My Mother's Hands

Peggy’s prompt for Feb 11, 2009. 25 minutes. “My mother’s hands”

My mother’s hands were an embarrassment to her during the years I knew her. Although I thought her hands looked just fine; she always kept her nails clean and trimmed and she used Jergen’s Hand Lotion every night, so to me they seemed soft and smooth. But to her, they were the hands of a farmer’s daughter—someone who as a child had worked in the fields, picking beans and tomatoes and bell peppers—and who for many years after that had washed clothes by hand, scrubbing them on a washboard, wringing them out by twisting and squeezing. She thought her knuckles were enlarged from hard work and that the veins on the back of her hands were to prominent.

More than anything, my mother wanted to be an educated middle-class lady, and she thought her hands put her squarely in the working class along with maids and housekeepers. As she got older, rheumatoid arthritis took an even heavier toll on her hand than did the farm work, and by the time she died, her hands were and looked crippled.

When I was a child, I would sometimes place one of my hands up against my mother’s hand and compare them for size. You have such nice hands, she’d say. I don’t want you to have to ruin them with hard work like I did. And so she deliberately spared me, and my sister, from much in the way of “heavy” housework, and required no yard work from us at all, although she herself worked in the yard all the time and had over time created a lush sub-tropical landscape for our modest home.

I think about all that now when I look at my own aging hands, with knobby knuckles and short fingernails, and enough age spots to make a face-lift seem ridiculous. And I’m grateful that my mother had “aspirations” for me to have an easier life than she did, and to instill a love of learning and knowledge in me that serves me still. But I feel sad that she didn’t love her hands like I loved them. When I think of my mother I often think of her hands, her warm, gentle, capable, hard-working, loving hands.

Dog

Peggy’s prompt for Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2009 “dog” 20 minutes

Wow, what an open-ended prompt. Dog(s) I have known. A special dog. Dogs: pros and cons. To dog (someone). Dog days. Doggone it. The Dog Star. Raining cats and dogs. Dog stories. Dog shows. Dog park. Simone/Ruffy/Sam/Soc. Fear of dogs. Overcoming fear of dogs. Raising shi t’zu’s (sp?) My mind hasn’t seized on anything yet. How ‘bout a fictional dog? Lassie, Rin Tin Tin. My own creation……

He wasn’t much to look at, my dog Spade. I called him Spade for no good reason. He didn’t look like a spade, he didn’t dig like a spade, he sure didn’t have Sam Spade’s detective ability. What he did do was jump, or really, leap. No fence was too tall for his long lanky body to hurtle over. His gawky legs would sometimes get caught on the top, but by furious squirming, kicking, and throwing in a little barking he could always make it over.

My mother wasn’t happy at all when I showed up with Spade. How’d you get to keep a dog at college, she asked suspiciously. Well, we sorta hid him most of the time, I offered back, hoping not to have to elaborate. You’ve got a fence, Mom, it’ll be fine. He can stay outside, I said. If only, I thought.

Within the first 30 seconds of being let off his leash, Spade was attacking the fence. He’d approach the fence with his nose down, sniffing, and when he found a spot that smelled just right he’d stop, lower his long black and tan body close to the ground, and suddenly spring straight up about two feet, not really trying to go over the fence. More like testing the height of his jump. Then, with Mom and me both watching, he trotted across the yard to the edge of the house, turned and picked up speed as he approached the fence. Then, just before smashing his big nose into the wire grid, he leaped up and sailed over the fence, plenty of room to spare.

Spade, I yelled. Oh no, Mom yelled. Spade stopped in his tracks about 10 feet on the other side of the fence and turned to face us. I swear he was grinning. Then he raced back about 30 feet and proceeded to repeat the same sequence, leaping back inside the yard.

Dang, I guess he won’t stay in the yard, I said. We could maybe charge admission, Mom allowed.

