Reverend Gren's Holey Finger

I have a hole in my finger. Personally, I am fascinated by it; but knowing that most people get a little nauseous when they see it, I do my best to conceal it from friends and customers. Most days I remember to put a Band-Aid on it, but when I forget, I spend my working hours bending my left middle finger under my hand while I type so as not to disturb the little old grandmother who has come to our store for a loan.

I guess I should qualify my statement. The hole isn’t really in my finger as such. That implies impaled flesh, and that’s not what I’m dealing with here. It’s more precisely a hole in my fingernail. It’s one of those injuries that make people a little queasy to look at but that’s about the extent of it. Having never lost a fingernail before, I would have assumed it was a more painful ordeal. It certainly looks painful. But the truth is that my left middle finger feels no different than my right. This leaves me totally free to marvel at the oddity of how my body is dealing with this injury.

The body’s ability to heal has always impressed and mesmerized me. Its ability to rebuild itself to a state that is almost indistinguishable from the pre-injury condition is just shy of magic to me. And something like this, this slow-motion restoration, gives me time to watch and wonder what will come next.

It began as little more than a slightly smooshed finger while building a stack-brick wall around our mailbox in early October. You see, the previous owners had surrounded the mailbox with decorative lava rock, and my wife thought it would be even more decorative to have some flowers sprouting from that rock. I agreed with her easily since it didn’t really involve me. Some money spent on bulbs, sure…but mostly it just meant I’d get to look at pretty blooms when I get home from work. Who would complain? She would simply scoop the pebbles aside, shove the bulbs down there and walk away; waiting for nature to work its tiny miracles. And that’s how it would have been at our old house. Our old house with its rich topsoil deposited by the muddy Missouri River and left untouched when the house was built 70 years ago. But here in this new house nestled in the suburbs of the St Charles explosion that metastasized in the 1980’s, there is no topsoil. It was hauled away by the same trucks that brought the concrete and asphalt to the trees and farmland; sold by Bob Whitaker as he unfolded his curved streets and cul-de-sacs to make room to plop down his little, green, plastic houses. And so, when my wife donned her gardening gloves and cleared a small circle in the lava rock, all that greeted her was clay.

She returned to the house and announced that we needed to buy some dirt to pour around the mailbox. Reasonable, I replied…but difficult. The stonework edging that was currently holding in the red rocks was only three inches high and already packed to the hilt. Where would this new soil go? The obvious solution was that a deeper space would need to be dug for this new dirt. And having dug this space, the old edging would certainly not be up to the task of containing this newly enlarged space. So, new stone work, more rugged and sturdy would need to be purchased and installed.

My wife’s eyes pleaded and suddenly this project very much involved me.

Fortunately, I was up to the task. Not only do I secretly enjoy a day’s hard labor, but I had also just purchased a 2005 Subaru Baja (white with leather seats and a sunroof) and had yet to come across a good reason to use that bizarre, little truck bed.

I was meticulous. After the digging, I tamped and retamped each layer of crushed stone foundation, leveled and releveled each brick. It was somewhere in the midst of the leveling that my middle finger found itself between two bricks.

I may have cursed a bit.

Always conscious of the possibility of loosing a nail, I walked to my open tailgate and rubbed firmly on the point of injury. It’s true that I often get strange looks when I do this.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” people will ask as I grimace.

“Oh, it hurts enough to make you pee,” I always reply...which is the exact reply my father gave me when he taught me this painful trick. His theory was that by continually rubbing the smashed nail, you prevent blood from pooling, thereby preventing the loss of the nail. Better, he reasoned, to suffer momentary pain than a protracted period with no fingernail. Although I have never attempted to prove this theory, I have religiously maintained the tradition. Consequently (or maybe coincidently,) I have never lost a fingernail, a distinction that will soon need an asterisk at best, a complete refutation at worst.

I completed the wall and it was a thing of beauty. We included a chicken wire floor for the planting area to keep moles and other burrowing animals from disturbing the bulbs. I washed my hands of the task and declared it good. Over the days, however, a small semi-circle of deepest purple appeared at the base of the squished fingernail. It was not sore in the least and was pretty easy to disregard, so I thought little of it. The small amount of blood would dry, I reasoned, and be broken apart and dissolved at my body’s own pace. I went about my business.

