
As the hot water hits the cool surface of the bathroom sink, I look up at the polished mirror fixed to the wall and consider the face that is looking back at me through the curling wisps of steam. I am struck in that moment by how many changes, both subtle and gross, the years have wrought on me. Sections of my face now sport hair where before there was smooth skin. Other sections possess nothing but smooth skin, having long since given up their hair. At the corners of my eyes, thin spidery lines radiate outward and my beard sports more than one patch of irregularly light colouring. I’m not a vain man, but sometimes the words of an old teacher come back to haunt me. Tempura mutantur, et nos mutamur in illes he said to me. It’s true, but as with most things that are true, it is harsh and sometimes hard to accept.
My hands reach for my razor and my shaving foam, my fingers moving almost of their own accord. Shaving reveals, in its own small way, the comfort that there is to be found in ritual. There is no need to think about what I am doing as I mix up the lather and spread it over my face, no conscious thought required as I scrape the sharp blade over my skin and run it under the scalding hot water. There is just me, the well practiced movement of my hands and the face looking at me from the mirror. As I deftly remove another patch of stubble I wonder who is studying who and I smile at my silliness.
Of course, I’m not alone in this process of change. The whole world is changing from minute to minute, responding in a million different ways as a billion different variables collide in a trillion different ways. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...the words spring to mind over the span of years between my shaving mirror and my old school desk. I’ve changed, the world has changed. It is to indulge in the worst form of cliché there is to say that the only true constant is the process of change, but the statement nevertheless stands with the strength that only the old truths possess.
The face that looks out at me from that chrome-edged disk of polished glass has witnessed so many changes, so many events. My mind wanders as I shave, and I think back to the days of my childhood. Things seemed to be so straightforward then, so simple. I remember the first day of summer holidays, with the whole 6 weeks off stretching out in front of me like an eternity waiting to happen. That is one of the biggest changes that comes with age: a different perception of the passage of time. When I was young and on my school summer holiday, 6 weeks was a stretch of time almost beyond comprehension. I was able to understand “I’m not going back to school tomorrow, or the day after.” but beyond that point it might as well just have read “forever”. Nowadays six weeks is such a short span of time. You celebrate New Year, and before you know where you are the shops are full of chocolate eggs for Easter. You’ve hardly picked one up and got it to the till before there is a suspicion of tinsel and wrapping paper around the aisles. When I was a child an hour’s play definitely had more minutes in it than the mean, stripped down hours I have now, I would be willing to swear on that. Time seems to go faster when you’re conscious of how precious it is, which is a mean trick any way you look at it.
The eyes of the face in the mirror pierce the steam as I shave, and I notice its eyebrows rise as a memory hits me. A memory of feeling old before my time, of knowing that time passes, of seeing a change so bald and so shocking that it stayed with me forever. I was standing waiting for a lift, near a table where two young girls were having their lunch. I remember to this day that they couldn’t have been more than 9 or 10. I didn’t hear anything of their conversation, my mind being on other matters, but just as the lift arrived one raised her voice and said to the other in a tone of some consternation, “Because I’m a virgin.” The lift had one mirrored wall and when I looked up, the younger version of my current shaving companion wore an expression of dull shock. I’m anything but prudish and in fact might be too liberal for some, but I remember thinking “Where did someone so young get old enough inside to be talking about her virginity over lunch?” Children seem on a headlong rush to become adults, only to find when they get there that the whole of adulthood is groaning with desire to go back the other way. Another pretty cruel trick if you ask me.
My mind is drawn sharply – in all senses of the word – back to the present when I nick myself with the edge of the razor. As the familiar sting fades and a thin line of red slowly seeps into visibility, I remember learning about shaving from my dad. The face in the mirror reminds me of him so much: the shape of the nose, the hairline, the arch of the eyebrows, it’s all in there somewhere. My relationship with my parents changed when I moved out of the house and set up on my own. Instead of being in the traditional parent/child positions, the situation more closely resembled that of adults on an equal footing with one another. It took a lot of getting used to. It was years before I would take a beer with my dad. Years before I would speak my mind to them, and relate to them as one adult relates to another. I guess some part of me wanted to hold on to that old relationship and not see it change. Some small part of me tried to defy the process of change, to hold back the progression of the world even just a little bit. I remember reading about some guy who tried that with the sea, and I think he and I had much the same level of success in the end.
With a little more care and a little less of the comfort of familiar ritual, I resume shaving and can’t help but wonder why my mind keeps moving back and forth from the smallest issue to the largest. I remember video games being easier to deal with. Two buttons, and a joystick. Then they changed and suddenly had more controls than the average fighter plane. I remember the world on the morning that planes with a great deal more controls in them were directed on courses that would alter the world forever. I remember wanting to eat sweets all day. I remember watching the news and seeing smoke rise from a train station and knowing that change had come again. I remember losing a member of my family for the first time, and seeing new arrivals. As I set down my razor and look at my hands, I wonder if this is perhaps a natural consequence of thinking about change. Small changes contribute to larger changes, which set off a cascade of other small changes, which build up to big changes, and on and on it goes. Maybe it’s not such a coincidence that the process of change and the fundamental stuff of our bodies both resemble a spiral.
My hands shake slightly, as if aware they are under scrutiny. When did that happen? I turn them over slowly, examining each side closely. Each mark, scratch, scar and callus speaks of times enjoyed, or times survived. Lovers held. Enemies struck. Games played. Hands shaken. Keys pressed. Food prepared. Snowballs thrown. I wish I could pass this on to the young, I wish I could make them listen and understand, but I know in my heart that I can’t. To do that, to achieve that, would be to destroy that which I sought to protect. You can’t protect youth by imparting to it the wisdom of age, because to do that is to give youth the burden of the knowledge that can only come with age. All you can do is enjoy the process of change as your perspective shifts with each new, small, hard won nugget if wisdom.
Anyway, I say to myself. Enough of this, time to get ready for the party. I raise a hand to wipe clear the mirror but as I do, the grey in the hair is revealed to me. The eyes looking back at me are rheumy with age, and the eyebrows above them bristle. The beard has gone, but the hand that held the razor is thinner than I remember, the skin mottled in places with dark spots. As the smell of aftershave mixes with the smell of soap, and as the mirror starts to fog again, I remember in a moment of clarity that I am an old man, and my parties are all behind me now.