The Beards of the Fathers

There are lots of discussions about the ‘new fathers’ who finally discover how much fun children are. The elite totally favours contrast: Beards, muscles and tattoos meet soft skin, clear voices and names such as ‘Emmaline’. I have never had neither muscles nor tattoos. In order to be allowed to the young fathers’ club I anyways had to compensate for that lack by a strong beard.

Until, one day, a tiny voice asked in the midst of a cuddle orgy: “Could you get rid of that beard please?” The stubble stung and my son’s eyes gave away that there were beardless fathers. What next? With my then girlfriend, who appreciated the beard despite its stubbleness, I agreed on the following solution: keeping a kissing zone around the lips clear. But the little one was a big fan of cheek to cheek: “We cheek.” But without a beard on my cheeks I felt naked. First of all I trimmed it. But that made things even worse. The shorter the hairs the sturdier they became. 

So I finally got myself to unpacking my mothballed shaving set. When it comes to using lather and blade the applies as for cycling: I could still do it. When I entered our living with smooth cheeks and chin, I felt an imaginary polar wind that hit the exposed areas mercilessly. Even colder the boy’s reaction: he was wary of strangers. The furthest he got was my lap. When he approached my face a couple of hours later, the five o’clock shadow was back. Not stingy, rather like fine sandpaper. He liked it! We replicated the experiment a Saturday later. On the next one we agreed that the beard “may go on holidays” every weekend. I quit thinking about using bubblegum tattoos to bridge the gap quite fast again.

Matthias Sachau is a Berlin based writer. His novel, Alicia verschwindet, is not so much about the perks of being beardy but more about the quest for (a male) identity.

This column has first been published in the printed edition of 30 Grad in spring 2018.