These Hands, Those Hands, His Hands

So this is a long one, but I am making this the theme of my trip to Europe, for those who are interested. It is very much a first draft so I am looking for any and all feedback.

These hands. Those hands. His hands.

 

These hands. These wrinkly old grandma hands. My cuticles spend their time in a constant state of disrepair, red and pointy, abused and patchy. My fingernails are jagged from the grinding of my teeth against them. Sometimes that teeny patch of web in between my fingers dries out and I have to give special lotion treatments to that area in specific. I have more lines on my palm than a map of the streets of New York City. Elaine Zick once told me that I have the ugliest hands that she has ever seen. I haven’t forgotten that comment. I remember it when I look down daily at my prematurely aged hands, and I will remember it when I am trying on wedding rings one day. There is really no doubt about it. I have ugly hands.

 

But these hands are my hands. They wear a ring that my father made out of a quarter. They have written novels. They have dug holes in my mother’s flower garden and planted Zinias every Mother’s Day that I can remember. They have held the hands of boyfriends, and best friends, and nephews and nieces, and all the world’s most important people. They’ve attempted playing basketball. They’ve failed several tests. They may have flipped someone off once too. But they have also held the fork that fed my frail old grandpa peas and carrots in his last month of life. They have held onto a priesthood holder’s arms as he dunked me into the water to save a soul. These hands are my hands, and ugly though they may be, they at least mean something to someone. These hands mean potential.

 

Those hands. The hands of the baker are confident as he kneads his sturdy fingers into the bread. His fingernails are meticulously clean though lightly dusted with a layer of flour from index finger to wrist. The lines on his palms that could once read his future are now blurred by burns that only speak of past. He is missing the top segment on his left pinky finger.  The spots of age are beginning to form, but they are merely spots of wisdom. Those hands are ripe with wisdom.

 

Those hands send his memories into the wheat that he sells to his consumers. Those hands represent the love of the honey that he weaves into the dough. Those hands have waved goodbye to a wife and daughter as he boarded the bus to Poland. They have shook in fear and trembled in the cold beneath a tent that scarcely kept out rain and didn’t keep out the sounds of rampaging war. Those hands held up a soldier, allowing the O negative blood to leak all over his hands as he hoisted this man to the nurse’s tent. They have pulled the trigger that fired the bullets at his neighbor. These hands have held his daughter’s cheeks and told her that he was home and that he would never leaver her again. Those hands are his hands. They vend the bread that sustains my life. 

 

His hands. Soft and open at all times. His hands. Splintered with the efforts of his labors as a carpenter. His hands. Weathered with time and experience, but the opposite of leathery. His hands are strong because in them, he has held the weight of the world. They bare imperfect scars of ultimate perfection in the middle of his palms. His hands are the ones that yours crave to hold the most, but they have already held my metaphorical hands that have fed my grandpa. They have held my metaphorical hands that have flipped someone off. They have held those hands that have killed a man. His are the hands the hands. His hands represent sacrifice. His hands are the bread of life.

 

These hands. Those hands. His hands. These are the hands that make up the human existence. In my exploration of hands in Europe, I hope to weave a journal that I can hold in my hands.