Hands

My great-grandmother Ruth's hands were, in their 70's, gnarled, veiny and strong. Attached to her tiny, 4' 10" body, they chopped fuel for her wood stove one minute and lifted translucent cups of tea the next.  They were feather soft on your face as she kissed you goodbye and conveyed pure joy when she clasped them to her chest in delight. Bakers of legendary scones, I often wondered if she held up to the light, would you see through them like you could through your earring-stretched lobes.

Her daughter Margaret drove to California in the late 40's. She was the rebel in her family. We have one picture of her from that trip and I often wonder what she saw as she drove highways from Victoria to California. In my mind's eye she is Gina Davis in Thelma & Louise - gorgeous scarf on her head and hands on the steering wheel of a convertible. 

Miles go by as she drives, wind trying to tear the fabric off her head. Did she grip the steering wheel hard enough to cramp her hands? Those same hands that put a needle on a record that told me the Bible story of David and Jonathan. The story that brought me to Jesus at age five.

She birthed my mother Kim in 1955. A shy, insecure girl who tried to fly under the radar so she wouldn't catch the attention of my grandfather in his drunken hours. Her hands held books, many books, over the years of my childhood. They also made bread, such far reaching bread that somehow my uncle would always show up just as it was being pulled from the oven. 

Later those hands were decorated with beautiful rings. Usually with clear, European lines, sometimes with amber or garnets, but mostly silver and stunning. Hands that held my baby boy moments after I did, that had rubbed my back often during the twenty-four hours it took to birth him.

Her hands are veiny and arthritic now, but still work hard stocking shelves for 12 hours a week. Then they can do more important things like touch the pews in the Church of St. James after walking the Camino. So she can drive with twelve hours across Montana, Wyoming and New Mexico, laughing with my sister and Curtis' Deanna en route to Austen, Texas. No head scarf or convertible for this road trip, but I still think the wind blew through her hair as her hands held the wheel.

I can only pray my own hands, Sam's hands, will tell such good stories. Isn't that why I am here? To do more with them than simply drop change in fare collector on a bus or correct endless addresses in a database that makes good works possible. Hands that have changed hundreds of diapers, created many pans of lasagna for special occasions, folded Star Wars and Pokemon underwear, or coaxed feelings of adoration and ecstasy from tender flesh.

Hands that cramp in the thumbs now when its cold, fumble with a bit too much weight, swell on hot days. Yet, they still sooth hurts, hug and ruffle hair for comfort. That spot on the back of Iain's neck where his three cowlicks centre which desperately needs to be tickled.

Hmm... perhaps those stories themselves are sufficient and precious enough. Perhaps it is enough that my hands do the handiwork of the one whose own hands were pierced for me. That they do the work of loving, and mothering, and caring that He called them to.  That they hold this pen to tell the stories He gave them. Isn't that worth finding out? I think I know.