Paper Cuts and Cracked Fingers

I was sure I was home free. My hands survived a cold long dreary winter without the usual visitation by dry cracked skin on my thumbs. I was battling a paper cut, you know, the kind of quick cut that happens when you are rifling thru papers and in an instant the sharp pain message screams up the neural pathways into your brain and blood starts to color the edges of whatever you are working on. I haven’t decided what location for these thin slices of pain is worse, on the knuckle or in the web of skin between the thumb and forefinger. Paper, not the home made crafty type of paper made from soaking and pressing wood chip pulp thru your blender and on to a screen to dry. No, this is letter size white 20 lb. copy paper that becomes the innocent enough weapon. Paper, which we were assured computers would do away with. A paperless society they promised us. Now, day in and day out, my hands handle more 20 lb. copy paper than ever. Each morning, a new set gets imprinted with information transferred from the electronic record. Copy, read, fax, paper clip. The cycle gets repeated till the whole pile lays to rest in the locked shredder bin. It’s spring. I can deal with a paper cut. I get past the nervous worry that the germs inhabiting my work space will somehow get past my immune system and cause an infection. We hit a cold snap, and it happens. The skin on my thumb cracks open. I am grateful that these cracks don’t bleed. But, they hurt like the dickens. The pain kind of reminds me of when I jab myself with a sewing needle. Only this pain doesn’t go away. A coworker suggests dousing the crack with vitamin e and wrapping the thumb a band aid secured with duct tape. We cleanse our hands so often that a humble band aid can’t stand up to the pressure. And then there is that worry about the germs and my over worked immune system. I opt for the vitamin e and non latex gloves when I am in patient areas. The paper cut is pretty much healed up. The crack, now that’s another story. It will be with me for a few weeks. I say prayers of thanksgiving to my immune system. I try to use some of that pile of paper over again, however as the information is of a confidential nature, my desire to reuse it is hampered by the content. And the pain? I am reminded that I am alive when I feel the pain in my thumb. Even though some days it really hurts, I know, pain is one aspect of having a human body that can’t be avoided.

What would you do?

What would you do? What would you do if someone held a gun to your head and asked you to declare what religious group you’re identified with? If you knew, that if you answered Christian, within a moment a bullet would pierce your brain’s gray matter and life as you know it would end instantly, what would you do? Does a person, innocent and unlucky, even have time, in those milliseconds, to review the faces of loved ones, or process any type of fear reaction? Would you have time to consider lying? Would you have time to consider jumping up and cause a tussle, thus going down in a firestorm of bullets? Would you scream out, “it’s none of your feckin business?” I have to remind myself that this is an ancient behavior, this killing of people who are different. I have to calm my rage, work to remain in the big picture, the picture that is painted to remind me that many times, life is not pretty, orderly or peaceful. Just for today, I need to remind myself of the phrase “forgive them father, they know not what they do”

I went in search of spring

Many of my waking hours are spent in what I affectionately refer to as a bunker. Concrete block wall, piped in air ventilated from the floors above. The area around me is a bee hive of activity, lit by fluorescent light. Yearning for sunshine and flowers, I would find myself staring at images of flowers on web pages and lingering in front of displays of tulips and daffodils in the local grocery store. Then, one mid-March evening, when visiting a friend who lives down in the valley of Zena, while walking back to my car, I took a deep breath and my senses were treated to the aroma of the earth. There it was, what I had been yearning for, that deep pungent fragrance of moist dirt. Dirt that was ready to explode with the small shoots of crocus, daffodils and tulips.

Early the next morning, with tea cup in hand, slippers on my feet, bathrobe tucked around me as protection from the early spring chill; I stepped into my back yard to explore what was under the dead leaves covering my flower beds. My efforts were rewarded. There, tender and vulnerable, were the shoots of daffodils, just beginning to emerge from the semi frozen earth. I was filled with hope for spring- visible now in these tiny little pre flowering plants, powerful in their own right as the precursor to the mature plant. Now, each morning as I head back into the fluorescent light filled work space, I carry the glimmer of hope, knowing the cycle of life continues, and I’m grateful to be part of it.