I painted my nails this weekend!

I’m not sure why I painted my nails this weekend. I think it must have been a subliminal response to my very own personal formaldehyde deficit.

Nail polish application isn’t usually a thing that I do, because I’m not very good at it.

This time, I only managed to paint the fingernails on my left hand. I really wish this was symbolic of something – my distracted perfectionism, or the self-doubt I carry around, or some kind of internal duality, or gender questions. But I’m actually just excruciatingly right-handed and I barely had the dexterity for the left one.

And I – yeah. I am always learning. Learning happens when I try things that are new.

For instance! I found out exactly how long isn’t enough time for the polish to dry, when I forgot what I was doing and tried to turn the pages of a book I’d borrowed from someone I don’t know very well and left a streak of red.

And, you know. The universe will keep presenting me with the same lesson until it is learned, so there is also nail polish in my hair, from when I tried to push it back out of my face. And on my forehead. And on my knee, for some reason. And all over my fingers. My little sister told me she uses the green side of a sponge to get the nail polish off her skin.

I found out what happens when you spill a drop of red nail polish in a bathtub of hot water when the bathtub in question is made of fiberglass that – well, it used to be white.

And I found out what happens to nail polish on the thumbnail that catches a groove and spins a wheel on a lighter, creating a spark, igniting the lighter fluid that’s escaping where a thumb is pressing down

creating just enough space for the flame to turn a dried-out sage leaf black

I found out what happens to painted nails when you spend six hours up to your elbows in a kitchen sink, scrubbing greasy metal pans with steel wool and mystery chemicals. Even inside the plastic gloves, the paint is chipped.

I haven’t done the fingernail painting thing since – I must have been five or six years old. I remember that my mother was good at it, but didn’t usually like to. She spent too much time playing in the dirt, and wasn’t inclined to sit still for long enough for the paint to dry. Later, I remember her objecting very strongly to the smell of the fumes. To be fair, I’m almost sure that the first ingredient in nail polish is the same chemical they use to preserve the fetal pigs we dissected in biology in like tenth grade. So I hear her concern for us. I just haven’t decided what I think.

Still, I remember how daintily perfect my fingers used to look, for the first few days, when I was little. And I remember watching the paint crack and chip and fall apart, and crumble to nothing. They’d spend more time being imperfect than beautiful. And I didn’t mind.

I remember Evie helping me turn them gold, for my 2016 Prom. They stayed that way all summer. I am just remembering this, just now.

I’m not sure why it came up again, this weekend. Maybe it had to do with an overheard conversation between coworkers at the grocery store about what this kind of work does to their hands, and I was curious. Maybe it was a conversation with Evie about an old homeschooling friend who used to paint his toenails different colors. Either way, I stole a bottle from my sister with permission and cautiously attempted about two coats. And it was messy, but I learned things. It could take me years, because I won’t always have the time or the inclination to work on this. And I will probably keep creating messes and having to clean them up, and sometimes the stains will be permanent. But someday I will add this to the list of things that I know how to do with some degree of grace.

Learning, always.