The Beard

Throughout my childhood my father was the center of my universe. I was the epitome of a "daddy's girl". I wanted to be involved in everything he did. He was my everything; the most fascinating man I knew.

As a child, my father always had a beard. Even now when I think of him, I picture the soft features of his face, offset by his full beard and moustache. I used to pretend to hate when he would kiss me, telling him that his facial hair was too scratchy. It eventually turned into a game for him to chase me around the house, trying to give me a kiss on the cheek. I would often times provoke him, just to get him to pursue me and ultimately give me a kiss. I loved my father very much.

Growing up, my father worked as a pastor, giving me a very religious background. Every Sunday my mother, brother, and I would go to church, sit in the third pew and listen to my father preach. Although I was quite young during his time as a pastor and did not fully comprehend all the things he spoke about, I loved to listen to him preach. He always looked at home behind the pulpit, with his curly, salt and pepper hair neatly combed, and his sturdy frame well presented in his suit and tie. Although he claimed to be six feet tall, my family and I knew the truth: he was only five feet eleven inches.

During his sermons, my father would regularly talk about my brother and me. One Sunday in particular sticks out in my mind when I was six years old. My father was preaching and had spoken about the love a father has for his children, specifically relating it to his love for his own children. As I sat there listening with intent, I began to wonder if my father really knew how much I loved him. I felt I had to show him right away how much he meant to me. I moved out of the pew, walked up the steps to the pulpit, looked up at my father and said, "I love you," just before giving him the biggest hug I was capable of at six years old. He looked down at me, as the church filled with "awes", and said, "I know, baby-girl."

Every Sunday night my family and I would watch "America's Funniest Home Videos" and have popcorn for dinner. This was our ritual after a full day at church. My father would make the popcorn in his sacred popcorn popper, while my mother would take out two huge bowls, one for my father, the other for the rest of us. My father's bowl was off limits. He always put himself last, but when it came to his popcorn it was a whole different ballgame.

I always viewed my father as a very giving, kind man because he did indeed put everyone else before himself; he instead referred to himself as a people pleaser. He always did what made everyone else happy. I believe my father was this way because of the man his father was: a cold, hard individual. My grandfather looked out for himself only, and did only what made him happy, and my father suffered because of it. He never felt the love from his father that I was showered with each and everyday.

My life was perfect. I had a loving family, and the person I adored the most, loved me as well. But then one day when I was ten years old, my world came crumbling down around my feet. My mother and father called my brother and me into the living room, saying that we all needed to talk. I knew what was happening, my parents were getting divorced. I knew that they had been having problems, but being still a child I thought that if I ignored the unhappiness and fighting it would eventually all go away. I did everything I could that night to avoid hearing them tell me what I already knew. I thought that if it was never spoken aloud, it could never be true.

My brother and I sat on the couch while my parents took seats on the opposite side of the room. I kept looking at my father, wondering how he had let this all happen, how he could have let himself fall out of love with my mother, and into love with another woman. I couldn't comprehend how he could turn his back on his family. Looking back I suppose he felt his wants, his desires, his happiness were always put on the back burner, and he was finally going to do what he needed to in order to be happy.

That night I cried alone in my room, until I heard a soft knocking on my door. My father poked his head in, and asked if he could come sit with me. Even if I hadn't been crying, my father would have been able to tell how upset I was. He climbed into bed with me and held me while I cried. I didn't understand at first why his body began to tremble, then I realized he too was crying. I had never seen my father cry before. Up until that point, I didn't think fathers cried, I thought they were always the strong ones. We held onto each other for comfort while we both wept. My heart broke even further as my father held me, softly whispering over and over again, "I'm so sorry, baby-girl."

My brother and I were to move to Long Island with my mother to be with her family, while my father would stay in Pennsylvania. I couldn't believe I wasn't going to be able to hug him everyday, or tell him how much I loved him. I wouldn't feel his scratchy beard on my cheek whenever I wanted. Never in my life had I felt so alone, so hopeless. The first time my father put his happiness before everyone else's, was the first time he had broken my heart. I didn't know it at the time, but it would not be the last.

