The Boarding Home Barber

unexpected intimacies with an otherwise forgotten man

an excerpt from a secret project that I’ll reveal soon :)

thank you for being here. thank you for reading.

a stock image of a home that looks like it could be a Toronto boarding home

Of all the gigs I’ve had in my life, giving free haircuts in Toronto’s boarding homes is perhaps the most unusual. For years I’d watched my spiritual mentor and inner-city chaplain, Rodger, tenderly snip and buzz the hair of anyone who asked. It was just one of the many ways he cared for the city’s poor and neglected people.  

When Rodger died suddenly, grief propelled me to take over his charity while the board sought out a new director. The air was impossibly thick that summer, but I biked from one end of the city to the other trying to tend to those who’d been under Rodger’s care for so long. Sweat soaked into my backpack, which was jammed with snacks. A bag of barber tools swung from my handlebars. 

Having only done a few buzzcuts over the years, filling my mentor’s shoes as the boarding home barber was daunting. But there was an irresistible lure to doing the cuts. As a volunteer, I wasn’t allowed to hug or hold hands with any of the residents. The boundaries were necessary, especially as a young woman, but I sometimes found this separation hard. Doing haircuts was the one time where I could feel their skin, lift their chin, and say with my hands, “You are wonderful just as you are”.     

Word must have gotten out that I was taking up the sheers because my friend Frank, who I’d been visiting for years, suddenly passed me a plastic bag filled with single-blade disposable razors. My eyes expanded with panic when I realized what he wanted. Frank was eight-five years old, and while being well-groomed was a point of pride for him, his skin dipped into crevices made deep by a life of hardship.   

He held a steady gaze as I mumbled excuses to get out of the job. I explained that I’d never shaved anyone’s face, not even my own. It seemed dangerous. He just kept staring. You see, Frank and I were sweet on each other and he knew I’d cave. Finally, I said I’d do it if he coached me. He pat my shoulder, nodded, and headed down the hallway. With a sigh, I followed.   

We set up a plastic chair in the backyard by the picnic table, in the shade and away from the wind. Positioned on the steady concrete, Frank and I looked out to the lawn, the garbage bins, the parking lot and the McDonalds beyond that. There was a narrow alley to our left, where people would pass through at random, always surprised and then happy to see the makeshift salon.  

While I worked away, others would slowly sit to face us and become transfixed by the activity. The buzzing of the electric shaver lulled everyone, including me. There was no chitchat— I’d get into a little trance and move slowly and sweetly over my friend’s creviced face. The tenderness of the haircut encompassed anyone watching, spreading peacefulness in this little pocket of the city. One man told me that he joined each week just to watch the cuts.  

Frank died suddenly that summer, but not by my blade. He fell. For years he’d been trying to get into an old-age home, but at eighty-four years old he remained on the list that never seemed to get smaller. I’d often seen him by the phone in the dark living room, waiting on hold while an official looking document shook in his arthritic hands.  

His situation wasn’t uncommon; residents were always waiting for something— a home, a cheque, an appointment. Stuck in limbo and on the bureaucratic backburner, Frank sat waiting for a situation that was just a little easier, just a little safer. His hope ebbed and flowed, but in the end it went unrealized. The night he fell, he managed to get back into bed, only to bleed internally for a day and die. I once heard a Médecins Sans Frontières doctor working in a refugee camp say she wanted to write “Born in South Sudan” as patients’ cause of death. For Frank, I’d write: “poor, Canadian, forgotten.”   

On the way to the funeral home, grief dissolved the boundaries of my skin. I was opened to the world, sensitive to the fabric on my skin and the wind brushing my face. Loving is so damn risky. It would be so much easier not to do it. And yet, my brave little heart does it again and again.   

I wept still more at the service. I met his family and then slowly walked home, curling into bed weakly. A question tugged at me, though I didn’t want to acknowledge it: why had he lived in a boarding home when he had a family that was able and willing to put a funeral service on for him? Frank was always polite and sweet with me. But I knew that his eyes, so alive, had the potential to become venomous. Did he set this poison on his wife? On his son? What form did it take?   

I sobbed through the confusion. I only knew what I knew, which was that, to me, Frank showed remarkable courage and resilience. He held fast to his dignity even though his living conditions tried to tell him again and again that he wasn’t worthy of even basic care.   

I’ve often wondered if I’d be able to do the same if I lived in a boarding home. Would I have the wherewithal to assert, let alone see, my innate value if people balked at me on the sidewalk or changed seats as I got on the subway?  

You see, the loneliness of the boarding homes is a communal project. We each do our part when we rush and don’t meet each other in the eye, when we allow our stigmas to brush over the particularity of human beings standing before us.   

Frank asked to be seen with specification every time he called to ask about his living situation, but he was told he was just a number on a list. Frank also asked to be seen when he handed me that plastic bag of razors. It was an honour to meet this most basic of requests— to recognize him, not as he might be, but just as he was. With each brush of my fingers and stroke on his cheek, I got to say silently:  

I see you. Right here, right now, you are perfect.