My hands look like my mom’s, other features do too, but I notice my hands more and the gestures they make. I would place my hand on the side of a student’s drawing and notice the familiarity, but the not-quite-ownership of that hand. It felt like me, but a little separate.

 

Think back to the hands of your parents and grandparents and there is something so memorable.   I remember my grandmother showing me her engagement ring, but she was unable to get it past a swollen, arthritic knuckle. Her hands were a little crooked and veiny but quite fascinating to my young eyes.

 

My dad worked with his hands, so they were skillful and firm, but never rough.  He would hold my arm to keep me safe or push me along. He could scale a fish like no one else, with a secure grip on the fish, he would give a quick whack on the head, then small, white, sharp scales flying everywhere, a cut like a surgeon and innards now out, a quick toss and a rinse in a bucket and one nice little filet.

 

My mom could crack an egg on the side of a bowl and with the same hand toss the shell in the garbage, just like a magician to me, and breakfast was on the way. When I was in bed sick with a fever, I remember her shaking down the thermometer with a snap of her wrist and her cool hand soothing away any bad feeling.

 

We hold out our hands for help, or friendship or signaling which way to go. We shake hands and hold hands and use certain fingers to indicate our feelings or point at something. We say so much and so little with our hands. As I look at my fingers hitting the keyboard my hands are doing the talking, and they look so familiar.

 

Palm

Rainer Maria Rilke

Palm of the hand. Sole, that no longer walks

but on feeling. That holds itself upward

and in its mirror

receives heavenly roads, that themselves

have journeyed far.

That has learned to walk on water

when it scoops,

that walks upon springs,

transformer of all ways.

That steps into other hands,

turning into landscape

those that are its double:

wanders and arrives in them,

and fills them with arrival.