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| Image by Avelino Calvar Martinez from Pixabay |
I started seeing my own hands mirror those of my mother when I was in my late fifties.
Her time worn hands showed signs of wear and reflected the care she had for her family.
When her hands were young they toiled in the yard gathering eggs and tending vegetables. As she grew her hands mixed the batter for cakes and shaped biscuits for baking.
Skills were added to those hands as they stretched across piano keys and held needles for the stitching and mending of clothes.
We will probably never know when she learned the rhythm of the knitting needles. Did her maiden aunts Hannah and Margaret O’Dea teach her, or was this a skill passed on through her mother Georgina?
Each crinkle could tell a story of babies nurtured, washing done in hot harsh conditions and lines flapping with heavy wet burdens in the depths of cold winters. Hot irons warmed on the log stove were held steady to press those wrinkled garments.
Rooms swept, floors washed and polished, waste carried outside; the tasks those hands undertook multiplied through the years.
Those arthritic swollen knuckles in mature years still managed to write letters and cards to families and friends. They were expert at manipulating Scrabble tiles and managing the wrappings on favourite sweet treats.
Those gentle hands nurtured me through my childhood, held me in hugs, dried my tears. Alongside her I learnt many of those skills and now my hands remind me of her.
