I Don’t Wear Nail Polish

I remember being a teenager and visiting my Grandma Pauline who asked me how I got my nails so white.  Puzzled I said simply, that was the color of my nail tips.  Then she pulled out this small white grease pencil from her purse.  She pushed the tip behind her nail and showed me how it worked as she explained that her nails we’re not white without the nail pen.

I walked away from that conversation with a deeper appreciation of the strength and color of my nails.  Indeed growing up and into my adult years I have not worn polish on my nails, save for the occasional clear coat.  I remember once being in a salon and telling the nail technician that I didn’t want any color and she said the word CLEAR? with such a raised confused tone.  Then proceeded to speak in her primary language with her fellow workers and I could only make out CLEAR several times as they all laughed.  Perhaps it was a callback to a funny unrelated joke.  Which of course it has now become just that for me all of these years afterwards.

The joke as it turns out is inevitably on me, as is not so unusual, when I was shopping on Instacart at Sprouts (which is such a blessing for someone housebound) and noticed this line of “mineral” nail polish that was formaldehyde free and supposedly less toxic.  It was also $9 a bottle.  And yet I bought all three colors they had on the shopping cart.

I chose a lovely mauve for my first painting.  Remembering quickly how unskilled I am with my left hand.  And how impatient I can be to let my nails dry before touching anything.  But if this heat wave is good for anything … It did dry my nails in record time.

Perhaps, I’ll blame the heat for telling my head it was a good idea to buy FOUR MORE BOTTLES of nail polish from Amazon.  Because they were a dollar less online and had sôöøõòō many pretty colors to choose from!!

I was in my feeling pretty mode.  Barely thinking about why it is that I don’t wear nail polish.  Barely but not amnesic.  I knew why.  I just pretended it wasn’t an issue.  And I so enjoyed the mauve!  

When my new colors arrived, I quickly took off the light shade and used a glossy bottle of amathyst.  Pfft.  If the purple crystal was still down deep in a cavern I suppose!  Because my nails were close to black with perhaps an opalessence of plum if the sun hit my hand just right.

I don’t mind dark.  But I noticed that the deep painted nails somehow made me feel my hands looked old.  As if my white hair doesn’t have that job locked up.  However my hands are in front of my eyes all the time whilst I only catch a glimpse of my hair in the mirror when I leave the loo.

Yes.  Sadly I wasn’t fond of the amathyst.  And admittedly I was more “aware” of why I don’t paint my nails.  Small wonder that when I woke up with a sharp pain in the middle of my chest at 4am, that I insisted on waking up the redneck to help me find my blood pressure cuff and the nail polish remover.

Thing is I have a long history of NCCP (non cardiac chest pain) probably related to my colon that sends reffered pain when it spasms.  I’ve struggled with it all of my adult life.  Once back in my 20s when I was pregnant with my first daughter I asked someone … How can I know if it’s a heart attack?  And they said I could look at my nail beds as one sign of a healthy heart.

It doesn’t need to be true, it just needs to be believed.  Turns out I still worried … But I certainly kept a close eye on my pretty pink nails with the white tips that Grandma so admired.  They became my canary in the coal mine.

Suffice to say that amathyst nail color is hell to take off.  And the residual staining of purple all around my finger tips didn’t ease my worried mind.  But I know my habit brain as well as I know my dysfunctional autonomic system and this for me was par for the course, if not a bogey which perhaps is more apt.

Good news is my youngest daughter loves painting her nails and I’m sure she will be delighted at the over $50 in brilliant non formaldehyde yadda yadda yadda nail color.  As for me, I went back to bed if not asleep, still well before dawn and felt my little Schnauzer flank up against my abs and nuzzle close.  Because that was the end of the shaggy dog story for the day.