My Grandmother's Hands

Some thoughts one Valentine's Day a few years ago.

My Grandmother’s Hands

         I looked down upon my hand poised over my laptop and saw a hand familiar but not mine.  The hand had an agedness, an oldness.  No more a young, fleshy, supple hand.   Now a hand that showed knuckles.  Veins.  Wrinkles.  Age.

         I move the fingers to prove to my eye and my brain that they are in fact my fingers. 

         They are.  They move to my command. 

         But they don’t look like what I think they should look like.  They don’t feel like I think they should feel like.   I feel my  joints.  I feel my tendons, my skin, when I flex my fingers to a fist.

         They are not quite my Grandmother’s hands yet.  But they do remind me of my Grandmother’s hands.  Not quite so arthritic, though. 

         With a little thought, and a bit of free-writing, this does not trouble me.  Seeing my hands like my Grandmother’s does not bother or frighten or trouble me. 

         My Grandmother was a lovely, wonderful, caring, brave, free-spirited woman.  She lived and led a very different life than mine. 

         And maybe not.  She wasn’t married young like most of her generation.  She married at 23.  Practically an old maid in her time.  Not because she had no choices to marry earlier.  She did.  She had said no. 

         But because she was having too much fun not being married any sooner.  She married when she wanted to marry.  When she had found a good man.

         At the age I am now, she had a married daughter living overseas. 

         I have no daughter.  I have no child, adult or otherwise, married or single, living anywhere, yet overseas.  And yet my hands begin to look as my Grandmother’s eventually looked.

         Aging follows no playbook.  It just plays.

         I didn’t follow the playbook from my Grandmother’s time.  Anymore than she did.  She was supposed to get married in her teens and have kids. She waited till her twenties and had just one kid.  I went to college in my teens.  I never married and will have no kids. 

         My Mom. She learned a trade, but married younger than her own mother, and then made her trade a business.  Not enough to live on her own.  But close.  Then she had me.  And made sure I’d learn to make my own way.  On my own.  And I have.

         My Grandmother. My Mother.  Both of whom I see in my hands. I see age in my hands. I see the passing of youth in my hands.  But more importantly, I see the women who came before me in my hands.   I see them pass on to me their strength.

They are My Valentines.  My Mother and my Grandmother.  Happy Valentine’s Day, Mom and Gram.  I love you more than you knew, more than you know.

Reviews

[Samuel Dickens]

Many speak of the eyes, saying there's much to learn there, calling them windows on the soul, and so it must be true, but hands are just as important. We caress, touch, and show love with them. We toil the earth, cook food, build great monuments and create art with them. They're our physical connection to the world.
I followed your words along as you described three generations of hands, and understood the meaning. Like you, I see generations in my hands, too. They are large like Dad's, but darker skinned, like Mother's. Whereas she had a simian line on her left hand, mine is on the right.
This piece was a joy to read.

[F. Mary Jesson]

Thank you. I've always written just for me, so to have you say my writing was a joy makes me feel wonderful.

[Lea Sheryn]

A lovely generational story that reflects on the past and the present. It is a story that many can relate to.