I spend my Wednesdays with people whose entire store of material possessions would fit in your garage.
Yes, even in YOUR garage, packed so full you park your cars in the driveway.
Except maybe John's possessions. He has a house in Idaho, but it's polluted with black mold. A sister bought it for him after he cared for their mother for 30 years.
He has tools and maybe a motorcycle upon which his mother took rides when the weather was too hot to cruise in the California 1991 Mercedes he kept mint and still may sell to the discriminating buyer. There's more. But he spoke quietly and it was loud in the hallway.
The black mold made John ill, and he is just getting back on his feet. His feet are going on 80. His mother is approaching 98.
I asked if he wanted to shed his coveralls before the trim, but he admitted he only had underwear on underneath. He'd worn his other pair of Dickies yesterday to a meeting with the case manager, and this was all he had clean right now.
John was my first customer. I finished the day with Nick, who is working on a Celtic look, with shaved sides and dreads down the back. Since he was last, and had his own razor in his pocket, I humored him and razored his head.
The woman in hygiene dispensed far too much shaving cream for the job. The cup in the photo shows how much I had left after finishing.
It seems wasteful to proffer way too much shaving cream in our little world of scarcity, perhaps depriving someone else down the line. But we do it, in part, because advertising has conditioned us to believe that men need mountains white with foam to vanquish a few whiskers.
Better, I think, to offer small abundances to those who have so little. Linger over the shape of their beards. Scribe the lines perfectly, though they will soon be overgrown. Yes, others wait, but they, too, will be lavished with care when their turn comes.
I wash the excess lather down the sink, but Nick leaves happy, and I do, too.
So much for a pennies' worth of wasted soap.
