I sweltered. More than I had in the single-use polyester cap and gown. My tie knot dug into my Adam’s apple and trapped the air under my sweat-soaked dress shirt. My itchy fingers fumbled with my samples: the smooth-handled kitchen knives I forced through resisting carrots and hairy rope. I ran my mouth dry, talking up these knifes, their fine slicing edge, their heft in the hand. The response was chilly, the boredom palpable. Only my mother softened. She thumbed through the slick pages of the catalog and tapped a hard little pill of a jackknife. My dad, with hands much tougher than mine, could whittle wood, trim rope, delicately pry out a splinter. Something to unwrap at his birthday bash and feel its extension of his strength and precision.
The heat only rose. One humid day, my mom’s van crunched up the gravel driveway to the mailbox. I leaned out the window. Later I’d be in pressurized climate control en route to a country so hot they color it orange in the movies. But right now in the van, the air was cooler outside than inside.
The passenger door’s frame dug into my chest as I strained to reach the sun-warmed metal handle of the mailbox. A soft wave of adrenaline quickened my pulse as I pulled out a cardboard box. As we rumbled north, I yanked off the tape and pried open the flaps. My hand slicked sweat onto the smooth metal and plastic of the knife as I lifted it, opened it, felt the safety lock catch in place. Was it the sweat or my trembling that sent the knife sliding through my hand, the blade making efficient contact with the flesh, then the blood, of my tender palm?
Next summer my hand was whole, and coarsening again with honest work. I was in working AC again, but my palms sweated in flimsy rubber as I gingerly handed people their piping hot coffees and pillowy donuts.
We’re so back.
welcome back!