The purple grew. I reasoned that the blood was being flatted; marched toward the tip of my finger to be ejected like a splinter. I continued to ignore the coloration, but received ever more questions as it became more and more noticeable. It became more difficult to convince people that it didn’t hurt…not in the slightest. I would tap it vigorously to prove my case, leading only to more wincing from my unconvinced audience.

Then, last week, I gave up trying to convince people of the painlessness. Not that the injury became more painful…just that, well…the aforementioned hole appeared and no one was willing to believe that the nail could be anything other than agonizing. With that said, I feel I should warn my more squeamish readers that the next few paragraphs, while still painless to me, are a bit more graphic. If you’d like, you can skip down to the paragraph that begins “I have no idea what will happen now.” Conversely, you are welcome to the details.

I noticed that the very back of the nail, where the purple had originated, was surprisingly thin. Just a rice paper thin wisp of an idea of a fingernail. I pushed the cuticle back a bit and found the nail just faded away to nothing, leaving just the dried blood there from months ago. While the nail itself had clung on stubbornly, the finger’s ability to grow new nail seemed to have been nixed from the collected blood. Unexpected this was…and unfortunate. Would my fingernail fall off from the back forward? I’d never seen such a thing happen, but who knows. If that was true, I reasoned, I might be able to clear the way for new nail growth, allowing my body to grow a new nail before the old nail fell off; a slick piece of healing that would leave me nailless at no point during the process. I peeled back just a bit of the old nail, thinking to clear out some of that blood. A few chunks fell out, revealing soft skin below, visible through a squarish hole at the base of my nail.

It was at this point that I got nervous. Should I keep picking at the injury? Was I making it worse? Perhaps I should go back to my original theory of letting my body handle this, I thought. And perhaps I’d done enough already and this small hole would relieve pressure, giving the rest of the nail a chance to cling to life.

I reverted to my waiting game.

I have no idea what will happen now. Will the new nail grow from the base forward? Will the soft skin beneath simply secrete a new nail? And in either of these cases, what will the remaining old nail do to help or hinder this reparation? I wait to find out and walk about with a violent violet rainbow on my nail; pink above and pink beneath like some miscolored manicure depiction of my fair city’s arch.

As I said, I am astounded by my body’s long trek back to a healthy, non-descript fingernail. I watch with detached curiosity to see how this disappears, as I know that it must. In the meantime, I’ll keep the offensive sight of my disfigured finger, my grisly reminder of my attempt to bring flowers and beauty to our neighborhood, away from unsuspecting onlookers. A Band Aid here, an awkwardly turned hunt-and-peck there, and a picture of it viewable only through this link…for those of you who may have been curious to find what’s under the surface of this impish Gren.

Long Overdue

As many of you have been too polite to publicly notice....I've not been keeping up with pictures of my Little Lutine. It's not that I don't find her as cute as ever. It's not that I haven't been taking pictures. It's just that...well, I've stopped sharing them with you. I know...quite rude of me.

Anyway, consider this post an appeasement of sorts. Because while many of you have refrained from noticing my laziness in public…you have been less reluctant to share your feelings in private. So here. Here are some pictures that showcase my little girl’s ever changing face. And, just so you know, the larger images linked to have been pre-formatted to 1280 x 960 so as to work perfectly for most wallpapers. (Well…not you crazy Mac users, but all the Mac users I know have daughters of their own they should be posting as a wallpaper…so any complaint they register will be an insult to their own family.)

Enjoy


Norah discovers the joys of finger painting


A picnic in Forest Park. Norah decided it was just a bit too scenic.


Norah wearing the old leather hat I wore when I was her age. I think my Dad picked it up in Mexico.



Norah wathcing TV.


Norah during our latest attempt to capture a Christmas card image. She's getting some molars so was throwing a fit about...well...we never really figured that out. But even her temper tantrum couldn't stop her from smiling when Daddy said "Cheese!"

Moksha the Dancing Alien

As many of you know, I've been spending some time in an alien suit of late. For those of you who don't know that...perhaps I should explain.



