Missing Parts

Today as I was hurriedly reaching into the pantry to get the cat food (I had one minute left on my afternoon break), I jammed my finger into the shelf, bending my fingernail backwards and breaking it all the way to the quick. Ouch! I knew it would hurt more if it peeled off, so I cut it -- and all the others -- as short as I could without causing (much) more pain. I keep my nails long and, almost always, painted. But if I break one, I cut them all short. Having them at different lengths drives me crazy. I guess it's been a long time since I broke one; the skin at the tips of my fingers is as tender as a baby's bottom.

As I finished my scoring shift, I noticed that my right "tall man" finger (I think there's another name for it, but that's the only one that comes immediately to mind) was sloped at the tip. I tried to push it back into a more rounded shape. It didn't work. It looks like Gumby without the arms and legs, and I couldn't figure out why. Then I remembered cutting off the tip several years ago. I was angry because my now-ex-husband had shown up for our divorce hearing late and without the required paperwork, so I was furiously cleaning my kitchen sink. In the drain were a few shards of a ceramic cup that had been broken a few days before, and I hit it with about fifty miles per hour of scrubbing force. I couldn't see how badly it was cut because blood was flying everywhere, but I knew it would need stitches. My younger two sons were at school and I didn't want them to come home and find me gone -- and the kitchen floor covered with blood. So I wrapped a damp paper towel around my finger as tightly as I could, wiped up the blood, and drove myself to the hospital. I don't remember how many stitches I got, but I do know that the tip had been nearly severed. It was hanging by a thread. As I recall, the doctor didn't cut my fingernail to reattach it.

Funny how things that seem so important in the moment are so easy to forget. That happened about seven years ago, and even with the missing part -- or, more accurately, the absence of that part --staring me in the face I had no recollection of how or why it was gone.