Her hands were soft and her fingers were long and casually groomed. Sans nail polish, her palms smelled of Jergen's lotion and her warm fingertips would pat time with an imaginary tune playing in her head on the steel arm of the lawn chair.
I wondered then... if we shared such a special day, would I someday have her worn hands and lined knuckles, too?
When my mom was hospitalized in NYC, I spent hours sitting in a chair at her bedside. As she dozed in a medicine induced sleep, I held her hand... and stared intently at it. In the blurry- barely-there-light of her hospital room, I saw Great Gramma's hands again. Her perfectly oval fingernails were bare and her hands lay exposed from her blankets, and I held on for dear life. For her life-- for mine-- for her barely toddler aged grand daughter and for all I knew we would miss. That touch of her hand was a stable force in all of my memories.
I recall being very ill with pneumonia in kindergarten and waking to my mom's hand absentmindedly creasing my forehead with the repetitive force only a worn and weary mother can duplicate. In the final hours of my labor with Madi, there she sat, recreating her bedside ritual.
Those hands. Those woman's hands. The hands of the women of my tribe. My family's fingerprints are forever pressed into my mind. The hands that changed diapers and dipped into scalding dish water. The hands that patted pie dough and pinched the corners to hold the fruit inside the crafted pie creation. The fingers that wove yarn around them and guided the yarn onto needles to create scarves and booties. The hands that pulled weeds and braided hair and twisted garbage bags closed with a flair.
The hands of my Great Grandmother, my Gram Alice, my wonderful mother. I see them. I see them now, typing on my keyboard. My hands-- continuing to hold on so tightly to the hands of those gone. Pounding words into stories yet to be told. Holding their precious tales in their palm. Pressing on pulse points and weaving thoughts into whispered prayers. Let our hands touch you.
