Scrivenings

Scrivener April 30th, 2008

4.30: a miniscule smidgin of possibility, originally uploaded by Scrivenings.

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Shaving

It is really the most miniscule thing,
but you see sometimes when I shave,
my daughter follows me into the bathroom
to watch–she’s sixteen months–and each
time she insists that I take the brush,
smear it around the lather in the cup,
then dab a small lump onto her hand,
which she studies, intently. Some mornings
I must do this five or six times before
I’m done scraping the remnants of yesterday
from my face. The brush is from a past life,
the present of an ex-girlfriend, and it’s
at least ten times my daughter’s age.
As for the badger, whose bristles
we are sharing, it must have been Swiss,
like the brush, and long turned to dust.
But I watch my daughter in the glass
and her pleasure seems so simple that I
don’t mind the bother as she pokes
the lather, sniffs it, tastes it and
smears it over her hands and face up there
on the third floor of the house where I
shave in a small bathroom without windows.
I am forty-five. I had never thought,
actually, that to have a child at my age
would be different than any other age.
Probably, I’m even more patient. But
I think how in twenty years when she
is getting started, I’ll be checking out,
that is, if all goes right between times.

Let them keep it, I’ve always thought.
Let them fend off the impending collapse.
But you know those parties where late at night
the whole place starts busting apart–
too many arguments, too many fights,
and you’re just as glad to get moving,
that’s how I always thought I would feel,
stepping into the big zero, but now
I see I’ll be abandoning my daughter
there in the midst of the recklessness:
the bully with the grabby hands, the lout
eager to punch somebody out, and my daughter,
who, in these musings while I shave,
is still under three feet tall and poking
at the lather smeared across her hand.
I joke, you know, I say we’re raising her
to be the girlfriend of a Russian soldier,
or next week she’ll begin karate lessons
and learn to smash carrots with a single blow.
But it all comes back as I watch her
in the mirror. Who is going to protect her?
Even now, anything could happen. Last summer,
for instance, I rented a cottage from a fellow
who had a place up the hill, and one day I heard
these bees whipping past me, and you know what?
It was him, my landlord, fooling with his .22,
shooting beer cans off a wall with me strolling around
down below. But that’s how it is all the time,
the load of bricks crashing behind us
as the flower pot smashes at our feet.
And cancer and car accidents, everyone’s

got stories. How can I not think of this
when I watch my daughter messing
with the shaving lather? The whole
world gets vague and insubstantial, like
putting your finger through a wet tissue,
the muggers, rapists, terrorists, the Bomb.
It’s just luck whether you escape or get hit,
making you feel about as safe as a light bulb
in a hailstorm which, of course, is exactly
how it is, except worse. But to have a child
means to expand the dimensions of the dark place,
until I wind up imagining this small
blindfolded creature toddling out on a rope
over the abyss and it’s my daughter, my daughter,
this sweet morsel left over at the violent party,
this Russian girlfriend of the future. Well,
some mornings such thoughts crowd in on me
when I go upstairs to shave, and she
comes toddling after. That lather is so soft,
such a fragile conglomeration of white bubbles,
such a miniscule smidgin of possibility,
maybe that’s why she likes it, dabbing it
with one finger, lifting it up, right there
by the pink ceramic toilet and torn green
shower curtain with silhouettes of fish,
sniffing this small heap of white bubbles,
touching it to her nose, then puff, just
blowing gently, so the bubbles hang, floating,
floating, and then they’re gone of course.
-Stephyn Dobyns

• Poetry , Project 365 , self-portraits
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