The day I cut my finger off

The day I cut my finger off –

my index finger, now made

smaller than my little finger –

I cooked my childhood favourite,

carrots and parsnips mashed, for tea;

it was the day my wife’s work sent

flowers in memory of her sister

who had died on the other side of the

world.  It was the day my wife was

gib-boarding the upstairs bathrooom,

the day I had a heavy cold and

should have been in bed, the

day the dog ate some of the carrot I

dropped on the floor, but not the

parsnip; the day I catalogued three

shelves of books onto an iPad app;

the day we were to go to a

quiz night at the Kensington, and

answer trivia; the day my two

daughters went to see

New Zealand’s Got Talent along

with thousands of others who wanted to

be seen in the audience and didn’t

realise it would be too dark and

that the audience is only there to

provide a noise.  It was the day the

two Jack Russells next door decided to

fight, with one of them nearly biting off

the tail of the other, the day my

son-in-common-law came to

pick me up from A & E since my

wife had to stay home to mind our

grandson, and he was the only one

free.  It was the day we almost had

soggy pies for tea, because I put them in the

microwave, and defrosted them too

rapidly, but saved them from

destruction by cooking them hot

and strong in the oven.  It was the day I

said to my son-in-common-law that

these things always happen to me,

and he didn’t agree, since he’d

cut off his own thumb at an

earlier point, in a wood splitter. 

It was the day – or maybe it

wasn’t – that all these things and

much more happened to me. 

Memory is deep, and memory

remembers what it wants, and

forgets what it wants, and

suddenly decides to bring a

history to light that years had

forgotten, and there’s a program on

TV, which is called Unforgettable –

only it isn’t, since it runs to a

formula every other cop show on

TV runs to: a main character, a

sidekick - male to female in this

case - with a know-it-all boss,

and a couple of lesser cast

members who fill in the gaps, and

in this case a heroine who can’t

forget anything, but if that was

truly the case she would be halfway

round the twist, which she plainly

isn’t. What she remembers are

only those things vital to the

plot, things that most of us would have

forgot, like a face seen in a cafe, or a

photo on a wall, or a shadow on a

gate.  Wait, all these things, the

carrot and the parsnip, the flowers,

the biting of the tail and cutting

of the finger, the cataloguing,

the gib-boarding, trivia quiz,

the NZ’s got talent, the picking up from

A&E have happened; I remember them all,

Yet there’s one thing I have to confess:

I didn’t cut my finger off at all.