Perfect Nails

I once had a student come to me at the beginning of a class and complain long and loudly about the woman she had sat next to on the train.

"All she did, the whole ride, was file her nails and inspect them, then file them some more. They were long and dark red and she just had to have them perfect! She didn't talk to anybody, and she never even looked out the window. All she did was fuss over those perfect nails!"

I have wondered about the conversation every once in a while, and I wonder a bit more now that I am getting older. For some reason I spend way more time getting my nails to look good than I ever did when I was younger. It is possible there are getting to be more and more body parts that are way past the possibility of perfection, so the nails are a safer bet.

A couple of years ago I had an acquaintance tell me I had beautiful hands, and that lovely complement has stuck with me. That may also be a reason to pay a little more attention to those appendages, all the way to their fingertips. I have always liked the way a person's hands expressed his or her lifestyle, and I do like to think that my hands express the diverse and wonderful life I have been able to live.

I love hands that show hard work, that are calloused and gnarled and powerful. I also am fond of the long, lithe fingers of a professional ballerina. The perfect set of nails, for me, would not be dark red, but clean and natural in length and color. I might also mention that every time I go out of my way to do a full manicure on myself (I hate having them done professionally), within 24 hours I break one nail right down to the quick. Therefore the idea of perfect nails is one I have great difficulty achieving for more than a fleeting moment.

When I think of my student and her vehement distaste for the woman on the train, one woman I know keeps coming to mind. She was a therapist I worked with about 25 years ago. At that time she was in her early forties, an alcoholic in recovery for 13 years, and divorced. She had left her husband and her children to sink deeper into her addiction, and was dealing with the death of her teenage son in a car accident. The intersection where he died was one she had to pass every day to get to work.

In spite of all this, she was wise and funny and a tremendous role model in therapeutic techniques. She made sure she was dressed well and appropriately for all of our consulting appointments. She also made sure she asked me to please put away some cold medicine I had purchased for myself while on a three-day job in a distant town. We were sharing a hotel room, and I had developed a nasty cold. After thirteen years of sobriety, she could not tolerate the presence of a bottle (it didn't matter what kind) that contained alcohol. I immediately put it out of sight. She gave me a lesson in addiction I will never forget.

My point in so thoroughly describing this woman was that she had perfect nails. They were all the exact same length, about 1/4 inch beyond the tips of her fingers, immaculately polished and buffed to a spotless sheen. I don't think I had ever previously seen nails like that on anyone, so they were worthy of notice. I gave a lot of thought to those nails when I heard of the woman on the train, and a lot of thought to the life that my friend and co-worker had lived. It is possible that the train passenger was actually my friend, but even if she wasn't, she deserved sympathy for those perfect nails. They may well have been all she had.