My Mother's Hands

My mother’s hands had short, clipped nails and prominent veins. She wore no rings, save her simple gold wedding band, and no nail polish.  

On Sunday mornings she wore soft white gloves to church. Her hands pointed to words in the hymnal and passed out little bags of chocolate chips, raisins, mini marshmallows, and red hots to her four wiggly kids. With one gloved finger, she tapped out “Intery mintery, cutery corn/Apple seed, apple thorn/Wire, briar, limber lock/Three geese in a flock…” on the fingers of the nearest child. During the sermon, when a single snap of her fingers signaled us to stop giggling and behave ourselves, her gloves muffled the sound but not the warning.

 

The rest of the week her hands rarely stopped moving. They folded laundry, ironed shirts, washed windows, scrubbed floors, polished woodwork, packed lunches, pared potatoes, peeled apples, stirred pudding, and cranked homemade ice cream.

 

They baited fishhooks, skipped stones, collected locust shells, arranged wildflowers, cut cattails, painted rocks and slate and pieces of driftwood. They played the piano and strummed the ukulele. They moved game pieces, worked jigsaw puzzles, colored in coloring books, and sewed teeny-tiny doll clothes. They turned the pages of our favorite books as we learned to read, held our bikes as we learned to ride, and pitched softballs as we learned to bat. 

 

I saw them covered in flour when she rolled out pie crust, hidden in bubbles when she washed the dishes, spattered with paint when she rolled the ceilings or painted walls, woodwork, and floors.

 

I felt them strong as they pushed the back of my swing, felt them gentle as she pulled out a stinger or splinter, felt them cool on my feverish cheeks. 

 

I watched them as she turned the whisper-thin pages of her old Bible, as she graded stacks of workbooks with her red pencil, and as she confidently filled in crossword puzzles in ink. 

 

As the years rolled on, they held the hands of my children, raced Matchbox cars down the ironing board with them, turned the pages of the same books she’d read to me. 

 

These days her hands are finally slowing down a bit. They still color, play the piano, and turn the pages of books and her Bible. They may be showing their age, but she has earned every wrinkle. To me, my mother’s hands have always been beautiful and always will be.

The Summer of the Second Grandchild

Ever since we found out about our second grandchild on Christmas Eve, our eyes have been focused on July (or August!). For months now, every conversation about summer plans has begun with “Well, it depends on Baby K…” We know the baby window is a wide one, but we are now two weeks from the due date, so I’m keeping my bag half-packed these days. My phone, usually silenced at night, has the volume turned up all the time now. And "casual" daily check-ins with my daughter have begun.

As we wait, I’ve been spending a lot of time looking forward to all that lies ahead: Holding sweet Baby K for the first time, watching my daughter and son-in-law as parents, happily taking day shifts and night shifts so Mom and Dad can get some rest… But I’ve also been looking back. It started with digging out my old journals to read the birth stories of each of my own kids. Then when I got to the journal from 1992, the year my daughter was born, I got lost in reading other entries, little snippets of our life back then. Those verbal snapshots gave me glimpses of our family that I’d nearly forgotten about.

 

Time is such a fluid thing. We’ve lived a whole life since I wrote those entries. Yet, sometimes, my days as a young mom seem like yesterday. I feel like if I can just look over my shoulder quickly enough, there we’ll all be—just as we were thirty years ago. I loved those days. But I also love these days. 

 

Our first grandchild, Jack, is nearing his first birthday, and what a happy, breathtaking year it’s been for my son and daughter-in-law (and for us!). Recently, I sent my daughter-in-law this text: “Good job, Mama. Your instincts were spot on.” She replied, “Aw thanks! I try but I don’t know what I’m doing.” I was struck by how true that is—in parenting and in life. We trust our instincts, try our hardest, but so much of the time we feel like we don’t know what we’re doing. 

 

Yesterday, my daughter and I spent the day hemming curtains for Baby K’s nursery. It involved a lot of measuring, marking, pinning, cutting, ironing, and finally sewing. We were as careful as could be, and the curtains look beautiful, but they are not perfect. At one point, early in the process, I said to her, “I wish there was one thing in my life where I could say, “Oh, this. I know exactly what to do.” There are probably some people with more expertise and more confidence who feel this way about things, but most of us just go along, doing the best we can and learning as we go. 