My brother and I own a loan store here in the St. Louis area. We have a cute little alien mascot we use in our advertising and in our store decore. Recently, we opted to take it to the next level to capture some of the excellent traffic flow we have in front of our store...mascot suit!!



As often as time allows, I zip over to the store and suit up to dance by the roadside, wave to kids and do a jig for folks on cell phones who pretend to be far too busy to notice me as they sit at the light. "Really? You don't notice the six and a half foot tall alien dancing next to your car...perhaps you should surrender your license, sir."



At any rate, here is the proof that those who knew about this have been asking for...and the images that those who had no idea will wish you could forget ;)

Norah Throwing Flora

As many of you may know, my brother, JET finally tied the knot with his wonderful new bride, Em. The entire ceremony was beautiful…but as the father of the flower girl, I’m rather partial to that specific section of the day.

Norah had done a few practice runs at home, showcasing her abilities to a) dump flower petals into one huge pile, b) stop walking and begin putting said petals back into the basket, then c) drop the basket and run away. Not exactly promising, but we all made our peace with the fact that two-year-old flower girls were mainly there to look cute and add comic relief. Whatever she did would be fine.

On the drive to the wedding, Moonshot asked young Norah if she remembered what she was supposed to do. Norah responded with what I’m told was a spot-on imitation of a snotty teenager. “Yeah!” she said in a tone that meant, “Gawd, Mom why do you keep asking this? It’s not like this is brain surgery.” So, Moonshot dropped it.

And then came the moment of truth.


Video by Marino Video Productions. Editing by JET (which explains why it starts a little late and runs a little later. But, on the up side, you get to see a tiny snippet of Em in her bridal splendor.

A Serious Lack of Lasers

“Seriously,” I said, “which is more exciting: Jane Austen, or Jane Austen getting shot by a laser?”

“I can think of someone else I’d like to see shot with a laser,” she mumbled as she put “Becoming Jane” into the DVD player, ignoring my claim to the superiority of sci-fi to chick flicks.

* * *

“What did you think?” she asked as the credits rolled.

“It suffered from a serious lack of lasers,” I replied.

“True,” she reasoned, “but the same could be said of the whole 18th century.”

Bit-O-Grit-O-Honey

It only took Norah a few floats to get the hang of darting out to pluck candy from the asphalt in yesterday’s 4th of July parade. We’ve been parceling it out to her at a controlled pace ever since and taking a few liberties for ourselves along the way.

The Tootsie Rolls are a popular treat for all members of the Grenstead, and the Jolly Ranchers are pretty inoffensive as well…but it seems I am alone in my enjoyment of the Bit-O-Honeys. Moonshot tends to make nasty faces as I unwrap them and then gagging noises as I eat them. Her face turned to bewilderment however, when I commented, my teeth gummed together with confection, “Ya know, they’re good…but they’re just not the same without the grit in them.”

You may be making a face similar to the one my wife made, because to understand my sediment sentiment, you’ll need some history.

I started caving with my Dad when I was about five. He purchased a kid’s football helmet and outfitted it with a headlamp since no one made functional hardhats for the preschool set. He taught me to pack for safety: three independent sources of light (typically your main headlamp, a reliable flashlight, and one or two cyalume lights (glow sticks.) Also on your person should be a canteen of water, maybe a space blanket (foil hypothermia blanket,) some matches in a waterproof container (especially important is you were a carbide caver…which I wasn’t at that age,) and some snacks.

My Dad took the snack selection very seriously. The snack break on a one-day cave trip (I wasn’t allowed on the overnight trips at that age) nearly always came at the very back of the cave. You’d stop, chat with your mud-coated friends and refuel for the trip back which you knew was going to be exactly as grueling as getting there in the first place. So, Dad was looking for a snack that was compact, delivered a good sugar punch for energy, would stand up well to being squished, rolled on and possibly soaked, and had at least the illusion of some healthy benefit. And as a man who raised bees and swore by the health benefits of his tablespoon of honey per day, the mere mention of the word “honey” on the label, even if it did only promise a “bit” of the substance, was enough to make Bit-O-Honey the obvious choice for our caving snack.

