1 July 2022
There is a documentary I’ve watched several times, about Anna Breytenbach, an animal communicator. There is a fascinating sequence when she communicates with a group of Chacma baboons in South Africa. These creatures have had many close encounters with man and his contraptions. They come out on the losing end: displaying bad conduct, bad attitudes, or worse yet, are crippled with missing limbs or digits.
Like the Chacma baboon, I suffered my own close encounter with man’s contraptions at age 2-1/2. My big toe and the tip of the middle toe of my right foot were severed in a farming accident when I tangled with a grain elevator chain/sprocket assembly. Even into my 20s, I covered this shame with a shoe. Scientology dogma, which I studied for many years, proposes that my injury at 2-1/2 was likely a plea for sympathy or attention or rebellion. The jury is still out on that point.
The loss of my big toe did not stop me from walking, running, climbing, swimming, biking etc. Had I not lost that big toe, I wonder if I’d have perished at a young age in some skiing accident, crippled while skate boarding, or eaten by a shark while surfing the ever restless sea. I’m sure that accident completely changed the trajectory of my life.
The Sioux Historic roller skating rink on the south-eastern shore of Minnesota’s Big Stone Lake, was the favored local venue for year ending grade school picnics. Of course everyone would roller skate. I never really got the hang of it. I fell repeatedly: no amount of frantic arm windmilling could keep me on my feet for long. Ice skating was even more challenging. Failure at these activities was disappointing but I never puzzled on it for long.
I tried downhill skiing in my 30s - once. My first attempt was my last. I couldn’t seem to keep my balance and fell, often, all the way down the bunny slope and then two trips down the big slope. Cross country skiing was easier, but also a miserable experience. I met with a bit more success with slow plodding snow-shoeing; yet staying on my feet as always proved to be a confounding issue.
With 8-3/4 toes, I can walk, or swim, certainly not run anymore, and long ago thought better of climbing, though now and again I do climb on a bike. Continued biking seems to improve my sense of balance. It does mystify me how a missing big toe can effect my ability to keep my ass upright on a bike!
That I was technically disabled never occurred to me until age 43. I met a sewing client for a fitting at a senior citizen’s home where she lived. She met me at reception and linked her arm in mine for support. As we chatted and strolled the hallway back to her room, this tiny woman staggered slightly pulling me to one side, and damned near threw me to the floor!
My steps oddly hitch and veer in a barely noticeable erratic pattern. Inside my body, my motility feels wildly uncontrolled. Surely those around me must notice and wonder: What is she on? Has she been drinking?!
Now and then I am moved to dance but the push-off or a turn executed from my right foot bothers me, throws me off rhythm. In my head I feel the grace, but my feet question it.
As for yoga, the right-side balance required, evaded any mastery the well meaning one-thumbed instructor good naturedly assured me I could achieve. My “Tree”, well balanced and rooted at the outset of the posture, was quickly felled with the slightest breath of wind.
The first time a certain elderly male client came to see me and shook my hand, I gasped! Chills ran up and down my spine, for he was missing the forefinger of his right hand! Grabbing his hand in both my own, almost in tears, I inspected his missing finger’s site. When he was a teenager on a farm in Oklahoma, his finger got caught in a piece of machinery. He made the split second decision to pull hard enough to pop his finger off instead of letting the machine devour his hand. Later, whenever I met this client, I would grab and hold his right hand so I could feel the stump. Camaraderie.
In the mid 1960’s, my father had his own close encounter, almost losing his hand in a combine accident, sacrificing one finger to the first joint. In the following years he would pull a prank: he’d sit pushing that stubbed finger up against the bottom of a nostril- looking for all the world that his finger was searching for something, deep inside his head.
A lovely woman bagger I see from time to time in a local grocery store is missing her left middle finger from a wood chipper accident. When I spoke to her injury, and showed her mine, we chatted like the closest of friends. I can never quite contain my excitement, open curiosity or love for someone I meet who has lost a chunk of their body.
Small children will notice my missing toe and, being curious, will squat down to inspect my stub-toe. Their parents are usually appalled and apologize profusely for their young child’s unabashed curiosity and lack of social politeness.
How many of my kind are out there in this world? We are a plainly marked subset of the population. Something is missing….a toe, a finger, an ear lobe, an arm. Why was a little bite taken out of us? What was the bargain we “marked ones” made and with whom? Should I forfeit this body part, do I get to keep/do that? With that proposed injury, what karmic debt will be considered paid in full?
When I spy a fellow member of this population subset: Accidental Deletion of a Body Part, I want to stop that person, to compare notes. I want to hear their story, touch their scars in sympathy and wonder, and then show them mine.
I have wondered about people missing body parts also. Difficult! Thank you Linda!