When Life Comes Full Circle

A number of years ago my wife and I went on a Spring Break Work Trip with our church's Junior High Group. The experience was memorable - memorable in a way I will never be able to forget, largely because one of my appendages will forever look up at me (even now, as I type) remindingly.

During one phase of the construction our students were there to assist with, our job was to pass telephone pole-sized logs downhill in true chain gang fashion so that they might be used to construct a new log cabin at the base of a ravine / near a small river. Upon reception of my first log, I was done.

Seeing a small junior higher struggling violently to handle the log end he was handing me, the correlation between his apparent struggle and the possibility of its extreme weight never once entered my mind. I was instead greatly concerned with appearing "manly" to my then girlfriend and future wife, the person immediately beneath me on the side of the ravine. In that spirit I elected to one-hand the log, only to have its full force pinning said hand to the ground nanoseconds later. Disappointingly, the section of ground on which everything fell was also home to a somewhat sizable and pointy rock. As I rolled the log off of me, this was only one of several observations I quickly made. Much of the surrounding grass was now lightly spritzed with something reddish. This spritzing was a full-blown drenching toward the tip of my ring finger - my previously starched white brand new work glove was now something you wouldn't want to drop into a bullfighting ring unless you were standing well outside of it.

When I pulled the glove off of my hand, the illusion of my manliness came screeching quickly to a halt as I barely managed to remain coherent in the face of a profuse amount of plasma and a dangling fingernail.

Now, with the command of time possible only in blogworld, we will fast forward to the present day. Last week my eldest daughter suffered a pantry door accident that left her right pinkie fingernail looking like it wouldn't be sticking around long enough to see her turn two. Knowing what losing a fingernail feels like, I remained hopeful for her sake... until last night. Catching what was still hanging on on a pillow, she looked up at me and whined, "Claire finger ouchy." My wife suggested tweezers. I suggested I sit down. And then, like Kevin McCallister in the only good Home Alone installment, I thought to myself, "[You're her Dad.] This is it - Don't get scared now." Taking her upstairs for a bath, I began muttering silent prayers that it would fall off in the warmth of the water, but to no avail. Within a minute of entering the bathroom, she again presented it to me with the same entreaty. "Claire," I said reassuringly, "this is gonna hurt just a little bit, but then all better." ... and yanked.

One minute and no tears later she was "swimming" with Elmo and loving life again, and I thought to myself, sometimes you get second chances to prove points. I don't think my wife has ever thought of me as such a bastion of masculinity as she did last night in a good, long while.

Thanks, Home Alone. And keep the change, you filthy animal.