Epiphanies don’t always come as in an Ah-ha! Moment. Often, the realization hits you later. Ladies, remember when you first felt like a woman? While you are thinking about that, I recall three distinctive steps into my manhood.
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Twenty-nine years after Alan’s underage-driving epiphany,
he and his dad really have “grown up.” Alan celebrated
his 41st birthday on July 31, 2014. His blow-out-the-candle helpers
are sons, from left, William, 5, and Fenn, 3.
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The first was pure fantasy, but I can still feel the sensation. Sitting in Ralph Grantham’s barber chair, I heard the whir of his hot-lather machine. I had dreamed about that day. For years, I watched men get their necks shaved after haircuts. And since graduating from the booster board across the arms of the barber’s chair, I had anticipated the day Ralph slapped that hot lather on the back of my neck, after “getting my ears lowered.”
And then it came. Somewhere around my 12th birthday, without a drumroll or a red bow attached, Ralph presented me with a handful of extra warm shaving cream. He didn’t sing Happy Birthday, but his straight razor, stroking the leather strop, was music to my ears. I remember thinking: “I’m on my way to becoming a man.”
That was boyish foolishness, but the next epiphany was closer to reality. Much of my boyhood was spent in a close-quarters apartment in the back of my dad’s funeral home. Many nights, my sisters and I fell asleep listening to mourners grieve on the other side of our bedrooms’ walls. One of my first jobs was washing ambulances and hearses and dusting caskets.
As soon as I was big enough to wear a Warren Sewell-from-Bremen suit, I was helping with funerals. Big Dink thought I was a Godsend with my long arms. I could tote six potted plants in a slow, dignified trot from the church sanctuary to the gravesite, before the family got to the funeral tent.
And then the day came. I was 16. My dad had two funerals when another death call came. Hanging up the phone, he handed me a clipboard with the funeral-plans questionnaire. “Son,” he said, “I need you to put on a suit and tie and visit with the family to get information for the obituary and the service.”