We didn’t eat them any other time. They weren’t my favorite candy and Dad was a Jelly Belly man when out of the confines of the cavern. And so the Bit-O-Honey was only eaten while resting countless feet below the surface of the Earth with muddy fingers to pull the wax paper from between the little segments of the taffy bar.

Since I’d not had one since those long-ago cave trips stopped, I had never really realized until earlier this evening as I chewed on that beige candy that the sandy grit of Missouri caves had become an integral component to my nostalgia for that red-and-yellow-wrapped Bit-O-Honey.

I tried to explain this to my wife, but she just shook her head and went back to stirring her “Chicken” Tortilla Soup…no doubt lamenting what a thankless job it is to prepare a delicious meal for a man who thinks mud is a gourmet ingredient.

Friday the 13th - Chapter 3: Hockey Night in Kansas

I’ll admit that I was in a fowl mood by the time I returned to Sarah's wedding reception…and might have stayed that way had it not been for my dear brother. Seeing that the lone half-keg of Boulevard Pale Ale was about to be emptied before I even had one cup (leaving me with only a wide selection of [shudder] macro-brewed lagers) he and my cousin Jerry had schemed to secret me away one cup of the good stuff. It wasn’t so much the beer that snapped me out of my funk as much as the joy with which they delivered their quasi-illicit good to me. Thanks again, guys.

We were just standing toward the back, discussing the beautiful park and building flaming napkin they had found for the ceremony.

What’s that? There was a flaming napkin there? Yeah, I’m pretty sure I saw that too, but I had to do a double take to be sure cuz it happend so fast. No cause for alarm…just a groomsman fleeing the building with flame spouting from his fist. Go about your business.

Anyway, we meandered outside, my brother and I. He’d been hitting the macro-brewed lager and his arm gesticulation was showing it. My cousin Caleb (Sarah’s brother) sauntered over and as we chatted, Caleb started joking with a group of groomsmen standing in a group beside us. He knows a little sign and so was having fun teasing the guys, all of whom had come down from Toronto (the groom’s hometown) for the wedding. I tried to think of something to converse about with these out-of-towner s and thought to myself that I do actually have a few Canadian friends, and pride myself on knowing a bit more about our neighbor to the north than your average American. I considered current Canadian events and remembered a conversation I’d had with my friend Simon about Hockey Night in Canada losing its theme song. It’s a big deal up there, apparently. It’s been called Canada’s second national Anthem and is a major source of pride. A good place to start a conversation, I thought.

“Caleb,” I said, “Tell them how sorry we are for their ‘Hockey Night in Canada’ loss.”

Caleb had no idea what I was talking about, but began signing. Jet knew this story from my retelling and laughed as he tried to look as sympathetic as he could to make the joke better. The best man looked confused. I assumed Caleb just hadn’t translated correctly. If this thing was as big a deal as Simon had lead me to believe, surly any Canadian would know about it. As I began explaining to Caleb the nature of the joke with him translating what I was saying to the bewildered group, my brother was “helping” by striking an imaginary puck with a pantomimed stick. One of the groomsman got excited. He played hockey and thought were saying that we did as well. We assured him that we did not and tried again. And it was somewhere during this time, while Jet mimicked air guitar to indicate the theme song aspect of our joke and as Caleb turned to shake his head at us that it hit me…none of these fine gentlemen had ever heard the theme song from ‘Hockey Night in Canada.” They’d never heard anything. They had no interest in theme songs and were thus blissfully unaware of any controversy surrounding what tune plays at the beginning of Canada’s most popular sports program. We were, my brother and I, while trying to prove just how sensitive we were to Canadian issues…proving how utterly clueless we were about deafness.

“Nevermind,” Caleb signed to them.

My brother, unfazed…hoisted his beer high and called, “Nevermind….cheers!!”

The three Canadians lifted the drinks and cheered, their looks of confusion gone as they all took a slam from their plastic cups.

Ah, I thought to myself as I slipped away to the shadows, the important thing here really wasn’t that they’re Canadian…nor that they’re deaf. The important thing was that they’re drinkers.

Leave it to my brother to be the first to learn that diplomatic lesson.