‘Hands’

Hands tell so much about us…who we are…what we do….

I remember how gentle my mother’s cool hand felt on my forehead…hot with fever. My husband’s strong young hand holding mine while we walked across the high school campus. The curl of a newborn son’s hand, as delicate as a pedal, but holding on so tight…around my finger.

Out on the lawn one day when I was 4 or 5 years old…my mother was kneeling beside me scrubbing doll clothes in a washtub. She held her hands up…suds running down to her elbows and said “Someday my hands will look wrinkled like this all the time!”

And I laughed…thinking that she was only joking. I came to know a hard truth as the years passed. Time stole away the firm skin of her youth…and left those dear gentle hands forever as wrinkled as they were the day we played in the water on a hot summer day.

My husband has a craftsman’s hands. Tough and strong enough to cut deep into the wood to carve away what doesn’t belong there, and yet delicate and sure with the details.

When he holds my hand now his grip is still as tender and as strong as when we met…nearly a half century ago. It comforts me now as it did then.

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