A few years later, when I was twelve years old, my father decided to come out to Long Island for one of my annual dance recitals. I was ecstatic to see him, because our visits were few and far between. After my turn on the stage, I ran out into the hallway to find my family, and there standing next to my mother was my grandfather. I had no idea that he was going to be there, and couldn't figure out why he had come all the way from Indiana just to see me dance. As I got closer, I realized it wasn't my grandfather at all, but in fact my own father. He had shaved off his beard and moustache, the very features I always identified him by.

After that day, my father changed in my eyes. He was someone else entirely. He was my grandfather, not only in physical resemblance, but also in personality. I thought after he divorced my mother, he would go back to being the man I adored as a child. I assumed he would go back to putting everyone else before him, but I was gravely mistaken.

My father continued to think of himself first. I would only go to visit him and his new wife when it was most convenient for them. I would still cherish the time I had with him, because after all he was such an important part of my life for so long, and old habits die hard. But I would look into his eyes and search for the man who used to be the center of my life, and would only find fragments of that now ghost of a man.

Some years after my father had ridded himself of his facial hair, I slipped into a very deep depression. Nothing would make me happy. My mother grew extremely worried about me, and asked if I would like to go spend a week with my father. I jumped at the opportunity to see him, thinking that maybe he would help me feel better, like he did so many times in the past.

A few days after I had arrived at my father's house, he sat me down and asked what had been bothering me. I always felt comfortable talking to him about anything and everything, but for some reason I couldn't speak about what was troubling me. I couldn't come to tell him how badly he had hurt me as a child, how abandoned I had felt when he left, and I certainly couldn't tell him about the things I still have trouble speaking about even today. I merely looked at him and said, "I just don't know, Dad." I will never forget what he asked me next, how awkward and unexpected his words were, "Are you gay?" I probably sat there with a stupefied look on my face for a good five minutes. I couldn't believe he had just asked me that, not because I have any problem with homosexuality, but because I couldn't believe the man who once knew me so well could have gotten so out of touch with my emotions.

I finally was able to speak again and told my father that I in fact did like guys, and asked where on earth he had come up with that question. He told me he thought my relationship with my best friend seemed awful close, and just wanted me to know that if I were in fact gay, he was "okay with it." How he had an opinion on my relationship with my best friend, I'm not sure, seeing as though he had barely witnessed it. This was the second time my father broke my heart. He had no idea who his own daughter was anymore. He had become so wrapped up in pursuing his own happiness that he completely overlooked my unhappiness. Perhaps I was being selfish, but I had so come to depend on my father for guidance and for my own happiness that when he stopped putting me first, it hurt me deeply.

Throughout the years my father continued to disappoint me and continued to break my heart. He consistently broke promises; promises to spend time with me, promises to keep plans, and promises to call. There even was a time he broke plans to meet me in Manhattan because of his dog. I couldn't understand what had happened to the man who put me before all else. Suddenly now I was after his dog on his list of priorities. I longed for my father, the one with the scratchy beard, not this imposter.

For a long time I thought I was the only one who believed that my father had changed, that no one else longed for that bearded man. Until one day when my father and I visited my grandmother in her nursing home. For as long as I can remember, my grandmother suffered from Alzheimer's. This particular visit was just a few months before she passed away, when she could no longer speak and could barely eat. She had no idea who we were, but kept a polite, if not confused, smile on her face. She was no longer my grandmother, but simply the shell of her. Then suddenly, something happened that I will never forget. She turned towards my father, and something in her eyes changed. I swear it was my grandmother trying to break through her illness. She grabbed my father's hand, and pulled him down to her eye level. She studied his face for a few seconds, and then lifted her hand to stroke it on his smooth cheek.

I may have been imagining things, or making something out of nothing, but it was as though my grandmother had noticed that my father was now beardless. She too had identified him by his facial hair, because he had had it since he was a teenager. She looked at him as if to say, "What have you done with my son? You can't possibly be him because my son has a beard and moustache." From just that simple look, that lasted no more than a few seconds, I realized that my grandmother felt just as I did. There was no possible way that this man had once been selfless and giving. There was no way this man was my father.

I'm not sure if my father had always been the way I perceive him now. Perhaps I never saw him for who he truly was, because I was too young. Perhaps I was too jaded by my love for him. I'm not sure if I'm being too cynical, that maybe my father was a great man at one point in my life. If that is indeed the case, I'm not sure what happened to make him change. One thing I am sure of is that with just a few strokes of a razor, the father I loved disappeared with that scratchy beard.