Return to top

MY MOTHER'S HANDS

April 2002
My mother's hands were horrible.
Stark and scarred with work, veins protruding,
tough as leather, knobby, gnarled and scrubbed too much,
permanently curved to wield a tool or cup a kitten.

Before the gnarling years they deftly, sweetly drew
the bow across her violin-
her hands and music ear would lead her to the orchestra
and lifelong love.
Those delicate musician fingers toughened on manual machines,
Pounding with sure-handed speed, a secretarial dream.
Those clever hands never spelled amiss.

That scar on her knuckle-she earned it
swiftly swishing a dishrag inside a silently cracked glass-
a newlywed, far from home,
nearly losing a finger to a simple glass.

Cleaning, cooking-oh yes, the work.
The kitchen center of our home,
her hands the silent hub.
From her youth she put up peaches in the fall-
22 halves per jar, not 21 or 23, her grandma had decreed-
so we could eat real peaches out of time..
The chili sauce-the famous brew!
Bushels to chop of tomatoes and onions,
and peppers so hot they stung for days,
that strong hand stirring the cauldron pot each time she passed,
all day, to make the magic stuff that none of us can recreate.
Store bought is pitiful enough-not the taste those loving hands- stirred in.
Three months a year she labored long to send to those she loved
Those glorious cookies, formed by hand, to near and distant lands.
Her mate, her kids, their friends, grandkids-those hands
would feed them all with nourishment and love.

Her hands were as at home outside as in.
Tending is tending, clean or in dirt.
Daughter of a florist-farmer, she knew her fruit peels
buried would enrich the earth
long years before the weekend gardeners
learned to manufacture compost.
So much to do with dirt on your hands, our mother, our earth.

Those hands tended tender roses, reaching through the cutting thorns
to the blessed blossoms, rewarding the stabs.
Children needed tending just the same,
reaching with those toughened hands
beyond the stings to bring the precious buds to wondrous bloom.

Her hands were fluent in love as they aged,
ambassadors of her nurturing , heart that cared for all living things,
and taught to those who watched them silently sing
the simple lesson of the sage:
though it may scar, it's the giving that brings us grace.

Those hands-so strong and sure, facile, fluid, seldom still, wrinkled, spotted gnarled-
historians of a life replete with work and joy.

My mother's hands were beautiful.

Return to top