pawpaw’s thumbs

I remember sitting on PawPaw’s lap when I was little, tracing his thumbs with my small fingers. His hands were huge, blue collar, and beautifully weathered. His thumbs were especially enormous, with the thumb nail spanning the length of three regular sized thumbs. They were exaggerated and cartoon-like, especially to a child. I remember saying to him, “PawPaw, what happened to your thumbs?” I guess he had been asked this before, maybe by other children, because he answered without hesitation.

He leaned closer to me and whispered, “They were run over by a train!”

“Both of them?” I asked. He nodded and grimaced, pretending some far away pain. My eyes got big, and I grew quiet, trying to imagine this dramatic event.

His thumbs, like Freddie Mercury’s teeth, became what I remember most about his body. When I mentioned PawPaw’s thumbs to my dad years after he died, he leaned back in his chair and laughed heartily. “Oh yes, they were so unusual!” He had never heard the train accident story and crinkled into a smile made of memory when I told him. He said, “I always wondered what happened to make them that way, too.”