The Romance of a Sore Finger

"What kind of man gets turned on by a woman's calf?" asked Margaret’s great-granddaughter as she listened to the story of how Margaret and Harvey met.  

"One that doesn't get to see anything else," Margaret said with a laugh. She said most things with a tilt of judgement for the young people. She said most things with a craving to be more like them too. 

As the story unfolded, her great-granddaughter leaned in to hear all the details: How Margaret was a cheerleader back when the skirts didn't show more than a calf, how Harvey nodded to her from the football field as if to say, "This one's for you," and how she averted her eyes after the game, which sealed the deal for Harvey. 

“I remember it the week after that game when he asked me to the prom,” Margaret continued. “I started practicing my dance steps and picked out the prettiest blue flowered dress.” Her gaze turned downward as she reminisced. 

Long after Harvey's chair held only the impression of his body, Margaret still loved to tell the story. She loved explaining 'the good ole days' to each generation, noting how simple things were and how nowadays people analyze things way too much. 

"We didn't tell them we had 'anxiety' and such," she said using air quotes, but with only one finger. "We liked to keep a little mystery." 

"When your great-grandfather asked me to the Junior Prom, I was thrilled," she continued. "He came in to meet my parents, handsome as ever with his suit. He handed me a corsage and that's when I noticed the blood on his hand. He had been practicing putting the corsage pin on a pillow and accidentally stabbed himself." 

"Well, nothing says love like a bloody flower," her great-granddaughter smirked.  

"It was that very gesture, actually, that made me realize I wanted to marry him," said Margaret. "The very thought of him anticipating that moment, practicing it on his mother's embroidered pillow, and then putting his pain aside to still bring me the corsage spoke volumes." 

“Seriously? You went on one date and knew you wanted to marry him?” 

"Oh my, yes!” she smiled. “Lord, we danced and danced," she said. "It was pure magic.”  

"Didn't you care about his politics or his morning breath or the way he tapped his spoon while reading the newspaper every morning? Didn't you wonder about his debt and illnesses and how to raise children? Didn't you wonder if you would meet someone else more exciting?"  

"There's beauty in the simplicity, my dear," Margaret said, running her hand along the arm of Harvey's chair. "I just didn't ask questions. I made a decision and followed through on it. It's how things were done. I wish your generation didn't weigh themselves down with all the 'what ifs,'" she said, using the one-fingered air quotes again.” 

“I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him.” She paused, looking down again, and said, “And I did, or at least the rest of his life." 

“That’s so sad,” her great-granddaughter said, focusing on Harvey’s absence.  

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Margaret. “He got to spend all of his years with me and you mother and your uncle Stanley. Then, when you were born, he held you like you would break. I’d never seen him so overjoyed!” 

“Age has a way of changing your perspective on things,” Margaret continued. “When we were married, I was over the moon,” She patted her great-granddaughter's knee. “That feeling passes quickly, and, before you know it, your days are consumed by all the things you think are important. You make dinners and run errands and raise children and before you know it, they are off to have families of their own.” 

“Once that part’s over, you get to breathe a little. You grieve the loss of the busy days and you begin to grow into a richness again with your husband. Those were my favorite years.” 

“So, your favorite years weren’t with mom and Stanley?” her great-granddaughter asked? 

“Of course, I loved raising your mom and Stanley, but it was hard work,” she said. “Back then, women couldn’t find much time to do things that made them happy. It was all about keeping a nice house and having clean children who knew how to behave, and I did that. But sometimes I still felt so alone.” 

“After the children grew up, Harvey and I began to find our way back to what we enjoyed. We would meet up with Eileen and Marty and play cards or we would read in the same room without the pressure young people feel to have conversations. We got a birdhouse and, oh, how Harvey loved watching those birds. He knew every one of them and could tell some of them just by their songs.” 

“The things that seemed so important to us when we were young began to fade. We sold our house and moved here,” she said, gesturing to the small living room that smelled of her Doublemint gum and Pledge. “There was just too much house for us at the old place.” 

“It was the first time I felt like I could do what I wanted to do,” she went on. “I went straight from living with my parents to being a wife, never had a bed to myself.” 

“I can’t imagine,” said her great-granddaughter.  

Margaret nodded, continuing. 

“You know, when I was almost fifty years old, they offered a ceramics class down at the community center and I told Harvey I wanted to take it,” she said. “He didn’t know what to think of me wanting to do something like that but it was so fun and everyone got ashtrays for Christmas that year.” 

She took a minute to laugh at herself, realizing no one she knew even smoked by then. 

“Anyway, Harvey and I would sit up late on the front porch, watching lightning bugs or passing cars, and just being together was enough. It was enough,” she sighed. 

“Those years somehow went by slowly and quickly at the same time, comfortable in the ordinary for the first time. Harvey learned to whittle wood and made us some walking sticks. We would go out after dinner and look up at the stars and sometimes go out back to the path that leads to the river. It was simple, but simple is good.” 

“Didn’t you fight?” 

Margaret laughed. “We had our differences, that’s for sure, but we got tired of the weight of disagreeing. Our time was winding down and I guess we just made the decision to choose peace over war.” 

“So, how did you know he was the one, the keeper?” her great-granddaughter asked. 

"If a man is willing to poke his finger to getting a flower pinning right, that says everything I needed to know about him," Margaret smiled. “Even after all those years together, I would remind him of how much that meant to me. For our wedding, one of my sisters got me that red tomato pin cushion over there,” she said pointing. 

“I think she thought I would use it for sewing and, of course, those pin cushions are supposed to bring good luck to family, although, for the life of me, I don’t know what luck has to do with a tomato. Anyway, the first thing I did was find a pin with a pearl on the end to remind me of Harvey’s bloody finger on that first date. I stuck it in the cushion to remind me of the kind of man he was, and that lesson came in handy after some of our disagreements.” 

Silence filled the room. Margaret pictured young Harvey playing with the brim of his hat with that sore finger.  

Her great-granddaughter eyed the sunken spot in Harvey's chair. She remembered the kind of man her great-grandfather was too. She remembered his laughter that almost always ended in a coughing fit. She remembered him pulling a chair over to the stove so she could stir his sauce. She remembered him bouncing her on his knee and singing something about a horse. He was exactly the kind of man that her great-grandmother knew him to be the night he pinned the corsage on her. 

She walked across the room to Margaret's red tomato pin cushion and pulled out the pin with the little pearl on the end, staring at it with a grin. 

"Can I have this?" she asked. 

"Of course, dear," she said. "Use it for practice, like your great-grandfather, but don't practice so much that you are afraid of getting hurt."