GRANDPA'S BARBER SHEARS
“To me, the way he cut hair was more like magic than a trade.”
Grandpa became a barber after he emigrated from Sicily, putting in 12-hour days to support his wife and four children. He scrupulously kept his shears sheathed in their leather holder until needed, string wrapped tightly around the thumbhole to ensure a better fit. A curved bit of metal extended from the other finger hole, a spot to rest his calloused pinky.
He cut his grandchildren’s hair, but when I was three, my mom—his daughter—stopped letting him cut mine because he always made it too short. So I became his audience. To me, the way he cut hair was more like magic than a trade. A snip here, a cut there, and transformation.
I’d walk down the basement stairs to find my dad on a high stool under a bare lightbulb, a cloth cape draped around his shoulders, Grandpa humming songs from his favorite operas, the scissors clicking a counterpoint to Puccini or Verdi. His singing wasn’t particularly impressive, but to my ears his speaking voice was musical, his English softened by his Italian accent. I loved the way he said Leoncavallo—the composer of Pagliacci—drawing out the syllables, savoring the sound of his countryman’s name. On summer nights on the back porch, he told me the stories of the operas. I knew Aida sealed in the tomb as well as I knew Sleeping Beauty.
He was loving and charming, so I puzzled over the animosity between him and my grandmother. They rarely spoke. Once when looking at an old photo, I commented on how handsome Grandpa had been. Grandma gave a muffled “hmph” and pressed her lips together, as if sealing them to prevent bitter words from escaping. Family lore said that she’d deliberately allowed Grandpa’s prized Caruso records to be carted off inside an old Victrola she sold; in my child’s mind, that had started their rift. In my twenties, however, my mother set me straight, revealing that Grandpa had abused Grandma early in their marriage.
It was hard to reconcile the image of an abuser with the quiet man I knew. He never spoke of it, and Grandma didn’t either; that “hmph” was as close as she ever came to discussing their marriage. I loved them both, and I was grateful that she never asked me to choose between them. Giving up my grandfather, no matter what he’d done, was something I wouldn’t have been able to do.
The highest compliment I ever received was on the day I visited Grandpa when he was hospitalized for congestive heart failure. I was a newspaper reporter and overheard him tell a nurse, with obvious pride, “My granddaughter is a journalist”—proof that he read my bylines although he never mentioned them. Thinking of that day still makes me cry.
He cut hair into his 80s, riding the bus with his leather barber bag to the offices and homes of a few loyal customers, still meticulously maintaining his tools. One Thanksgiving a few years before he died, I was turning around after hanging up his coat, and there he stood, hand extended, offering his barber shears in their leather holder. “You take it,” he said. “To remember me.” I think his pride and affection for me—the family’s first college graduate—explain why he chose to give them to me and not to his children. Perhaps he knew I'd care for them as he had. Or maybe he hoped I’d write about him someday.
—Vicki Mayk
Vicki Mayk is the author of the nonfiction book Growing Up on the Gridiron: Football, Friendship and the Tragic Life of Owen Thomas. Her essays and reporting have appeared in Hippocampus, Literary Mama, Brevity Blog and other publications.