When I was about six or seven, Mom gave me a little bottle of red fingernail polish.

Actually, I'm not certain of the occasion that sparked the gift. Maybe the Tooth Fairy brought the bottle, or perhaps it was a reward for something. I know that it was either late spring or summer, since I distinctly recall sitting at my miniature picnic table in the backyard and decorating my fingertips. I also distinctly recall my little brother, three or four years old at the time, pestering me to paint his nails, under the law of nature that whatever I had was certain to be a Good Thing.

I will always carry with me the mental image of my baby brother, climbing the jungle gym with his fingers held stiffly in front of him, trying to be very careful and not smudge his nail polish. When Daddy got home and saw what I'd done, the nail polish was taken from me; Dad was not a huge supporter of gender neutrality and ordinary childhood exploration. Whatever he may have thought, though, little Cory looked pretty darned cute until Dad sat him down with the bottle of polish remover.

I was always proud of my fingernails. I bit them a little bit, but, for the most part, I was always able to grow them long and keep them pretty. They were very strong and rarely broke. I often had strangers ask me whether or not they were my real nails. The answer was obvious, since, aside from that childhood fun, I rarely took the time to polish them. I tended to smudge and smear them whenever I tried, which always aggravated me.

When I was about thirteen or so, I remember going to the neighborhood swimming pool with my family. Cory and I were horseplaying around in the shallow end, and he took it into his head to grab my head and hold it under the water. I began to panic after several seconds had passed, and I flailed my arms up out of the water, trying to grab his hands or push him away. I made contact and he abruptly let go; when I rose out of the water, he was crying and grabbing his chest, which was marked with a bright red S-shape in four lines.

That was one of many times that Mom and Dad made me sit down with the nail trimmers and reduce my claws to a less deadly length.

In college, my parents' opposition to my nail length was supplanted by my piano teacher's. My form was, apparently, something of a disgrace; it's difficult to play with the tips of one's fingers when the tips are tipped with half an inch of nail. I was playing with flattened fingers, as I had for years. The professor was appalled and put me on a regimen of regular nail clippings.

It wasn't that I was necessarily opposed to keeping the nails short, mind you; it was simply that my nails grow quickly and I would forget to shorten them before lessons, which would result in a scolding. Even without the nails, I was fighting a long-ingrained habit of sloppy form, so I needed all the help I could get, I suppose.

A few years later, I rediscovered my youthful affection for nail polish. I built a sizeable collection of bizarre colors: bronze, green, blue, and yellow, along with the more predicable peach and fire-engine red. Now that I was no longer playing the piano so often, I was free to indulge my love of my nails, and I painted and repainted them frequently. (The frequency was an unfortunate necessity; I still hadn't mastered the ability to keep them smudge-free.)

"Green? What an interesting color," the older patrons of the library would say in a dubious tone of voice. The children were more fascinated and welcoming of the color changes; the teenage volunteers asked me where I got my bottles. Eric sighed whenever I came home from the drugstore with my newest bag of acquisitions.

And then along came Sam. I read contradicting articles about the safety of nail painting during pregnancy, so I decided not to risk it; the polishes went into storage and I resorted to regular buffings. After he was born, he developed a taste for Mommy's fingertips, so I continued to keep my nails bare. I also had to keep them quite short; when they got too long, he would sometimes accidentally poke his gums on them when chewing, which made him angry.

It was easier to remember now, too, since I received constant reminders from Sam's own fingertips. Baby nails grow quickly, and Sam's seemed as healthy as my own. Little claw marks on my breasts and arms reminded me of similar ones I'd made in my own youth.

He's bigger now, though, and I'm debating the rescue of my polishes. I miss my blue fingertips. It seems silly and frivolous, but sometimes a little frivolity can be a refreshing thing. I get so little of it now, and it would be a welcome change.

And, hey! If I do it quickly enough, Sam might give me time to get one whole hand painted!