I looked at my hands today, really looked at them,
remembering the grease burns from the Sunset Inn oil fryer
when I ignored the stings and pushed through again and again and again
I looked at my hands and refelt stroking my children's so so soft hair when they fell asleep on my chest ; being sad and seeking comfort or when sick brushing damp hair from their fevereish foreheads. That ::smell:: that linked us before they were born in the world and I watched their impossibly tiny hands grasping my thumb.
I looked at my hands and remembered how many people I grabbed onto not wanting to let them go until I had to. How many times I reached for my children in frustration and how I held my head in those hands and vowed to do better.
I looked at my hands and felt how hard I dug those gardens, planted those trees, stuck them deep into the dirt ...
I looked at my hands and put them up instinctively, defensively envisioning the past when I didn't want what was happening
I look at my hands and I feel like creating
I look at my hands and I feel like singing
I look at my hands and I feel like crying,
seeing my mother's hands after she died, laid folded on her stomach. Her hands in white gloves winning the sewing award, in mittens with her ice skates on posed in eternity, at the sink with a set grimace on her face at the frustration (I assumed) of raising five children in a military household, reaching out to welcome everyone who came to her door, especially her grandchildren, and the forgetting of her precious beautiful hands in her last years, her nails chewed and dry...
I look at my hands and open them.
and then i cup my face in those hands and breathe <3
