{"id":123441,"date":"2018-03-26T15:30:11","date_gmt":"2018-03-26T19:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=123441"},"modified":"2018-03-27T10:23:14","modified_gmt":"2018-03-27T14:23:14","slug":"farewell-to-winter-farewell-to-my-fingertip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/03\/26\/farewell-to-winter-farewell-to-my-fingertip\/","title":{"rendered":"Farewell to Winter, Farewell to My Fingertip"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I lost my fingertip in January while carrying a wooden boat across icy ground. When I slipped, the gunwale came down on my hands. About a half inch of my middle finger lay in the dead grass, which might not sound like a lot until you look at the geography of a hand\u2014the cut went to the white crescent setting in the cuticle. I wish I could accurately describe the feeling of picking up the fingertip\u2014how immediately protective I was, holding it in my palm, cupping it like I\u2019d found a songbird egg; how I felt it was both numb and not numb because it was then an object, not part of my body anymore. It was of my left hand\u2014my writing and painting hand.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to go,\u201d I said to my friend carrying the other side of the boat.<\/p>\n

The surgeon couldn\u2019t sew it back on. Before I was put under, he said if he couldn\u2019t graft the skin from the lower part of the finger, he\u2019d bend the finger and attach the open end to my palm, cleave it free later. I woke up to it not sewed to my palm but erect with a bulb of bandages, an aluminum plate apparently shoved under the nail bed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Weeks of dreaming animals were chewing my hands. Waking up one night sure that someone was holding my hand. Pain in the most creative ways: buzzing that felt like sound, pinches, bites, whirs, reenactments of the amputation, pins and needles, burning like my finger was in a candle flame. Mostly, a hammer going, Pay attention here, here, here, here, here, on my fingertip.\u00a0 When I called the nurse to ask if the pain was normal, she said, \u201cYour fingertip was exploded off.\u201d<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

It took a century before January became that cold. As in, the week I lost my fingertip was the coldest stretch of days in Massachusetts since 1918, which is why the ground was so slippery, all moisture hardened to ice. A few days before I was carrying the boat, Mount Washington, one hundred and fifty or so miles to the north, tied with Armstrong, Ontario, for the second coldest place on earth, with a wind chill of negative ninety. There was a brief January thaw, the warmth of winter\u2019s yawn, before the jaws snapped shut again. Mattresses of sea ice floated into the river. The high tide left waxy skirts of ice up on the dock pilings. The birds quieted down. I watched a fox walk across water I hadn\u2019t seen freeze since my childhood.<\/p>\n

The house was too cold. I was delirious with pain postsurgery. The wood floors stung my feet when I got out of bed. So I moved into my parents\u2019 house, a quarter mile across the bay\u2014partly because of the cold, mostly because I couldn\u2019t wash the dishes or drive a car or cut an onion or open a jar of peanut butter.<\/p>\n

My mind was too soft with pain and painkillers for reading, and with no Internet at the house, I\u2019d turn on the television and watch the evening news. An ecstatic weatherman ranted about the cold snap\u2014\u201csnap,\u201d like the sky had broken, a stick bent too far by the hands of winter. The weatherman flapped his arms at a long blue necklace slung low through the January days laden with sapphire low points: Sixteen. Fourteen. Twenty-one, eleven, twenty-three. He nearly yelled, rapturous, delivering the bad news everyone already felt pressing in all around them.<\/p>\n

To stave off cabin fever, I made it my daily task to find the snowy owl that had recently arrived on the moors. She was most often on the ground, on a hummock, her white body luminescing. There\u2019s no bird so mammalian as a snowy owl: coal-black eyes, hunched over, tall as a baby. I shouldn\u2019t have followed her from the moors to the beach to the marsh. To be outside in this centurial cold. Inevitably, my finger nub would be in a vice of pain\u2014maybe the metal plate had chilled to some unforgiving temperature. I\u2019d stick the finger in my mouth, breath through the bandages, track home, light the stove, and hold my hand over the flame until the pain softened.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\u201cIs not January the hardest month to get through?\u201d Henry David Thoreau writes in his journal in 1854.<\/p>\n

After failing to enjoy almost any part of television, this book (The Journal 1837\u20131861<\/em>,\u00a0edited by Damion Searls) was the only one I had the attention span for. I skipped to his winter entries to see how he might better describe these weeks that I was finding more and more painful to endure. \u201cThe surface of the snow in the fields is that of pretty large waves on a sea over which a summer breeze is sweeping,\u201d he writes on January 22, 1853, also in description of the snowfields spread out in front of the house.<\/p>\n

