My Mother’s Hands (Have not read previously)
I look at my mother’s hands in the photo of her and my dad’s anniversary and realize they are not my mother’s hands. They resemble my mother’s hands with her wedding rings worn proudly. But you see, this picture is static, my mother’s hands were never static – they were expressive, when she spoke, her hands would match the rhythm and meaning of her words. Her hands were creative, no challenge was too great.
As a young woman, she had worked in a match factory in Hull, Quebec. Her tasks required great care and meticulous precision. The workers were aware of the dangers of this work. When she was 16, a family move to homestead the great North of Ontario, meant her hands undertook many tasks that were very foreign to her, being a “city girl”. This part of her story is relegated to the future.
I have seen these hands at their creative and most expressive best. Watching her carefully fold meringue into Angel Food cake or spreading it with great accuracy to top off one of her delicious lemon meringue pies in order to create great peaks that would, when baked, turn golden brown and look so inviting to young and old.
Knitting, crocheting, sewing, weaving and the very precise work of tatting were but a few things I saw undertaken by these hands. Baking bread, cakes, pies and desserts as well as decorating wedding cakes worthy of awards were created by these hands. Manual dexterity was evident in the tasks executed, be it in the finer details or other tasks such as hanging clothes on the line before the purchase of the clothes dryer, putting up wallpaper or tending to her precious geese.
In her 80’s, my mother decided to take piano lessons having never played a single note in her life. As a music lover, she told us at the time, that she had always wished she could play and also that “you’re never old to learn something new”. Under the guidance of her granddaughter, the piano teacher, her hands would slide lovingly across the keyboard.
But the best use of those two hands was in the love shown to many. Children were held gently, babies were swaddled, toddlers were cuddled. Comfort was offered to those who needed it. A soft touch to the cheek was given freely with these hands. Hands of a daughter, wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and great-great grandmother; soft, inventive, creative, arthritic, all the while loving.
I have come to realize that this picture is far more than what the eyes can see. The hands captured in this picture are but the essence of the person she truly was in life.
