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.