I keep my fingernails long. Occasionally, my
husband complains about their length, especially when I accidentally spear him
with a nail. My grandsons—when they were small—found my nails infinitely
fascinating, running their fingertips over the tips of my nails, as if they
were trying to find the meaning of life in those transparent plates at the ends
of my fingers. My husband suggests upon occasion—usually those occasions when I
accidentally spear him—that I should trim them. While I do trim them when they
get so long that they become a nuisance to me, I never cut them completely
down, as my husband would like.
I keep my fingernails long because when I was
growing up, my mother bit her fingernails to the quick. I, too, and my younger sister,
bit ours. My maternal grandmother, on the other hand, had long, beautiful,
shapely nails. I admired and envied them and aspired to grow fingernails like
hers.
When I left for college, I stopped biting my
nails. Two years later, when my younger sister left home, she stopped biting
her nails, and my mother stopped biting hers, even though she still had her
youngest daughter—a four-year-old “surprise”--at home.
All of my adult life, I have found this timing
curious. Why did my younger sister and I cause our mother so much angst that
she bit her nails until we left home? We were not problem children. And why did
we react by biting ours? Perhaps once the great weight of raising her older
daughters passed, she relaxed, and my sister and I followed her lead, handsome
hands.
I keep my fingernails long. All of my adult life,
I have been proud of my long, strong, triumphant nails.
Throughout my adult life, I have found that these
long, strong triumphant nails serve other purposes, in addition the
metaphorical one--they provide a complete tool kit. They serve as a flat-head screwdriver when drawer pull screws
or the screw on the side of the French press come loose. They serve as toothpicks,
although I still prefer the wooden kind when dining in public—depending on the
restaurant! They reinforce folds on paper, especially if I am trying to make a
neat tear when I cannot find scissors. They serve as can openers when I am
trying to pry the lid off of preserve jars and am too lazy to open the utensil
drawer. The list goes on, but they do also serve well when I decide to poke my
husband.
