For years, we joked about the chin hairs.

He had a few long ones, and every so often we’d threaten to pluck them and he’d laugh and pull away. Then the patches started coming in. Random pockets of teenage fur expanding like a land mass reaching for each other across the ocean of his face.

Recently, one of his friends started shaving, and before my son went to Arizona I mentioned we’d get him a razor when he got back. A few weeks ago we got haircuts, so it was the perfect time to bring it up again. He said yes. I ordered one that night.

I went with an electric razor rather than a blade. He’s always had a tremor in his hands, ataxia from a long time ago, a reaction to medication he was on years before he was old enough to understand what any of it meant. Fine motor control tasks are harder for him than they look. A blade and shaving cream in a steamy shower didn’t seem like the right place to start.

The razor arrived that night. He wanted to shave first thing in the morning, but his mom wanted to watch too, so I convinced him to wait until later in the day. After I wrapped up a few afternoon meetings, we went to the bathroom.

He called his mom first. I held his phone on FaceTime so she could see the whole thing. She wanted to be there for this, and it seemed right that she was.

His hand was shaking when we started. Some of it was the ataxia. Some of it was nerves. I could see both. I showed him the razor and let him feel that the blade wouldn’t cut him. That was why we got this one specifically. We talked about the different parts of the face, the angles, how to hold the razor so the blade stays flush against the skin.

I was nervous too. I didn’t show it. I was trying to be as calm and gentle as I could, to make it feel safe without taking away the excitement of it. He was watching me as much as he was watching the razor, reading my face the way he does, and I wanted what he saw there to be steady.

The angles were hard. Reading your own face in a mirror and positioning the razor to match is more complicated than it sounds, and his hands were shaking. So I held his hand sometimes, or held the razor with him, guiding the angle until he could feel what right felt like. When the razor cleared the patches on his chin and jaw I could see it on his face. That worked. That’s what this does.

I showed him my razor afterward, the blade kind, the one I use in the shower. I told him that’s where he’d get to eventually. For now, this one.

I had him run his hand over his face to feel for any spots he’d missed. We talked about how often he’d need to shave to start, which was less often than he wanted to. I told him it was fine to practice anyway, and to let me know if his skin felt raw or irritated.

He did great.

I don’t remember learning to shave. There was just a before and an after. Somewhere in between I figured it out, probably wrong for years. Nobody held my hand through the angles. There was no buildup, no moment. It just happened.

This felt different. More deliberate. More intentional. More of an event. He called his mom to be a part of it. We took our time.

We knew what it was.