The cleaver

The cleaver

I managed to find out about almost all of my Christmas presents from D this year before Christmas day. I didn't go out snooping. I love the surprise of it, but it just happened. The first one, I discovered as the amazon account is in my name: "Hey, That's my Fish!" shipped today!

D went on email duty until the rest of my presents arrived. He, unlike me, doesn't feel the need to make all the red numbers on my phone display disappear. When the note arrived for the last shipment, I gleefully deleted spam and swore at urgent missed missives.

A few weeks later, as I tidied the spare room, I found an amazon receipt. With dismay, I looked at it thinking, "How careless, Amanda, you left the receipt laying about." It was the receipt for my two gifts. I saw both gifts pre-Christmas...

The knife I want

The other gift? A cleaver. My old knives kept losing their edge The snick snick of the knife on vegetables dulled into a "scrinch scrinch." The knives would slide off whatever I cut. The cleaver was the closest shape that I prefer, a santoku, in the type of steel D wanted. "The cleaver is the only knife used in many other countries."

Unwrapped and in hand, I could feel the handle lacked enough girth for my neuropathic fingers, but D can make a new handle. The old knives packed off to the thrift store, I set about learning the new one. 

It slides left when I slice. I can't get my hand closed around it with enough pressure to keep it moving the direction I want.

A few days after Christmas, the sneezes arrived. By Sunday, D and I huddled together under blankets sneezing and whining. By Monday, one of us had to make soup. I started cutting the garlic. I sliced half of an onion. I turned to slice the other half, and the cleaver pulled left out of my hand and slipped neatly beneath the skin of my left ring finger.

Blood actually spurted. I actually howled. I haven't felt pain in my fingers for 8 years. D tried to get me to put

it under cold water, I, thinking he thought I had burned myself, hollered "Wrong solution." I grabbed a towel and applied pressure. D looked at the finger: "We need to go to the ER."

"NO ER. NO ER." gasp, sob.  "DON'T TAKE ME." gasp, sob. "DON'T," gasp sob,"TAKE ME. I," gasp sob, "CAN'T.," gasp, sob, "GO."

The ER is worse than bleeding. The ER is the place I go when nothing else works. The ER is where I find out bad news. The ER is no good. The ER is where I blow thousands of dollars at a time. Stupid cancer. Me bleeding and not healing is better than going to the ER sick and wounded.

After D swore he wouldn't take me and the bleeding slowed, he cleaned it, super glued it, and bandaged it. He then cleaned up the blood in the kitchen. I couldn't explain why the knife slipped. I still really can't. I think everyone thought it was too sharp, too big, or too something and that is just not it.

I'm not careless. I just don't have a great grip. When I hold onto small things too long my fingers and hand feel like they've been jammed by a basketball and eventually my muscles let go, and my hand stays in a neutral position. It drives me bonkers. I drop things all the time. In this case, I dropped the moving knife on my slightly extended left ring finger.

It and I are on the mend. I think, more than my finger, my heart hurt from the thought of the ER doors looming. It was a shock to feel that stab of emotional pain burst through the very real and blood drenched physical pain. I think I'm past it all and then it comes: grief, fear, and pain wrapped in a tidy little packet.  Will it always be my shadow?

D and I talked through all this on a hike. When I showed him the hand position that is the only one that never hurts, he said, "That's the neutral position. That's what it  does when you are floating in water." In that one phrase, I felt my grief lift. My hand is floating in water all the time. It's always relaxed. I only need to reach for it with my mind to remember to breathe. It's not broken. It's just sleeping.

P.S. A very sweet friend of mine said good bye to her sister this week. Please send her warm and loving thoughts and prayers. Heaven has another angel, and here she is greatly missed.