Thorn in the Flesh
By Niall Twohig
“You can thank your dad for this,” the doctor says as he prepares to extract my ingrown toenail. That the curved nail is genetic comes as no surprise to me. I remember Da getting these extractions. But I don’t need memory. At 42, my foot resembles his: Its strange curvings and calluses, the discolored big toenail. When I tend to my foot I might as well be tending to his. As I did in his last days. I washed those weird feet, angrily not lovingly. And maybe because of that karma comes to me genetically: in this curved thorn of a nail.
But it’s not “bad” karma. It’s just karma. Good-with-the-bad.
As the doctor presses down, I thank God for the numbing shot for I still feel the pain knowing it’s but a fraction of the total. And Da, in this moment, feeling this pain, would think of the kids in Gaza who have neither the shot nor the tool to extract worse thorns.
I smile sadly through this minor pain,
thanking you Da,
for this little thorn.
Even this minor affliction brings me to you,
to your little way,
to those thorns in your side
where you felt God.