Hands

I think I've expressed before my obsession of hands, just the simplicity to them and the rawness. They are always so honest. I don't know if it's just me, but I feel like you can see a life in a hand. When you see someone's worn and wrinkly hand, you know they've lived a long and full life. When you see a baby's chubby fist full of hair, you know they are only just beginning.

 

Some people are nail-biters, some thumb-suckers, some piano players. It is amazing what we can do with our hands and I often feel such gratitude towards them.

 

When you become older and arthritic, you may grow to despise your hands and the way they look. I would like to always try to look at the memories and what my hands have been through -- perhaps a fifteen-page, typed-out symposium in grad school, years worth of family-blogging, eulogy-typing, church talks, elementary school lesson plans, white board writing, sand castle-building, present-wrapping, hand-holding, tattoo-getting at the early age of nineteen, hand-written letters to pen pals -- and all of these things will be so worth it. Worth the crooked fingers, the choppy nails, and the wrinkled tattoos. Rather than worry about the way they look, I will be grateful for a life that was so full and so grand that it brought me to these hands. They are mine forever, mine to keep, mine to show when someone asks, "So what's your story?"