My mother's hands are small. As a child, her hands got scratched while picking lucious, dark blackberries. Her hands deftly collected eggs from the chicken coop and plucked clean the hen destined for the Sunday-supper pot. Her grip held tight the wooden pestle that pounded cabbage and salt into earthenware crocks for a winter's-worth of kraut, and ladled thick, sweet apple butter from the cauldron boiling in the rear yard.
As a young woman, my mother left her native Kentucky for a factory in Cincinnati where her steady hands skillfully soldered transistors onto circuit boards. After marrying, her hands changed diapers and turned the pages of bedtime stories that lulled her children to sleep. Her strong hands could wield a mean hickory switch when a child required a good licking.
Then, one day, my mother's immune system decided her hands were her enemy. Arthritis ravaged her joints into deformity. Fingers became twisted, joints permanently locked--inflamed, red, swollen and excruciatingly painful. These are now hands that have a will to open jars, touch type, thread needles, and plant flowers. They have a will, but not a way. I wish for my mother, the hands of her youth.
As a young woman, my mother left her native Kentucky for a factory in Cincinnati where her steady hands skillfully soldered transistors onto circuit boards. After marrying, her hands changed diapers and turned the pages of bedtime stories that lulled her children to sleep. Her strong hands could wield a mean hickory switch when a child required a good licking.
Then, one day, my mother's immune system decided her hands were her enemy. Arthritis ravaged her joints into deformity. Fingers became twisted, joints permanently locked--inflamed, red, swollen and excruciatingly painful. These are now hands that have a will to open jars, touch type, thread needles, and plant flowers. They have a will, but not a way. I wish for my mother, the hands of her youth.
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