaved my legs, much the same way his Dad shaved his face. Once when somehow the discussion involved the shaving of legs by girls, he said But you don’t shave your legs, Mom. And I said Yes, I do. No you don’t he said, I’ve never seen you do it. Another example of how children are the center of their universe. Anything I haven’t seen doesn’t exist. At least to Jonathan.
But back to whiskers. My Dad also enjoyed rubbing his stubbly face against mine and my sister Mary’s. He would always chuckle when he did it, and I would always squirm away, complaining that it hurt. It was his awkward way of showing affection to his girls, I guess, never mind that we didn’t like it.

Larry had whiskers--curly,  and if he didn’t shave regularly, the growing hairs would curl and grow back into his neck, whereupon I would be called on to come with tweezers and pull the hair out by the roots. That must have hurt, but perhaps the irritating and often infected re-grown hairs were more painful. The things women don’t know about men.

Whiskers. Whiskey. Any connection? I just noticed the similarities. Did men use to put whiskey on their whiskers? Maybe as a disinfectant? That bears looking into.

So much for Whiskers today, Friday Sept 10th. Tomorrow is the 9th anniversary of Sept 11th, and in addition to all the fuss about a possible Muslim center two blocks from Ground Zero, we also have the attention-seeking clown pastor in Gainesville—it would have to be in Florida—threatening to burn Querans on the 11th. What a waste of emotion, air time, ink, and breath that all is. Neither story is worth the fuss, but such is the time we live in, where Muslims are now our current Boogeyman, and we must fear and hate them. So say the fearful and hateful ones. It just makes me tired and so discouraged about the human race. And a few in my own family are part of the furor. What is their problem? Or how did I not get the gene for isolationism, racism, fear of the unknown? It’s a mystery, not a puzzle. Puzzles can be solved. I’m afraid this quirk of human nature is not something to be solved by chemists.

Off I go to the cardiology clinic—my every-three-months visit. I’ve gotten pretty blasé about these echocardiograms, as they’ve always been “normal” and so I’ve been able to stay on the Herceptin, but complacency is dangerous sometimes. Let’s assume this will not be the day for surprises.