They are so similar to hers. This is my thought as I rub the bar of lavender hand lotion onto the rough winter skin of my hands, massaging it in deeply. The snarled knuckle on my middle finger is tender, swelled with arthritis. I find myself rubbing over the arthritic bump with my other hand, sliding my thumb and ring finger up and down it to soothe the burning pain, with the index and middle finger pointing upright, just like she used to do. My action causes a reaction. A smile comes to my face. I am almost afraid to look up at the reflection in the mirror for whom might I see, my mother or me? The little finger of the same hand curves just like hers and there is a small bump on the outside of the top knuckle beginning to form. By nightfall I unconsciously keep this pinky finger rather straight. She was right. It does feel better straightened than to bend it. Observing my finger nails, I assess they are strong and healthy and grow faster than chickweed in a summer garden. I can hear her words as I say them aloud this minute. My wrist lines are deep as were hers, and the skin is thinning on the tops of my hands, making soft wrinkles appear when they are stretched straight out. There’s that raised vein, often deep blue in color, across the top of the left hand. I recognize it well but how long has it been here on MY left hand?

As I massage in the lotion for a little longer, I can’t help but to notice my long life line. I remember tracing her lifeline and her tracing mine, and how it tickled my hand, making me laugh. They were then identical in length in comparison to her full grown size hands and my child size hands. I was 5... She was 42, and beautiful. It’s a long life line but hers granted her a life of only 80 short years, 30 more than I have already lived, not long enough, either way I look at it...those that she lived, or those that I have left to live.

I place the hammered tin lid over the shallow cut glass container that holds the lotion bar, remembering all the years she used this attractive container to hold cotton balls. I stop massaging and go to sit on the couch, cozy in the corner, leaning back to rest my neck on the top curve of the back. After a few deep breaths and quiet sighs, I pull the wrapped white towel off my damp clean long hair, shaking my head to let the tangled mess fall. Tucking both hands under the thick clump of wetness, I lift my hair and plop it over the back of the couch, resting once again my neck. I need this time to gather my patience before the comb out, while also allowing it to air dry some more before the undertaking.

I close my eyes, and almost instantly there I am, sitting on the pretty pink silky chintz that covered the seat of her oval shaped vanity bench, my feet dangling two feet from the floor. In the fancy mirror in front of me I see her behind me, her soft lips smiling as she tells me how beautiful my hair is but the ends need to be trimmed again. She pulls a few strands around to the front of me, showing me how they are beginning to split. She tells me she hopes it stays the same strawberry blonde, how lucky a little girl I am to have such a pretty color hair.

I tell her, “I wish it was brown like yours,” adding a loud, “Ouch” as the comb gets stuck in a tangle. She is patience and gentle as she combs out the rats. I never did ask why she called tangles rats. I guess it just seemed right to me that she called tangles rats, since sometimes before dinner she would tell me to go wash my hands, adding, “And please run a brush through your hair, it looks like the rats were sucking on it.”

When she has finished combing out my hair, and she is satisfied with it lying smooth and sleek down my back to my waist, she strokes my head. “Ok all finished my beautiful girl.” As her hand lovingly strokes my head a couple of more times, we talk back and forth to the two people in the mirror for a little bit. It is always good to see both our faces when we talk like this, and I wonder for one minute if I will ever be pretty like her. I slide off the vanity bench and my fuzzy cat slippers finally touch the floor both at he same time making a little plop noise as the hardwood meets the sole of my slippers. (It was fun to slide off the bench, and I never wanted her help, but her arm instinctively would brace itself on the front of the wood vanity, just in case I fell forward). She leans down to kiss me goodnight, saying she’ll be in to tuck me in soon, reminding me not to forget to say my prayers. I think to myself, “Why do you always remind me, who would forget to say their prayers?”, but I don’t say it aloud.

