Years ago, I was in Kansas visiting my older brother, his wife, and their six month old baby girl. They were using the cutest toe nail clipper I’d ever seen in my life, and the two of them were cooing and playing and distracting my niece so that they could clip her itty bitty baby nails. Her wide eyes moved from her own feet to my brother’s hands and big smiles. She didn’t seem to mind, and maintained her extreme adorableness throughout the entire ordeal.

Cutting Michael’s toes is not so adorable.

It’s not horrible either.

I imagine clipping the toe nails of the majority of adults would not be much fun. I go and get a pedicure now and then though, and the people I’m paying to do that for me don’t seem to shudder away from my feet, so they must not be too bad. Granted they are getting paid, so I really can’t use that as solid evidence.

But Michael doesn’t walk. His toes aren’t gross because he wears white socks everyday and they stay in his shoes until he goes to bed. This does not leave much room for dirt or scum on his toes, which I for one am grateful for.

Honestly, I didn’t have to work too hard to get over any weirdness involved in clipping his fingers and toes due to any possible ick factor. His fingers do get a bit dirty, but not as much as one might expect.

The thing I had to get over in order to clip his nails, was the constant fear that I’m going to cut off part of his flesh if he moves and I clip at the same time.

I’m always going to worry about that, though not as much as the first time.

My Turn To Trim

When I got to his house, he said, “NAILS.”

I’d been working for him for several months and it was just one of those things that had never occurred to me. Of course someone has to cut them. It’s not like having C.P. stops your nails from growing, any more than it would stop your hair.

It just occurred to me that someone has to cut his hair. Oh man. Not my job. Scissors by his eye is WAY more scary than nail clippers by his hands and feet. One of those buzz cuts with an electric safety trimmer maybe, but he doesn’t keep his hair that short! I’ll have to ask him if I can watch the next time he gets his hair cut. Give props to the brave brave barber.

One day his other helper jokingly suggested she cut his bangs for him. I cringed the whole time she pretended like she was going to. “Don’t hold scissors to someone who moves sporadically” should be as ingrained as “Don’t run with scissors” is, and equally enforced .

Anyway. I figured out what he meant by, “NAILS,” and went inside to get the clippers. As with most things in their house, aside from Bill’s coffee mug which was perpetually lost, things are kept in a specific place. Part of his mother’s legacy was the order she left involving all things Michael. I’m willing to bet money that it was she who decided where which towels, ointments, tools, and medicines go where. Their home truly was a streamlined machine, meant to make assisting Michael as efficient as possible.

I knew exactly where to find the clippers, which is another reason I should have considered the situation before. So I went inside and got them. I used the small ones. I don’t even like using big “toe” nail clippers for my own toes, and am not planning on starting with Michael.

“Which hand first?”

He looks down.

Okay, toes first.

We were outside, which is also convenient. I asked him if we wanted to go in, but outside is easier since you don’t have to keep track of where nail bits fly. My mom always got annoyed when any of us cut our nails at the kitchen table (can’t imagine why).

So I got to work. I sat down on the sidewalk. Took off his shoe. Pulled off his socks. Took a deep breath and managed not to cut off any of his toes.

It didn’t take me long to learn to hold still.

That’s the key to a lot of this.

Michael can’t hold still. Well, he can. Sort of. But not for very long, and I know it’s hard work for him to do so.

But if I hold still eventually there are openings and I can cut his nails. I have to wait until his toes stretch up and out. Most of the time they are curled together like he’s making a fist. I try and remember to hold firmly, but not to use force. It’s difficult to describe, but I hold his foot and let my hand and arm move with it, until there is a moment where I can snip.

Sometimes it takes awhile to get one toe done. Usually it gets easier after the first one. I cut them, and get the sock fuzz out of the cracks, and it takes about half an hour for both hands and feet. I’ve learned not to talk to him. If I say something funny, his movement will start up, at least when he thinks what I said was worth laughing at. It’s easier if I don’t say much. Sometimes and occasional, “I’ve got all day.” If he thought I was in a hurry, the anxiety, however small would make it that much more difficult to get the hygiene ritual done.

Dodging Blows

I also have to watch out for my face.

I’ve never been kicked hard, but I try to pay attention so that I can get out of the way because his feet do come after my face. Not on purpose, but that it wouldn’t be on purpose makes me want to avoid it even more. No one wants to get kicked in the face, but I imagine it would hurt less to be kicked in the face, than it would to kick someone you care about in the face because your body is out of your control.

Perhaps that it sort of a backward way of looking at it, but when a stray hand comes at me, I know that Michael gets distraught. He doesn’t want to hurt me, even more than I fear getting hurt.

I’m tough enough to take it, but I doubt he is. The situation hasn’t come up, but if he ever really hurt me, I’d do my absolute best to ignore any pain until he’s out of earshot. It’s not Michael’s fault at all, but he would blame himself.

Fingers are trickier. His hand move in a thousand different ways all the time it seems. Plus there’s the filing. Have to file the nails, otherwise it’s a big snagging mess. I end up spending a lot of quiet moments, holding his hand as it clenches into a fist, just calmly waiting for it to open up again. It always does.

Cutting his nails is the best practice in patience I’ve ever experienced.

Such a simple task. When I get my own it takes about three minutes (once I find the darn clippers which, like coffee mugs and scissors, seem to disappear constantly). It’s not typically a task one thinks of as taking a significant amount of time.

It’s the only time I shut up on the job. And the longest I hold still in my week.

Afterwards he said, “THANK YOU.”

He always says, “THANK YOU.”