Yesterday my middle toenail fell off for the first time.
I think today is the first snowfall.
This toenail is the first for the middle toe of my left foot to come off, but I’m already missing the fourth and fifth toenail on the same foot.
I have runner’s feet, or foot, in this case, since it’s my left foot experiencing the most pain at the moment–which is odd, because I’m right footed. Perhaps I relied on my left foot too much because I’m right footed, if that makes sense.
Your toes don’t feel much.
It didn’t hurt when my fourth and fifth toenail fell off, but when I ran yesterday, my middle toe experienced sharp pain and I ignored it.
You should never ignore pain, and I know this as an athlete, but I ignored it and kept on running anyway.
I sprinted the straights and jogged the curves, but I started sprinting at maximum speed on the last mile. Both straights and curves.
I came home and a familiar red spot seeped through my white socks. I’m used to seeing blood on my socks, but this time I was frustrated.
The reasoning for my frustration is illogical and stupid—but it reminded me of my dad’s childhood story.
He asked his mother, who has passed, if she loved him as equally as his siblings, and she bit her fingers and said they all hurt the same.
Why did she have to say hurt? Why couldn’t she have said that not one feels less than the other?
I’m the middle child, and my middle toenail has never come off until yesterday, and it hurt the most out of all the toenails that have fallen off.
I don’t believe in bad omens, but I didn’t like this middle child syndrome conspiracy that seemed connected somehow to my middle toenail falling off.
It felt like a foreboding foreshadowing. It’s pretty stupid—it’s just a toenail and it’s my fault because I ignored the pain my body signaled.
And because things fall, and things fall apart—love, family, friends, and toenails—I know it’s only natural.
Today is the first snowfall, and as I am writing this, the snow continues to fall.
The first snowfall for Michigan is expected to be high, which isn’t surprising for Michigan weather.
A lot of people hate Michigan weather, but I don’t hate it. First of all, I’m adapted to this weather, because this weather is all I know as a lifetime Michigander, but second of all, I try not to hate anything. Hate is too strong of a word—feeling.
But the snow falling right now is not too strong: it’s fragile, delicate, gentle, white, pure, natural, and innocent. Yes, it’s cold, but it melts very quickly when it lands on a warm surface.
And if you look close, you can see its intricate, beautiful pattern, but that’s only if you look close enough as it lands seconds before it melts away. It’s fleeting.
A crew of joggers just passed by the window, and I see the snow melting on their vinyl jackets—even more quickly than it does on the surface of the ground from the heat the runners generate as they pump their warm, red, blood in this cold, white, snow.
…
I often listen to music when I write, and currently I’m listening to Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.
This piece makes me miss playing the violin for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and dancing ballet in my hometown’s small dance academy. I also miss running high school track meets. I miss a lot of things from my past and feel regretful for not taking full advantage.
But recently I’ve been talking to a lot of people, and I think I miss so many people and things because I talk to so many people and see so many things.
Holden Caulfield said “Don’t tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”
I know what he means. You either “miss” them as in you desire to see them again, for they’re not with you physically in time, or you start “missing” them in the sense that they “miss” what you’re telling them. They “mis”understand you—or they just miss you telling them anything at all. The feeling of “missing” is reciprocated—whether good or bad.
In this way, things fall, things fall apart, and we miss.
But like waiting for the first snowfall, we wait, hope, and know that there is a first.
And today–as I watch the first snowfall in fall weather–I wait, hope, and know that the future holds a first.
A Journal 