It’s a miracle. I pinched my right index finger badly last night. The experience was quite dramatic, but it seems barely inflammed this morning and that’s all. I could have crushed it or worse. Whew!

We have been doing a major letting-go week, giving to charity and throwing away, which allows for change in how we store things. I gave away 12 grocery bags full last week, and perhaps a half dozen this week. We have three city garbage bags full of trash already and we’ll have at least one more before the truck goes by tomorrow morning.

We have one of those fold-up units in our closet room, that they use at university events to hold coats. If you do just the right thing, they go up in the middle and down at the sides, and roll around on heavy rolling casters for low-profile storage. They are designed to fold up when empty and be stable when evenly loaded.

We have had this unit for at least ten years, and it has been great. Our “closet” is the landing at the top of our stairs (many old houses in this area have these) which holds this rack and two other smaller ones, all jam packed with goodies. The other two racks are not as heavy-duty as this one.

Our folding unit is about 8 feet long (245cm). Knowing me, you can imagine it was heavily loaded with clothing. Clothing is one of the biggest joys in my life, and one of the largest categories of “stuff” in my house.

I gave away a LOT of clothes including much from this rack. (Yes, I finally let go of the many expensive business suits I had not worn since 1999) I moved certain clothing from another rack to this one, and apparently it changed the balance enough to make it unstable.

I was on the outside edge of this rack with my hand on a vertical support, and I rolled the unit just a few inches. We’ve been doing so much work cleaning and putting away, that the balance of clothing had shifted to lots of weight on the very side edges and not as much in the center. It went up to fold itself, and my finger was pinched between three square metal supports.

I lucked out, because what got pinched was merely the skin pad of my right index finger. My 2nd finger got a little pinch but nothing serious. Had I been holding it differently, I could have bruised the bone or worse.

But here I was, with the metal folding thing weighted down by many pounds of clothing. I couldn’t push it back myself, with only my left arm.

I yelled for Brian (thank heaven he was here, or I may have had to pull my finger out and damage the skin of the finger). He ran so fast I can’t tell you, and pushed it up just enough for me to pull out my finger.

It stayed folded until Brian pulled the clothes off it, bound the middle two supports together with belts, and then put the clothing back, heavy sweaters and Brian’s stage tuxedos at center and lightweight caftans and dress shirts at the edge.

I spent several hours with ice on my finger, and this morning it merely feels puffed up. It’s very mildly sore, and mildly red. I really lucked out this time. I was pretty scared there when I was trapped and alone for those few moments.

Gratitude. That’s me today.