The Chipped Cup

One of the first times I ever brought souvenirs home from a trip was not long after Dennis and I were married. I can’t remember exactly which science education conference it was that I went to, or what city it was in, except that it was north of Tallahassee—but then, isn’t everything? Anyhow, I got coffee in the hotel coffee shop at breakfast, and it was served in a heavy, footed cup that had stenciled on its side
“As you ramble on through life, Brother,
Whatever be your goal,
Keep your eye upon the doughnut
And not upon the hole .
I loved it—the saying and the cup. They were selling them at the cash register, and on impulse I bought two—one for me and one for Dennis.
Dennis thought the cute was “cute” but he continued to use his giant stained lucky coffee cup just the same as always. I, on the other hand, used my souvenir cup daily. Then the inevitable happened—my precious cup got a chip on the rim. What to do now? The pristine cup in the cupboard was Dennis’, not mine. I had given it to him myself. So, excruciatingly fair person that I was, I continued to use my chipped cup for the duration of our short-lived marriage.
But then, when we divorced, somehow the chipped cup got thrown out and the pristine cup stayed with me. All’s fair in love and divorce, I guess. But I’ve never drunk coffee out of that pristine cup. It still sits high up in my cupboard. It doesn’t seem fair to use it.

At dusk...

At dusk, she would come out of her tiny cottage and walk slowly up and down the sidewalk on our side of the street, sometimes going right past our house. Taking her daily constitutional, I guess. Walking sort of tilted with her head cocked to the right. Our neighborhood’s version of Boo Radley. We kids were all scared of her, but Daddy said she was harmless. She was Frank Parks’Aunt Mary. Frank Parks who lived in the house on the corner and who had delivered ice with Daddy when they were both young men. Frank still worked at the ice plant and he had built a tiny house behind his own house for his Aunt Mary to live in.
I know very little else about Aunt Mary. She was a common presence in our neighborhood, but only at dusk, for the ten years I spent in that neighborhood before going off to college. After that I never saw her again and pretty much forgot about her. I never thought to ask my folks what became of her.
I don’t remember Aunt Mary ever saying a word, but maybe that’s because we kids kept a sizable distance away from her at all times. I wonder if she realized how we avoided her. She’d stand by the large fireplug at the corner, her hands on her hips, her head in that permanently cocked position, and stare at us. At least we thought she was staring at us. Maybe she was looking at the visions in her head. Whatever, it spooked us.
Only now, looking back, do I feel guilty about the way we children treated her—running from her, calling her Crazy Mary, avoiding her at all costs. Who knows what a closer contact with Crazy Aunt Mary might have taught us—about compassion, tolerance, empathy. We all had to learn those lessons somewhere else. Crazy Aunt Mary was just too scary.

You don't know me....

“You don’t know me.” That’s what I thought when the nurse-in-training came to get me set up for my bi-weekly infusion. And, as luck would have it, I jinxed the blood-drawing part of the routine, drawing from my permanent Port-o-cath. First time ever that it has refused to give blood. She tried all the tricks in her bag—another bolus of saline, move your head to the right, now to the left, stop right there, don’t move, lean bac, lean forward, put your feet on the floor, another bolus of saline into the port, then through the routine again. I tried to cooperate, trying deep breathing, conscious relaxation of my muscles, but to no avail. Finally, she said “Does it matter which arm I use?” meaning “I’ve given up. I’m going to have to use the vein in your arm.” Another, more painful stick than the one I’ve already had into the Port-o-cath.
I wonder if it was my gut reaction, my antipathy, that caused the problem. There’s no good reason not to like this gal. It’s just that she’s not one of the “regulars”—the ones I talk to, the ones who know my cancer history, the ones who ask about Jonathan, the impending granddaughter, my plans for the holidays. This gal is more like a technician—cool, competent—well, except for not getting my port to give up blood. It’s not her fault. It’s mine. I’ve gotten accustomed to the comfort of the routine of “my” nurses. I’m like Jonathan, I don’t adapt immediately to change that’s not of my own making.
This is just a little taste of what “comfort” is to an ill person. The comfort of routine, of caring caregivers, of a sense of rapport with them. I need to try harder with this gal. Next time I’ll try to engage her in conversation, give her a big smile.