Recently, I received an email from my father-in-law. He often forwards emails that have been well circulated around the Internet, but this email struck me very differently than the other hundreds of weekly forwards I get in my inbox. In this email, someone was telling the story of meeting an old man who was considering his hands. The old man told the stranger of all the amazing and mundane things those hands had done in his life – everything from combing hair to fighting a war. The old man claimed his hands were “the mark of where [he had] been and the ruggedness of [his] life.” It was an amazing story he told through the life of his hands, and it began a series of thoughts for me that I had never contemplated in quite the same way before.
I began to consider that hands are much like biographies. My dad's hands, especially, reminded me of this: Every scar, callus, wrinkle, age spot, and black fingernail tell the story of his life. For nearly 40 years, he has used those hands to build and maintain natural gas pipelines and the mammoth engines that move the gas. As a result, those hands show vividly how he has spent a life working to support his family – how he worked to buy me things like prom dresses and tennis gear, as well as the larger part of a college education. They do, indeed, show "the ruggedness of [his] life." I only wish that somehow they also showed the gratitude that I have for all that they have done.
Similarly, this email also reminded me of my grandfather's hands -- large working hands that were always somehow very kind. In the last months of his life, when he was so overtaken by Alzheimer's that he did not know his own wife and children, his hands remembered how to thread pipe, something he did often as a young man working in the petroleum industry in West Texas. His hands remembered, and they threaded that pipe as he slept. During a time when he could remember virtually nothing of his own biography, his hands remembered for him.
Hands, too, seem to reflect our legacies. In my three-year-old son’s hands, I see so many others'. Sometimes, I see my husband’s 12-year-old cousin’s hands, thin and boyish. Sometimes, I see my mother-in-law's hands; something about the first knuckle of his first finger is so similar to hers. Of course, my husband's hands are also often reflected in the movements of those tiny, sweet fingers, especially the pinkie.
Beyond my son and his hands, there are times when I look down and see my sister’s hands doing what I am doing; my own hands oddly morph into her hands as the fingers move. A little older with a few tiny scars in different places, her hands do what my brain tells them. Then, without warning, the illusion vanishes, and my hands are my own again.
At times, I remember being jealous of other women’s hands, hands that seem so cool and smooth while being also elegant and purposeful. I have often wished that my hands were more like these women’s. In recent years, however, I have come to realize what my hands represent. They are large hands, hands that have been bequeathed to me by a family tree filled with farmers, with folks who worked and worked hard. These were people who valued hands that could work a long day without tiring. I am learning to appreciate this legacy in myself, in my own hands.
I realize now that my hands do all they need to: They hold my babies, and they show the world the ring of promise between my husband and me. They fill sippy cups and throw baseballs to a preschooler, and they turn the pages of my Bible. They are not perfect, but they are my life – my biography. My hands, like everyone else’s, exist as far more than digits, palms, and nails; they tell the stories of my life truthfully with every mark and line. They serve not only as tools, but also as tangible, visible memories of where my life has been and as an inheritance, tying me to those who came before.
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