“I wish I had found you sooner when that happened. I should’ve let you have a surgery . . .”
Today, too, my mother’s eyes get all teary, looking at my fingers.
When I was little, my mother would stay up until late at night in the cold winter, making rice cake for the national holidays. I, a curious seven-year-old boy, took iron chopsticks from the kitchen in secret while my mother was preparing food. As I brought the iron chopsticks to the bedroom quietly, two small holes on the wall got my attention. I looked at them closely for a while, and stuck the chopsticks in those holes—Bam!
I felt a great shock as if someone had hit my head with a hammer. Afterwards, what I remember vaguely about what happened is that I was held in my mother’s arms and my hands were in alcohol.
Collecting pieces of information later, I learned that I was in an electric shock when I stuck the iron chopsticks into the socket. Belatedly, my mother found me, her youngest son, fallen unconscious with electricity flowing in the body due to the chopsticks I was still holding with my both hands. She kicked the chopsticks hard to get me off them.
Seeing my burnt hands, my mother ran outside, carrying me in her arms and shedding tears. Back then, my house was in a very remote place without neighbors to ask for help. My mother ran for an hour, carrying me in her arms, until she arrived at the closest neighbor’s house.
Our neighbor was surprised to see us storm in suddenly, but she brought alcohol to get rid of the heat in my hands. There was no transportation to the hospital since it was so late at night. My mother spent all night watching my hands and hoping alcohol would take away the heat in my hands.
As soon as the day broke, she took me to a small hospital by bus. The doctor looked at my hands and told her to take me to a big hospital. However, my family circumstances were not good enough to take me to a big hospital. I had to come back home after getting a simple treatment. Afterwards, my mother wanted to stay with me all the time that she carried me on her back even when she went out to the field to work.
As time passed and burns got healed, my fingers began to change. The left hand had a little bit of burnt mark, but the problem was my right hand. The middle finger became thicker, and the first joint of my little finger got bent inward. The muscle must have shrunk; I couldn’t open my hand fully. My mother blamed herself for not putting herself out to have me undergo the operation.
In my school days, whenever some classmates made fun of my fingers, calling them “ugly fingers,” I was embarrassed and hid my right hand. But as I held a pencil and practiced drawing all day long to move my hand freely, I got able to use it with no problems. Moreover, my drawing skills made progress day after day. Later, I even heard a compliment that my hand is perfect for drawing because my thick middle finger wouldn’t get tired from holding a pencil for a long time. Thanks to my ugly fingers, I could get a design job.
Nevertheless, my mother always says, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” whenever she looks at my hand. I am no more ashamed of my hand. I am just sorry and ashamed of myself that I made my innocent mother apologize to me all her life because of my foolish, immature act.