A Bum Paw

I fell down a flight of basement steps at a kids' cookie decorating party. It was 11 a.m., a few days before Christmas.

That's how I acquired this bum paw.

Everyone wants to know if I was drunk.

I was.

Not.

Everyone wants to know if I really punched my husband.

I did.

Not.

"Did you land on it?"

No, I grabbed onto the railing with all of my might to avoid face-planting on the basement floor with twenty three year olds on a sugar high swirling by.

"So what the hell happened?"

My pinky went far east, trying to secede from the rest of my hand. Sickening pain enveloped my body.

I shed a few tears, grabbed some ice. A six year old ran and found a makeshift Frosty the Snowman splint.

It's not broken, the other moms diagnosed. "You can move your pinky!"

"Just tell your husband you can't cook dinner tonight," one offered up. Now that made me smile despite the pain.

"What should I tell him about the past five years?"

I decorated some more cookies with my left hand.

"Are you right handed?"

Complicated question. I write and eat with my left hand but I do everything else with my right hand.

Cutting with scissors? Right.

Throwing a ball? Right.

Batting? Right.

You get the idea? Right.

So I think my bum paw is actually my dominant paw.

"How will you get through Christmas?" the nurse wrapping my hand asked in sheer horror.

"I'm Jewish."

That response may have sufficed years ago when I was eating honey walnut shrimp on Christmas Eve in Miami Beach. But that was then...

Christmas is now a legitimate forced to be reckoned with in my home, along with Hanukkah.

There were gifts to wrap, decorations to hang, cookies to bake, diapers to change, eye drops to administer, baths to give, toys to build, small ninjas to toss off of me, and a million other things to do which require all hand ligaments to work in unison like an orchestra.

"You're blowing my hair out," I told my husband.

"Ok, I will," he laughed.

So did he?

He did.

Not.