I'm Only Going to Say This Once. Or Twice*

I have a deep and abiding and utterly irrational fear of kitchen tongs.  

Bear with me, it's been on my mind for a while....

I write this with all due gravitas, of course.  It is a very deep, very abiding, very irrational fear of kitchen tongs.  

And it is constantly on my mind.  Because I have a house.  Which has a kitchen.  Which has kitchen tongs.  I see them every day.  I open the 'tools' drawer and there they are, staring me down with their utterly pleasant completely benign blue and red tones.  Nestled between microplanes and meat thermometers, they hide until they don't.  Then they strike.

Don't judge my drawer.

I am at subtle war with kitchen tongs.  

Kitchen. 

Tongs.  

You see, when I took my yoga teacher training (YTT) about a million and a half years ago (okay, it is more like 15 but it feels like a million and a half) I almost cut the tip of my finger off.  I know, I know, I have occasionally been known to exaggerate but this is a far cry from exaggeration.  I still break into a cold sweat when I think about it.  That moment when I felt flesh separate from flesh.  When I stood at a sink full of soapy water and dirty dishes closed my eyes and thought if I just leave it in there, it's not really cut is it? 

But it really was.  And what's more, it was very nearly severed.  

Which I found out when one of the other trainees, a doctor, gently coaxed my hand from beneath the murky depths.  Of course my eyes remained closed (I do not do well with blood- particularly my own) but I felt the physicians tsk-tsk to my very soul.  "Well, that is not good," but with an Aussie accent.  Our ashram was too far away from the local urgent care to send me there and really, what would they do other than bandage it up?  So that's what he did.  

And as he did, he informed me that if I took the bandage off prematurely, before the top of my finger had knitted itself back on- because skin is so crazy- I would risk infection and loss of the tip altogether.  

Somehow, I did not vomit.  

So there you have it.  While cleaning it, I cut the tip of my finger off on a pair of kitchen tongs.  That's right- that feeling of flesh separating from flesh? was not from a paring knife of chefs knife or any other professionally sharpened utensil.  Oh no, it was the result of the dull inner lip of the tong and my own zeal for washing dishes.  

I almost cut the tip of my finger off with kitchen tongs and I literally cannot get over it.  

I have YTT-KT-PTSD.  

This is absurdity at its finest.  I fully admit that. 

And profundity in a way, too, I guess.  I mean, here are these lovely, largely harmless, completely commonplace cooking utensils and somehow they managed to change my actual fingerprint.  This thing that is unique and an identifying mechanism for an individual- completely altered.  I know this because I worked for the government for a time and had to be fingerprinted on several occasions.  Where one season my right index finger looked one way, the following season, it did not.  There was- is- a thick white line that now bisects the upper half inch or so of the offending digit.  I stare at it sometimes- mesmerized by it. I have tattoos- loads of them.  I have freckles and moles and scars in strange places.  I have a body that grew a baby, and it shows.  

But this one white line, this one sliver of stiff scar tissue just messed with my head.  

Clearly. 

*Solid chance I've said it thrice or more times.  Alas.  I have made a liar out of me. 

"Welcome."

A couple of days ago Facebook Memories kicked out a post that I made eight years ago (there's no getting around that double 'ago').  It was a photo of Henry, a photo of a stormy rainbow, and a long explanation of how- this is not a joke- we would be moving to Norway.  You see, I used to do things with some aplomb and not a little sense of drama.  

Scrolling to capture to the beauty...
and the bullshit. 

There are a few times throughout the year when my Memories just sucker punch me.  One of those times is now-ish.  The Easter/Spring holiday timeframe.  In Norway it usually heralded some sort of major (or minor) excursion for my husband and I.  One year it was Amsterdam, one year Wales.. another year it was Svalbard.  NATO would go quiet and we would escape. 

Since moving back to the States, things work a little differently.  Holidays are spent with us still- together and grateful- just differently.  Yet Facebook never fails to remind me that I have been places and done things.  

And that I was once a burgeoning Photographer (capital P).  

And that I could write.  

And that Wales remains the most perfect place on earth.*

But- as I am wont to do- I digress.  This moment in time that Facebook reminded me of felt a lot like a nudge.  A not-so-subtle shove back toward my own/old self.  Slinking away like a thief in the night has never been my MO.  Not really.  Yet here I am, eight years later, not really talking to anyone about the fact that we have started the process of relocating to Portugal.  Lawyers have been hired, documents sent back and forth.  And yet I don't talk about it.  I tell myself it is because nothing is firm yet, we don't have a house yet, we haven't filed for the visa yet. 

But we are going to.  We, my husband, son, and two impossible dogs, are going to firm things up.  We will find a house.  We will file the paperwork, in person at the consulate, and wait until they tell us "Bem-vindo".  

"Welcome." 

And then we will work hard at making our house a home, at creating a community, at discovering all the best places for gelato and the finest spots for fresh carrots and tomatoes.  We will welcome others and all.  We will create and be good and bad and happy and sad and feel everything and feel it on foreign soil.  Only it won't be foreign forever- nor will we be foreigners forever.   

Bem-vindo a casa- welcome home.  

*To me.