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My Mother's Hands
March 2005
 For the past few years, I have been startled to discover my mother’s hands extending off my wrists. This discovery always surprises and intrigues me. I watch in amazement as her fingers flex and move before me. Our identical gold wide wedding bands adorn slender fingers reaching out from narrow palms. I hold them aloft, in front of my eyes and study them. I notice the way the bones protrude slightly against the skin below the knuckles. Yes, they are definitely my mother’s hands.
Her hands suddenly accompany me in almost everything I do now. My wonder and study of them doesn’t dim. The location and activity of their joining me varies. It happens frequently as I work, as she and I are both writers. I look down and find her hands hovering above the keyboard, thinking for a moment, before plunging in and typing as quickly as possible. Mom’s hands are always moving, always doing. They are still only when she reads and they quietly hold the book.
I watch her hands digging in the dirt to plant spring flowers and summer vegetables. I watch her hands quickly wrap and fasten a diaper about my babies, always punctuated with a gentle tickle on the tummy to elicit a giggle. Again and again, I hold them aloft, delicately moving my fingers, remembering hers dancing across the keys of a piano as effortlessly as they now do the keyboard. In the morning, when I write by candlelight, I smile softly to myself as the shadows cast illuminate shallow lines that over time will mold to match hers.
I gaze upon them and think of all of the history carried within the blood running through the veins I sometimes faintly see through the surface of the skin. This blood connects me, binds me with its legacy of feminine love, wisdom, and strength. I study them and wonder if Mom ever does the same, seeing her grandmothers’ hands extending from her own wrists, wondering if her mother’s had looked similar.
This morning as I read a story to my five-year-old daughter, Wynn, she gently rested her small hand upon mine. Questions and thoughts of her future flooded through me. Will she one day hold her hands aloft, startled to discover her mother?s hands extending from her wrists?
I hope so.
And, I hope through her life the sight fills her with the same comfort, strength, and love, as the accompaniment of my mother’s hands does me.
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