She takes my place on the vanity bench. I watch her as she looks at her face in the beautiful cherry wood mirror. Her head turns to the left and she strokes the outline of her thin eyebrow with her middle finger. She turns her head to the right and repeats the same with her left hand on the left eyebrow. Next comes that the same deep breath that she always takes when she sits here. Sure as I know it is coming, she lets out a sigh, and I have again the same thought I do each time she does this, that the sigh is surely unworthy for the size of the breath she took. As her shoulders slowly come down to a peaceful rest she picks up her brush with her left hand.

Opening my eyes, to the reality of my own living room, I think silent thoughts. The only real difference in our hands is that she used her left one as the predominant hand, and I am right-handed. How beautiful she could crochet and how difficult it was for her to teach me, and for me to learn, because everything was opposite for us. A few days after her first attempt to show me, she taught herself to crochet with her right hand, well enough that she could teach me, so I wasn’t confused watching her do it with her left.

Her hands worked hard. They cooked, baked, sewed, hung out and folded laundry, ironed everything even pillowcases and my daddy’s jockey underwear, dusted, paste waxed floors polishing them to a shine, planted flowers and pulled weeds, crocheted, wrote long letters to friends. Her hands held hands with my father through a lifetime of a happy marriage and even long after his demise. These hands were lovingly giving as they cared for my ailing Nany, my paternal mother, long after he was gone from this earth. She lent them out to others whenever and wherever they were needed. These same hands turned the pages of her Bible daily, and they folded together when she prayed. They clapped at school plays, and spelling bees, they wrapped my birthday presents, and they fixed my skinned knees. At times they kept me from my falls, and when she had to let me fall to grow her hands were there to help me rise. They smocked dresses for me when I was a baby, and they smocked two more dresses so many years later for my daughter, all by hand and with perfection. These hands held mine when I was in labor and gave me endurance for pain. Her hands are the ones that bathed my baby girl for the first time only minutes after she was born. They dried many a tear from her eyes that she never let me see, and wiped many a tear from mine that I always let her see. Such a selfless example that she set for me, and one which I followed with my children. A child’s tears can swell a mother’s heart, but a mother’s tears uselessly burdens the heart of her young.

I think of how my hands are so much like hers, not only in appearance. Her hands were hard working hands, just like mine. “You never have to be ashamed of hard working looking hands,” she once told me. “God gave them to us to use and he will judge them with kindness, by the years of work they show, and by measuring the helpful kindness they gave to others.”

I begin the task of combing the rats out of my hair, and yes, I do chuckle to myself. Where did she ever get that expression from? Perhaps, from her Mother whom she only had to love for 12 short years of her life, and hence a grandmother I never knew but through the few memories my mother held so dear to her. There was always a hole in her heart that never closed, I suspected. I cannot help but to wonder how she could have possibly learned to be such a good mother with such a short time of her own mother’s teaching. I comb and comb until the comb runs freely from top to bottom of the great length of my hair...Pulling it back I grab it at my neck and twist it tightly forming a long roll. I loop the roll of hair and form a knot, pulling the end through to hold it secure. My hair is now ready for bed. My heart is missing her, but it is far from heavy, my mind is full of her memories and sleep is what I long for now.

Cozying my wretched tired body, laying my head on my pillows, and pulling the goose-down comforter up to cover myself, I shut off my brain for a time, waiting to feel the feathers warm me. It takes only a few minutes and I am warm and relaxed. I fold my hands to pray... not with my palms together and my fingers upright but rather locked inside of one another hand to hand, forming a rounded ball...just like she did. Tonight I am selfish with my prayers. I take time to only give thanks for two things. First, for my mother’s hard working hands that guided me. May she now be able, in heaven, to rest them. Lastly, I give thanks for my hands that still have so much strength left in them, to work hard and to give kindness to others. Her hands told the story of a good living, loving woman, and one day perhaps my hands will be worthy the memory of the same story.

Goodnight Mom, I will never stop holding you close in my heart and always be grateful you were chosen to be my mother.

Love,
Carolyn

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