In the middle grade novel The Watsons Go to Birmingham by Christopher Paul Curtis, there’s a part I love where the main character, ten-year-old Kenny says, “Dad? I don’t think I’ll ever know what to do when I’m grown-up. It seems like you and Momma know a lot of things that I can never learn. It seems real scary. I don’t think I could ever be as good a parent as you guys.” His dad replies, “You’ll learn from the mistakes your mother and I make, just like we learned from the mistakes our parents made. I don’t have a single doubt that you and Byron and Joey will be much better parents than your mother and I ever were…”

 

I think this is true: each generation learns from the mistakes of the previous one. That doesn’t stop us from making our own mistakes along the way, but from what I’ve seen of this current generation of young adults and young parents, the future is in good hands. Thirty years from now when our kids’ kids are having kids, I hope and believe the world will be a cleaner, greener, safer, kinder place. 

But for now, for us, the countdown is on. See you soon, Baby K. We can't wait to meet you!

Happy 90th Birthday, Dad!

 If my dad had lived another twenty years, he would be turning ninety today. Although I’ve thought of him practically every day since the day he died, it still surprises me that he’s been gone so long and has missed so much. I wish he could see his grown-up grandchildren and meet his great grandchildren. I wish he could see how far technology has come in the last twenty years. But probably most of all, I wish the phone would ring and I’d hear his voice on the other end saying, “Hi, Babe. I don’t really want anything. Just thought I’d check in.” 

Back when those phone calls came regularly, I was a busy, frazzled, working mom. Sometimes I’d sometimes think, If you don’t really want anything, why are you calling? Now that I’m retired and have grown-up kids of my own, I know exactly why he was calling: to hear my voice, to make sure all was well, to stay connected… 

 

The same thing happened in childhood. If one of us kids happened to run into Dad in town when we were on our way to the pool or to a friend’s, he’d be as pleased as anything to see us. “Hey, Windy Mindy,” he’d say to me, “Want to go to Isaly’s for a vanilla Coke?” Sometimes I went, other times, I was too busy with my friends and my plans. TOO BUSY. If only I’d known then what I know now: It wasn’t about the vanilla Coke (though, those soda fountain vanilla Cokes were delicious), it was about a dad who, even then, could hear the pounding feet of the years slipping by, a dad who’d do anything to spend a few minutes with one of his kids.  

 

Like everyone, my dad had his share of troubles. He struggled to find the right job and career. He suffered from anxiety, depression, poor health for almost all of his adult life. Sometimes, those things got in the way of being a dad. Although I have memories of some of those hard times, what I remember more are all the days and all the ways he was a great dad—despite the battles he was fighting.

 

In honor of Dad's 90th birthday, here are just nine of my favorite memories from childhood: 

• The packages of M & M’s he left under our pillows on nights he got home late.
• The time he made my school lunch and instead of a sandwich, he put a potholder between two pieces of bread with a dollar tucked underneath along a note saying I had permission to eat lunch in town.
• His practice of giving us Friday night dimes (later quarters) to spend on anything we wanted.
• The nights he’d come through the door and call out, “Who wants a party?” then pull out little packages of Hostess cakes.
• The odd times he played kickball, four-square, or Spud with us when Mom was working.
• His roll calls: “Is everybody happy? Gail? Timmer? Windy Mindy? Salbo? Willie Bill?”
• The sound of his voice as he led the music at church, sang duets with my mom, or belted out “Five Golden Rings on Christmas car trips.
• The way he thought a milkshake could fix just about anything—from a sore throat to hurt feelings. 
• His ability to make each of us four kids feel like we were his favorite.

Although I would love to have had another twenty years with my dad, he gave me so much to hold onto in his absence. The very best memory I have, the one I carry with me everywhere I go every day of my life is the way Dad was always in my corner, the way he cheered me on and cheered me up, the way he believed in me and helped me believe in myself. In short, the way he loved me. What more could a daughter ask for?

Happy 90th Birthday, Dad. I miss you.