Grandmommy's Hands

In the fall of 2010, just months before my mother passed away, my daughter did a school project that she named Grandmommy’s Hands. Kate interviewed her grandmother, my mother, with various pre-selected questions about Momma’s early life and her memories of her teen-age years. I was present. The interview was rather eye-opening, almost eye-popping, as I may share in a later post.

My mother had any number of skin problems. In one of life’s cruel and enduring truths and as so many things do, her skin problems worsened with age. With Mother’s advancing years, regressing health, and at least one documented stroke came bangs, bumps, bruises, and falls and the corresponding wear and tear on her skin, particularly on her arms and hands.

Today, as on most days, I spent countless hours at the computer keyboard. I at some point inadvertently glanced down at my hands. With dismay I thought, “Oh no, I have ‘Grandmommy’s hands.’ This is horrible. Suddenly and unexpectedly I have old hands.” Almost immediately I heard the recently ever present voice in my head, “They may be the most beautifully ugly hands you could ever have imagined. They are, after all, your mother’s hands."

Again, in another and the smallest of ways, I carry her with me. I find myself wondering if that could also have been her voice……