And so this became my habit for the historic cold month: look for the owl, light a fire at home, read a few journal entries. Watch the fire break into itself. Fall asleep under the vague effects of oxycodone. Wake and read another few journal entries.<\/p>\n

I underestimated the scope of loss\u2014half an inch isn\u2019t so big, really, on the body. But this is the character of grief, I\u2019ve learned. Grief generates more than you started with. Sometimes I\u2019d unwrap the bandages to look at what used to be my fingertip and was now a bloodless sore, skin sandpapered down. I learned that the tiny white crescent that remained of my nail was called a lunula, a little moon. Two lines of stitches dovetailed across the tip. What an uneasy feeling to be repulsed by a part of my body I used to love\u2014for who doesn\u2019t in some way love their hands? \u201cI must confess there is nothing so strange to me as my own body,\u201d Thoreau writes in February 1842. \u201cI love any other piece of nature, almost, better \u2026 I am like a feather floating in the atmosphere; on every side is depth unfathomable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Depression<\/em> isn\u2019t the word for that January. It was more a thinning, a shortening of spirit. Thoreau puts it better in his winter of 1842: \u201cMy soul and body have tottered along together of late, tripping and hindering one another.\u201d\u00a0 Why was it so comforting to read this hundred-fifty-year-old account of winter and loss? Perhaps to acknowledge the immortality of weather. It was the weather report that the man on the evening news couldn\u2019t give: an interpretation of what negative numbers have on the skin and soul and home. Thoreau writes in 1855:<\/p>\n

Our thermometer stands at -14 at 9 a.m.; others, we hear, at 6 a.m. stood at -18, at Gorham, N.H., -30. There are no loiterers in the street, and the wheels of wood wagons squeak as they have not for a long time\u2014actually shriek. Frostwork keeps its place on the window within three feet of the stove all day <\/em>in my chamber \u2026 I was walking at five, and found it stinging cold. It stung the face \u2026<\/p>\n

The coldest night for a long, long time was last \u2026 People dreaded to go to bed. The ground cracked in the night as if a powder-mill had blown up, and the timbers of the house also \u2026 Must leave many buttons unbuttoned, owing to numb fingers. Iron was like fire in the hands \u2026 The cold has stopped the clock \u2026 Bread, meat, milk, cheese, etc., etc., all frozen. The latches are white with frost and every nail-head in entries, etc., has a white cap \u2026 This, i.e. <\/em>yesterday, the 6th<\/sup>, will be remembered as the cold Tuesday.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

*<\/p>\n

The temperature kept dropping. You cannot fight winter in New England. There\u2019s something too powerful in it, even practically. It exacts millions of dollars from northern cities in snowplowing; it cancels school; it injures those with bad footing. The language of cold is a language of violence\u2014gripping<\/em>, snapping<\/em>, pinching<\/em>, numbing<\/em>. The fear of falling temperatures is manifest in the way cold<\/em> resists being a verb. While days in spring continue to warm<\/em>, in summer to heat up<\/em>, and in fall to cool down<\/em>,\u00a0what do they do in these painful winter months, in this downward swoop?\u00a0 Freeze<\/em> isn\u2019t the word, as freeze<\/em> implies some end point. It must stay an adjective, padded with verbs, a line of separation: the days are<\/em> getting colder<\/em>. When a friend from Sierra Leone called, I said, \u201cThe days here are still \u2026 \u201d I paused. \u201cColdening.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can be imprisoned by it, or you can do as Thoreau did\u2014put on a pair of skates and marvel at the hats of frost on the nailheads. At the end of January 1854, he writes this paean to cold:<\/p>\n

Last night I felt it stinging cold as I came up the street at 9 o\u2019clock; it bit my ears and face, but the stars shone all the brighter. The windows are all closed up with frost, as if they were ground glass \u2026 The winter, cold and bound out as it is, is thrown to us like a bone to a famishing dog, and we are expected to get the marrow out of it \u2026 It is true it is like a cow that is dry, and our fingers are numb, and there is none to wake us up. But the winter was not given to us for no purpose. We must thaw its cold with our genialness. If it is a cold and hard season, its fruit, no doubt, is the more concentrated and nutty \u2026 I knew a crazy man who walked into an empty pulpit one Sunday and, taking up a hymn-book, remarked: \u2018We have had a good fall for getting in corn and potatoes. Let us sing Winter.\u2019 So, I say, \u2018Let us sing Winter.\u2019 What else can we sing, and our voices be in harmony with the season?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

