The Imperfect Gift

As I age, I’m starting to get aches and pains in places that never bothered me before. Lately it’s my ring finger in my right hand. Convinced it was arthritis, I went to the orthopedist who sent me for an ultrasound, and the results were – thankfully – some sort of infection. I took antibiotics for 10 days and the pain finally went away. But literally 1 week later, the pain was back. Now I’m waiting another 3 weeks for yet another appointment to the same orthopedist to try and figure out what this is.

My hands are so integral to who I am as a person. Good range of motion is vital for every human being, but being both a piano teacher and an artist, I use my hands more than most.

One would think that I probably have what they call “piano hands” – long elegant fingers that can reach an octave plus two (IYKYK), and the kind of steadiness that a surgeon holding a scalpel would have.

The steadiness I have – from years of perfecting calligraphy and drawing precise lines and curves. But I have anything but “piano fingers”.

First of all, most peoples’ pointer fingers and ring fingers are roughly the same size and height. My ring finger looks as if it’s missing an entire section between joints. I can’t even wear both my engagement ring and my wedding band on the same finger because they would be literally sitting on top of my knuckle.

So that’s super weird.

I also have what I call “witch fingers”, where my finger is bent in at the top joint making my fingers look like claws. Most people can isolate that joint and force it into a claw, but mine is like that naturally. And if that wasn’t bad enough, it’s arching sideways towards my middle finger.

Yeah, my hands are weird.

But they’ve been like that since I was a child. In fact, while most 13 year olds might skip school to hang out with their friends at the mall, or see a movie in the middle of the day, I skipped school to see my family doctor.

I showed up without my mom, without an appointment and the lovely and wonderful Mrs. Hill took my concerns so seriously that she put me in an exam room. Dr. Disenhouse – who was the best doctor in the entire world – listened to my complaints about my hands – reading between the lines that I was probably made fun of and was pretty much sick of being a freckle-faced frizzy redhead with glasses and braces and witchy hands. (On a separate occasion, I had skipped school to ask him how to medically remove my freckles, but that is another story….)

He asked me what I had in mind regarding my hands. I told him I had seen a documentary on someone with irregular limbs where they broke the bones and reset them. I told him I wanted to do that as well. Being the best doctor ever, he told me that he could do that. I was delighted. But then he said, “I know you’re a great artist. And that you are gifted in playing the piano. I have to be honest with you and tell you that I can do what you want me to do, but you may never draw or play the piano the same way again.”

Then he got up and said, “stay here and think about it for a few minutes. I’ll come back and we’ll talk again.” In the meantime, Mrs. Hill called my mom to let her know not to worry, and to come pick me up.

Obviously, I decided not to go with the bone breaking and resetting. My doctor nodded and said, “good choice.” Then he said something that stuck with me all these years. He said – and I’m paraphrasing here – “there’s always something about ourselves that we wish were different. For some reason it makes us feel less, and we wish that that part of us could be perfect. But maybe these imperfections are exactly what makes you able to do what you are able to – better than most other people. It might seem like an imperfect gift, but it’s what you can do with it that counts.”

More than 4 decades later, while I worry about what this pain really stems from, I am forever grateful for all that I have been able to accomplish with my weird hands. Every new design, every Haydn that I am able to master, I look at my hands with awe. Because it honestly doesn’t always make sense.

This whole thing has made me think about the gifts we have or receive that are not perfect.

Like Israel. Our homeland.

It’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. We have unity issues, divisions between secular and Ultra-Orthodox. We have a government that not everyone is thrilled with (I’m being diplomatic here…). We have serious security issues which are currently taking precedence over the many other domestic issues that need dealing with, like affordable housing, improving the education system, as well as many others. On top of that, we are facing the kind of worldwide hatred that rivals the 1930s. In short, there’s a lot of work to be done before we can sit back and take a break.

That list seems like a whole lot of negatives.

But I think of what we’ve done with this imperfect gift of ours. Our country is young – so much younger than most countries in the world – and yet what we’ve done in this short time is nothing other than miraculous.

No water and just sand and rock? No problem. Drip irrigation. Water shortages? No problem. Desalination plants. Enemies at every border? No problem. The creation of one of the most powerful armies in the world, in addition to the creation of world leading defense systems that save lives all over the world.

This country has had so many difficult challenges since we became a state, but our people are not the type to give up. It’s just not in our DNA to shrug our shoulders and let things be. If we were like that, the FlyDubai flight might have had a very very different outcome than it did, safely landing a plane instead of nosediving towards death and disaster.

We see a problem and we don’t wallow in it. We put our heads together and say, let’s be creative and let’s try to solve this. Most of the time, thank God, we do.

We’re heading towards an election right now, and since October 7, 2023, most people are still not sure which government will be the best for healing this country.

But I think most Israelis feel the same way about Israel that I do. We recognize that it’s not perfect. That there’s still so much more we can do to improve it for ALL its citizens.

But the gift of the country is here. It’s real, and it’s ours.

So we’ll do what we’ve always done: We’ll accept it lovingly, we’ll do whatever we can to keep improving it and protecting it, and we won’t let its imperfections define it. We will do whatever we can to live with the problems that may not have easy solutions, and to make this incredible place thrive despite them.

Because maybe it’s those imperfections that make it what it is: remarkable, miraculous, vital, and infinitely worthy of all of our best efforts.

So let’s continue to give this place our all. Our lives depend on it.

Am Yisrael Chai