“I cut the dickens out of my finger,” said Jamie. My dad. And wounds.
There is less of me.
About 3 pints less.
Because last week, I cut “the dickens out of my finger.”
I blame it on Cutco because they make such damn sharp knives. I blame it on my son — whose dear friend sold me the knives. I blame it on myself because I’ve never treated myself to knives worth a damn before now.
Washing dishes the other day, I reached into the murky depths of soap, leftover spaghetti sauce slime and SLICE.
I lifted my hand out of see a rip from the tip of my left ringer down to my first knuckle.
Holy Mary Mother of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Other than fire-branding pain and stopping the current of blood, all I could think about was my favorite Dan Aykroyd SNL skit. EVER.
I had forgotten the liver part of this sketch. Too funny because my mother was mad about livers. I actually used to order liver as a child in restaurants —
but any emotional scarring due to excessive liver intake as a young’n shall be saved for another post.
* * *
I am at the seashore writing this. Long after the bleeding has cauterized.
After I arrived and caught the salty scent, I heard the voice of my father and the voice of his father — a surgeon. “Go put your hand in salt water, Jamie.”
It heals.
For the first time in four days, I unband-aided my left ring finger and lowered it into the waters off the coast of Georgia.
My aging hand shimmering under the clear water transformed into a five-year-old pudgy hand. One whose father’s hand gripped it at the wrist, lowering it into the water.
The Atlantic coast only an hour away, we traveled there most weekends as a child. Just as my father did with his father when they both wore much younger, browner skins.
Any tear in the flesh, burn from the iron, any mar in the body was immediately dipped in the salt water.
I’ve been thinking of my dad lately.
When he first died, it was hard to think on him. Age and illness had stolen the fun man he was.
I loved him so. It was so hard to see him elderly and bitter.
Elderly and jolly is easy. Like a sleeping pill chased by a sip of Chardonnay.
Elderly and bitter is hard. Like slamming your head with a granite stone. Repeatedly.
I should treasure these last years with him but . . . he is so miserable. It’s making me miserable because I can’t fix it.
No. I couldn’t fix him.
Age eroded his youth and he was bitter. I got it. But spending time with him was like drinking chalk before CAT scan. It was good for me, the dutiful daughter but dear God why was it so hard to see a parent crumble away?
I was so weak. A little girl denying that her father had turned feeble and so very vulnerable.
For the first time since his death, I am yearning for my father. For the young, strong, stubborn, love with passion the-best-he-could man he was.
The buzz cut of the 60s and 70s. The pipe. The man who loved to body surf.
His dry wit.
And his pride.
It was his pride that made him bitter. Age and illness stole the strong man.
And time is a thief that never returns its bounty.
I am so much like my father.
This day my soul has been covered by the salty murk and healing begins.
But when wounds mend, a jagged scar remains.
