These Hands

I promised to savor her smallness.   To let her nap on my chest, curled up like a mollusc, and allow the laundry to pile up.  And so, I carry her into bed with me in the early amber hours of morning as we stretch and purr and sluggishly shed sleep’s skin.  I attempt to memorize the contours of her face, the pucker of her lips, the ripe plumpness of her cheeks.   I inhale the honey sweetness of her breath. I know this is our last baby and her hands make me cry.  They are flawless and minuscule.  The delicate nails, the quaint dimple of her knuckles, the distinct pattern of her fingerprints.  She will have these hands for eighty, ninety, perhaps even one hundred years and they will do a lot of living.

These hands will soon begin to grasp and thump the floor in rhythm with her knees.  They will clap, yank hair and assault her sister’s Barbie house.  They will learn to tie laces and doggie paddle in the shallow waters of Michigan summers.   These will be the same hands to tug on my sweater at the park when I am chatting with another mom and she is desperate to show me her cartwheel.  And the hands that will refuse to unravel from my neck the first day of school.  These hands will ravenously flip the pages of a Harry Potter novel, clutching a flashlight under the covers, flinching at the sound of my footsteps. She will let me hold these hands through parking lots, on escalators, and in crowded department stores.  These hands will need me.

These hands will cover her face, soaked in tears, and shoot up in elation after a soccer goal.  They will perspire during spelling bees and freeze on the sledding hill.  They will clench the steering wheel in white-knuckled uncertainty that first trip down the driveway.    They will give me the finger when my back is turned behind the kitchen counter and they will wave goodbye when we drop her off at college, just as my own will suddenly feel as though they have been severed from my wrists. These hands will grow independent.

These hands will encircle cups of Italian roast coffee and drape over stemmed glasses of burgundy. By day, they may steady a scalpel or draw a bow across a violin.  They will taste-test the world and uncover her talents. These hands will tentatively reach out and touch the arm of a stranger.  They will caress the face of a lover and gingerly adjust the knot of his tie.  These hands will be enfolded in another’s.  These hands will one day wear a sapphire ring. 

These hands will grip the rails of a hospital gurney during labor and envelop a swaddled infant.  They will learn to be a mother’s hands – tender and sturdy.   These hands will work hard.  They will callous.  Scrubbing, mixing, typing, diapering, comforting, teaching.   They will tuck in toddlers, apply Mickey Mouse Band-Aids, twist hair into French braids, and scour the clay out of softball socks.  These hands will make countless bologna sandwiches.   These hands will nurture.

These very hands will get singed while taking a lasagna out of the oven and sliced while chopping carrots for Christmas dinner.  They will ball-up used wrapping paper, wipe tears from little cheeks, and trim tulips from the garden.  They will endure numerous paper cuts, splinters, and knicks and knocks and one broken pinky on the ski slope. They will tire, rub throbbing temples, and wearily plop down on pillows with the lights still on and the evening news rattling on the TV.  

These hands will travel, touching pyramids and pink sand and the leathery backs of elephants.   They will call me on Sundays and carry in my groceries.  These hands will expertly swing a golf club. They will wrinkle and cradle the heads of the great-grandchildren I will never meet.  These hands will quiet.   These hands will find serenity.  

These inconceivably tiny hands that I have held since her first day will be the same ones decades from now to reach across my worn-out body and squeeze my own.   And as I lay here now, staring at these hands I have known for only sixty days, I think there isn’t another pair I would rather hold on my last day.  These hands are mine for such a short, fleeting, delicious wisp of time.