Band-Aids, Neosporin, and Hemingway

I must have missed stabbing myself while washing dishes last night. When I woke this morning I discovered a small wound in the center of my palm. I immediately headed for the Neosporin and a Band-Aid. And I realized that every single time I tend to a wound like this, I remember Hemingway’s “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” Harry dying on the side of a mountain because he didn’t tend to a seemingly insignificant injury.

What we read affects us in surprising ways. I confess to not remembering the story that unfolded after that situation was introduced, but I read it when I was a teenager and that was a very long time ago. Maybe the lesson I got from his story was not the one Hemingway intended to stick with his readers, but it is what got my attention and what I internalized.

This Christmas my daughter sent me a delightful little book, Everything I Need to Know I Learned From a Little Golden Book The book, complete with the signature Golden Book spine, is full of familiar pictures. As I browse through it, I realize that many of these images do,indeed,permanently live inside me.

The pace of incoming information was less frenetic when I was growing up. How many layers of words and pictures are forming all those developing young minds out there right now? Can we help them sort it out and make sense out of their lives? I don’t have the answers, just the questions bubbling up this morning.