*<\/p>\n

February comes.<\/p>\n

Cuts leave scars. Amputations leave nothing, only the air above it, a new bit of air. Below is a weird shape that does not resemble what is\u2014I notice only then\u2014the truly elegant form of a fingertip. Each one is like a tiny hull, a bow of a ship planked in ridges. Fingerprints. The planking of my left middle fingerprint is gone, smudged now with scars and grafted skin and somehow turned inside out, as if stirred through the middle and frozen into an eddy. Left and right:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Losing your fingerprint has its significance: \u201cThere appear to be no external bodily characteristic, other than deep scar and tattoo marks, comparable to the persistence of these markings,\u201d Francis Galton writes in Finger Prints<\/em>, the 1892 book that gave the first comprehensive analysis on what we now take for granted as our individuality expressed in these ten points. He exalts the longevity of the fingerprint, the signature it has on a person from birth, which no age or sickness can change\u2014even death, in the right circumstances: \u201cThe marks on the fingers of many Egyptian mummies, and the paws of stuffed monkeys, still remain legible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Galton, Charles Darwin\u2019s cousin and a collector in his own right, owned around fifteen thousand fingerprints that he studied. There is no other external mark, he argues, that can vouch for a person\u2019s individuality like the fingerprint. Not a signature (forgery). Not looks (twins). Not voice. Even eye color can change. Nothing but papillary ridges forming, in his language, patterns of \u201ctuning forks,\u201d \u201cdouble eyes,\u201d \u201cdeep spirals,\u201d and innumerable types of whorls, arches, and loops. Characteristic of some nineteenth-century science writing, Galston\u2019s book doesn\u2019t shy away from the poetry in discovery:<\/p>\n

It is no violent misuse of metaphor to compare the ridges [of fingerprints] to the crests of mountain ranges, and the depth of the blackening [ink] that they ought to receive to that of newly fallen snow upon the mountain tops in early autumn, when it powders them from above.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I lost the geology of my finger, now a wash of snow down a fractured mountain crest, cut with surgical scars.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

When something is gone, it\u2019s hard to measure what\u2019s lost. The finger used to be longer by\u2014how much? I drew 1\/16-inch marks on my right middle finger, held the left finger against it. Exactly 7\/16 of an inch shorter. I couldn\u2019t help but notice other near half-inches in my day: a chocolate bar, a pill, a stack of pennies, Denis Johnson\u2019s Train Dreams<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Spring is coming, but still the cold is unrelenting\u2014winter clawing back. When I go outside, I still wrap the finger in a bandage. The cold still hurts it.<\/p>\n

Recently, a German woman I was seated beside at a dinner party pointed to the bandage and asked what happened.<\/p>\n

I told her about the boat. The slippery ground. The stitches. The metal plate. How I need to wrap it against the cold because it felt permanently sunburned, nerves destroyed and numbed.<\/p>\n

She shrugged. She said I could have lost all my fingers. I agreed.<\/p>\n

\u201cGl\u00fcck im ungl\u00fcck<\/em>,\u201d she said. \u201cIn bad luck there is luck.\u201d I agreed.<\/p>\n

She might as well have said, \u201cLet us sing Winter. What else can we sing, and our voices be in harmony with the season?\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

  I lost my fingertip in January while carrying a wooden boat across icy ground. When I slipped, the gunwale came down on my hands. About a half inch of my middle finger lay in the dead grass, which might not sound like a lot until you look at the geography of a hand\u2014the cut […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":572,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4393],"tags":[7184,2530,21288,8641,2711,10033],"class_list":["post-123441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person","tag-charles-darwin","tag-denis-johnson","tag-francis-galton","tag-henry-david-thoreau","tag-massachusetts","tag-winter"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFarewell to Winter, Farewell to My Fingertip<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The week I lost my fingertip was the coldest stretch of days in Massachusetts since 1918, which is why the ground was so slippery, all moisture hardened to ice. \u201cIs not January the hardest month to get through?\u201d Henry David Thoreau writes in his journal.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/03\/26\/farewell-to-winter-farewell-to-my-fingertip\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Farewell to Winter, Farewell to My Fingertip by Ben Shattuck\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"March 26, 2018 \u2013   I lost my fingertip in January while carrying a wooden boat across icy ground. 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