Mother was a widow in her 80s during the early 2000s and managed reasonably well living alone. She kept track of and paid her own bills but appreciated help from my sister with grocery and other shopping needs now and again. This was also around the time I traveled to Kansas to pay Mom a visit.

Following an outing to her favorite shoe store for acquisition of two new pair (no woman is ever too old for this!) I suggested we stop for lunch at a cafeteria I knew she enjoyed. The entrance to the restaurant was not unfamiliar – two sets of doors separated by several feet to maintain different inside and outside climates.

I held the first door open until Mother was mostly through behind me with her hand on the door, then let go to reach for the second door. The self-closing aspect of the first door was too much for Mom. It pushed her over, knocking her to the floor. A flap of skin the size of a credit card dangled partially attached near her elbow. The restaurant manager called for an ambulance that carted her to a nearby emergency room.

We returned to her condo hours later, where she relaxed with feet up, reading a book as I fixed sandwiches. Her focus suddenly shifted beyond the book she held, instead on her bare toes waggling atop the hassock.

“I need you to take me to the podiatrist tomorrow so I can have my toenails trimmed. I have an appointment there,” she told me.

“Mom, there’s no need to see a doctor for that. I can trim your toenails.”

“I don’t know… are you sure?” she wanted to know.

“Absolutely,” I replied. “For gosh sakes, I’ve been trimming my toenails for most of fifty years without any problem. No reason I can’t take care of yours too. No charge!”

As she continued relaxing in her easy chair for a while with feet up, I retrieved a toenail clipper from my dop kit and placed a small towel under her feet to catch the trimmings.

“Are you sure?” she asked again. I repeated confidence that she need not worry, then directed my attention toward the first little piggy, which Mom long before taught me went to the market. I gingerly positioned the clipper where it needed to be before mashing it closed. I had never heard Mother scream like that before. Accompanying a sizable amount of the nail came a chunk of meat. Not enough to bait your fishing line, mind you, but enough that blood began a steady drip onto the towel. I felt terrible. During subsequent visits to see Mother, faint blood stains on the carpet provided a cringe-worthy reminder of my ineptness as a manicurist.

These days I’m as flexible as an overly padded six-foot four inch, two by eight plank. Getting close enough to position a clipper in the vicinity of my toenails is as probable as enjoying a vacation riverboat cruise on Pluto. Rita offered to trim me up. Reflecting on mother’s fateful encounter, I declined. Rita switched strategy claiming, “Lots of men go to nail salons for a pedicure – and that’s what you should do.” When I asked and she told me what it would set me back, my eyebrows reached for the sky. She then added, “At least you won’t have a skinned-up elbow or walk like Chester on ‘Gunsmoke’ as your mother had to when you finished with her twenty years ago.”

Rita has a knack for crafting messages that incorporate a minor slip-up or two from my past that she thinks will determine the future. Now I have two options to weigh. I could risk the need for crutches instead of a cane if Rita wields the clippers. Otherwise, I might be spotted hanging out in a nail salon somewhere as other patrons cringe at the sight of my freak-of-nature, old goat hooves.