My mom always had the nicest nails.  They were natural, strong, long and admired by people wherever we went.  They weren’t freakishly long and she didn’t paint them funky colors, but other women would comment at the grocery store, at the restaurant, all kinds of places.  “Oh, your nails are so beautiful!”

I hated her nails.

There were funny stories, like the time she jumped from the deck of our above ground pool onto a raft in the water.  As she tried to grab onto the raft with her hands to make sure not to slide off, she impaled the thin plastic with her thumbnails.  The air whooshed out with some serious force as the raft began to sink.  That was the last cheap raft we had at our house.

There were dark stories.  I may or may not have been an impulsive child.  At the very least, I was a child.  Once, in an angry attempt to stop me from doing something more than likely stupid, she grabbed my upper arm.  She left marks.  Four little curved scars on the inside of my upper arm.  She was probably just as horrified as I was, but it was a lesson for me that the nails were a force to be reckoned with.  There were many discussions about how I wasn’t to tell people what had happened because she didn’t want to get reported for child abuse.  It was the 1970s, so I don’t know what she was worried about, but this was not something to brag about to playground peers.

The hardest part to stomach for me about my mom’s nails though wasn’t the set of scars that I had for months.  It was the comparisons.  I had – and still have – nails that are about as thick as waxed paper.  Hers were like corrugated cardboard.  Mine would peel, split, break.  I bit my nails.  I picked at the skin.  I was an anxious child.  I was always told that if I cared, my nails would look as good as hers.  She reminded me – constantly – not to bite my nails.  From my own mom, as well as my Auntie Pat, a family friend with auntie status, I would receive manicure kits at Christmas and birthdays.  As if the only thing that was stopping me from having beautiful nails was a new cheap-ass metal thing to push my cuticles back with, from a zippered leatherette case, where all the tools were held in with little elastic straps.

Not being able to stop biting my nails and not being able to cultivate the Revlon hand-model worthy nails that sprang naturally from my mother’s fingers, I felt like a failure.  I tried what she swore worked for her: take off the polish and apply new polish every day.  No luck.  No improvement.

(Truthfully, every article I’ve read on how to get amazing nails says you should limit the amount of acetone you expose them to, but that mattered not to my mother.)

Once, as a young adult, she paid for me to get my nails done.  It was some technique where they build up a fake coating on your nails and then extend them beyond your existing length.  I tried to appreciate the gesture, but when I went home and tried to play my guitar, I realized how incompatible these nails were with my life at the time.  I was able to cut them short enough for the guitar, but sort of defeating my mom’s purpose when she saw me next with mismatched hands of nails:  right hand long, left hand short.

I turned 50 this year.  My mom has been gone for 9 years now.  Her nails were perfect until the end, even if her mind had left her far behind.

My own daughter, Annie, also struggles with thin-and-flimsy-nail syndrome.  And anxiety.  While I remind her not to put her fingers in her mouth, it’s mostly to stop the spread of germs.

Annie has solved the problem of thin nails by buying fake nails from the drugstore and gluing them to her own.  This is a thing. A thing I never really wanted to try.  I would suppose that not wanting to have nice nails was my own way of fighting back against the years of commentary like, “your hands/outfit/diploma/life would look so nice with pretty nails.”

Casting aside that black cloud, I bought a set of nails a few weeks ago.  They were $7.99.  French-tip manicure style, and the size is “RS” for really short.  I had to warm up to the idea of using Super Glue to affix a set of claws to my fingers.  I put them on for the first time in the passenger seat of my husband’s car as we drove out to see Liza, our oldest daughter, in Cleveland.  I cracked the window for proper ventilation.  Trying to use up a little extra time on the way to picking her up after opera rehearsal, we stopped at a drugstore so I could get more glue.

I was putting the nails on in the car because I had time to do it.  I don’t think Liza cares about nails, one way or another.

With all 10 nails firmly affixed, I realized I had finally achieved that holiest-of-states:  I had nice nails.  For $7.99 I achieved a moral victory.  I was no longer just Jenny-who-can’t-have-nice-nails.  I’m not a failure.

I’m on my second box now.  I like them.  I have toyed with the idea of having a real nail salon apply what my younger daughter calls acrylics to my own nails, but for now, I’m enchanted with the idea of being able to buy a long-sought after moral victory for less than eight dollars.