I am the Hammer!

Some time back I saw this cute little cartoon, Get Fuzzy. Old Satchel dog was trying to love on the dysfunctional, disturbed Bucky cat, and said, “Let’s play like we’re utensils in the kitchen drawer.” Bucky thinks for a moment, picturing knives and corkscrews and the like, and then says, “Ok Dog, you’re on. You go first.” Satchel leans over, gives Bucky this huge hug and says, “I’m a spoon!” Bucky has this look of sheer terror on his face as he shrieks, “I’m a hammer! I’m a hammer!”

I know the terror from which Bucky Kat speaks. I too would rather be a hammer - feared by all the other utensils in the drawer, revered by the smaller tools. Capable of both destruction and the repair of destruction. I have swung a hammer that has created holes and brought down walls. Similarly, I have also swung the hammer that put up new walls. Of all the tools in my caches, the hammer is the most ambivalent. It does not have ONE purpose; it is not simply a tool of destruction OR a tool of repair.

Today, a friend said to me, “I am hugging you inside” and if it is possible for the spirit man to backfire, mine did. The carefully constructed walls that said, “Stay here, outside this line and come no closer” were both respected and totally ignored as she made that statement to me. Hugging me - not breaking the physical rule, but is the physical rule the most important one? Do not hug me translates to do not care for me. Allow me to be aloof, to use humor to hide what really pains me. Do not hug me means do not see past my walls into the core of who I am really am, a childlike creature dying to become alive through a simple hug. I wanted to scream, “Don’t say that! Don’t do that!” and I didn’t know why. I wanted to run - wanted to crawl under the chair I sat in and disappear. Who am I that someone deems me huggable? That they are willing to respect the boundary I’ve set, and yet still communicate the depth of concern to me? Who am I? I want to be a hammer again.