Hands

When I was a little girl, I wanted hands like my grandmother’s.  My Grandma Cecil, aka Eloise Beyette, my mother’s mother, had hands that worked.  

Hands that dug in the red East Texas dirt and planted acres and acres of beans, cucumbers, okra, squash, eggplant, tomatoes, corn, peas, beets, greens.  Hands that picked all those vegetables, out in the hot summer sun, with no hat, no gloves. Hands that canned a year’s worth of fruit and vegetables in just under a week.  

Hands that hung tons of wet laundry on the line.  Hands that took the stiff, dried pine-and red-dirt-and-fresh-air scented clothes, towels, and linens off the line, and folded, hung, and put them away, over and over.  Hands that made beds, cleaned bathrooms, vacuumed and dusted.

Hands that upholstered furniture finer than any store-bought upholstery.  Hands that made beautiful satin curtains that lasted for years and fancy evening wear dresses that made my sister Kim the belle of the ball in Houston high society.  

Hands that painted every inch of her house inside and out, ceilings and cabinets included, over and over.  Hands that built a chair with a 2-man cross-saw all by themselves, when she was just 16 years old and wanted a chair and was tired of waiting on my grandpa to get her one.

Hands that hauled firewood off the carport and into the fireplace.  Hands that tended the fire.

Hands that pushed a hand mower through lowland boggy grass on the other side of the creek and across acres of pine-tree dotted lawn.  Hands that raked and picked up all the pine straw and pine cones on that lawn, piling them up in huge bundles to be burned. Hands that burned trash and yard debris.  

Hands that rolled out dough and cut and baked thousands, possibly millions of buttermilk biscuits, and then served them to the men working with her husband and friends and family.  Hands that made the best hamburgers and chicken fried steak and pot roast ever. Hands that cooked 3 hot meals a day for her whole life, except those days she drove into Houston to work.  

Fried eggs, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, and biscuits for breakfast.  Sandwiches for lunch. Fried fish, fried chicken, fried steak, fried okra, fried squash, french fries for dinner.  Pot roast for Sundays. German Chocolate Cake for special occasions. Barbequed chicken out in her big cast-iron cauldron out past the carport for really special occasions.  And hands that cranked and cranked and cranked the best homemade peach ice cream ever, out back of the house.

Hands that washed dishes, pots, and pans for all that food, in scalding hot soapy water--without gloves--every day of her long life. Hands that never touched a dishwasher. Hands that chopped ice blocks into chips with a hand-held ice pick, because it tasted better that way--she didn't believe in refrigerator ice-makers. Hands that used towels and pot holders to handle hot pans when they no longer had handles.

Hands that scaled and beheaded and boned thousands of fish that my grandpa caught on his lakes. Hands that helped him build those lakes and stock the minnow ponds and catfish ponds.

Hands that killed many a snake.  Copperheads and rattlesnakes, mostly.  Often right out the back door on the carport, while she was getting in the car.  “Hand me that hoe,” she’d say in her calm voice, motioning to the utility closet, “there’s a copperhead right by my foot,” one hand on the open car door and one foot on the floor board already, the other foot still as it could be on the concrete floor.  I’d hand her the hoe, and chop, there goes the head, the snake is dead, and she’d hop in the car, and off we’d go.

Hands that drove her beat up old boat of a Chevrolet Impala even when her legs barely worked anymore.

Hands that ran the Sears home kitchen goods department in the fanciest Sears store in Houston, back when there was such a thing.  Hands that drove her and her best friend there every morning, off at 6 am or so.

Hands that could control dogs that we were afraid of, dogs that sent men to the hospital, dogs that we approached with great caution and treats.

When I was in my 20s, I saw her lift a hot cast iron dutch oven with a pot roast out of the oven and put it on the stovetop like it was a book of matches.  I tried to pick up the pot, and I could barely budge it. She was at least in her 80s by then.

She was probably in her 80s before her hands ever even touched a remote control.  She had hands that dialed heavy metal phones and changed channels on the tv by turning knobs.

When my grandpa and my cousin died within months of each other, she turned her hands to making arrangements and taking them to their graves.  Her hands cleaned the headstones, scrubbing them with clorox and soap. Her hands gathered greenery from the woods and flowers from the florist and turned them into arrangements that were pure art of the heart.  Pure love. Her hands began to take photos of her creations and collected the photos in a portfolio.

My mother was a creator too, of children and food and clothes and homes, an artist of the beautiful, but her hands were not like her mother’s.  They were softer and whiter. They got gnarled a bit with age and arthritis, like my grandmother’s, but they were not as strong, not as spotted by sun, not as wrinkled, ever.

My hands are still forming. At first I tried to make them wrinkled like my grandmother’s by not wearing moisturizer or sunscreen and by doing lots of things with them.  But my hands will never look like her’s. Mine were formed by softballs, bats, gloves, footballs, basketballs, pianos, typewriters, pens, pencils, colors, marbles, monkey bars, jungle gyms, swings, slides, see saws, jacks, and light household chores.

What will touch screens, remote controls, voice-activated technology, and smart phones do to my hands?  I hardly use any pressure or fine motor skills using these devices. Sometimes I don’t use my hands at all.  I never cook a pot roast in a cast iron dutch oven and haul it to the stove top. I can just cook it by pressing a button on InstaPot.

I notice the hands of people under 30.  Their fingertips are insubstantial, thin, wispy, and tapered--not designed for work--but lightning fast on screens of all sizes.  I have to mash down to get the “p” on my curved screen Android smartphone. They have no problem with their “p’s,” or anything else, on the screen; their thin, wispy fingers just barely graze the screen and letters magically appear.  

I feel stupid touching screens.  Hundreds of years of print and writing culture tell me that symbols on the page are not the thing itself and that touching the page does not affect the page, is not like pushing a button.  Yet, now I am supposed to touch a screen--smooth and slick--no buttons, no keys , and the screen is alive and is the thing. For me, raised on manual and then electric typewriters, where I had to make solid contact with a key, which made another key move and leave a mark on a page to create one letter and then another, and the words were clearly not the thing, and the typewriter was clearly not the thing, but a tool in a process, where all the boundaries were clear, like skin, muscles, and bones; like ligaments and tendons, nerves and blood vessels, organs and joints--one object in relation to another object--each distinct and with a purpose--for me the world of smartphones and touchscreens is unreal in some essential way.  Boundaryless.

Yes, the pressure of my touch causes ones and zeros to flash and codes are spoken and move in the ether beyond, behind, underneath the screen, but where are they, what are they, and what exactly is happening?  Symbols create symbols in a world of codes. No wonder it’s hard to know what’s real.

My fingertips were formed by pens and pencils, typewriters, and brushes.  My mind was formed by knowing how objects related in space and time to one another.  My emotions were formed by watching my parents and their parents and my brothers and sisters and other people and observing and reacting to their emotions and my own stimulated by theirs, and on and on in continuous, spiralling loops of connection.

The young ones with their slender fingertips that never had to push a key to make a letter and may have never held a hammer or driven a nail or operated a sewing machine, but fly lightning fast over screens, what are their sources of emotion and connection?  How are their minds and emotions and bodies being formed? What is happening to their hands?

My cat reaches his paw out over my hand.  A quiet plea to pet him with my hands. Hands that were formed by me, and by my grandmothers on both sides, my mother, my father, my grandfathers, and all those before us, and all we have ever done. Hands that are still forming. May they always work.