My Mother’s Hands

When I was a little girl, I was fascinated by my mother’s hands. She has lovely hands. Her nails, never polished, are well shaped without much effort or maintenance. She never wore lots of jewelry, just a white gold wedding band and a simple diamond engagement ring. Her hands were sun tanned from working in the yard year round. They were capable of so many things.

I remember sitting next to my Mom in church when I was a small child. After doodling on the bulletin and flipping through the hymnal, I would often lean against her and pick up her hands from where they rested in her lap. I would study her hands. I wanted hands like hers when I grew up, attractive, strong, and capable of miraculous things like untangling delicate necklace chains. Sometimes those church sermons went long and I would release my Mom’s hands and my head would rest in her lap instead. And then her hands would do their most amazing feat, they would gently comb through my hair. There is no calm in the world that compares to being a child, resting on your mother while she gently runs her fingers through your hair. There are times in my adult life when I am in need of comfort and my mind takes me back to that church pew and the soothing rhythm of my Mom’s fingers gliding through my hair.

My Mother’s hands are gardener’s hands. She developed a love of plants from her parents, and she had an amazing garden. I remember stacks of Organic Gardening magazines around our house that she would consult. She was in that garden for hours every day. It wasn’t something she taught us or showed us, and to be honest, it is not anything I aspire to learn. It was her therapy. A way that she worshipped God. It provided food for our family for the year, and she froze, jarred, jellied and jammed everything in that garden. My mother’s hands can also cook!

My Mother’s hands can sew. Her Dad taught her to sew. She made many of our clothes growing up. We spent much time in fabric stores, pouring over McCalls, Butterick, and Vogue pattern books. My Mom doing the fabric math on her scratch pad before sending us loose in the store to pick out materials for our new clothes. She did tailoring for our neighbor. She made curtains, throw pillows, and even reupholstered a sofa and chairs for our first homes.

My Mother has beautiful handwriting. She would be the first to tell you what she does wrong technically according to her penmanship teacher from elementary school, but I always admired her signature on every document I had to take to school. And when the time came to learn cursive, I had no care for that the quick brown fox jumping over the lazy dog or that I was holding the pencil too tight against my ring finger. I wanted my signature to look exactly like my mother’s.

My Mother’s hands turn pages. She’s a reader. She loves to study the Bible for herself. The soft worn pages, highlighted and noted, bear witness to time spent with God. She loves Scripture the way that her father did. This is one way that my hands are like my Mother’s. When people ask me why and how I learned to study for myself, I can say, “This is what I watched my mother do.”

My Mother’s hands can hold cards. They can throw dice. They can spin a wheel. My Mom loves to play games. We played a lot of cards and games when we were growing up. She plays cards with her grandkids now. They all associate Nana’s house with games. Her hands are a legacy to her family to take time for play.

My Mother’s hands serve. Maybe because they have done so many things over the years like comforting, cultivating, sewing, creating, cooking, writing, and playing. These are the hands of someone who has lived and loved so well, and when a heart is that full, it directs the hands toward others.

My hands will never do all the things my Mother’s hands have done and I don’t wish it any different. She is uniquely gifted by God for the life He called her to and I am in awe of that calling. I’m simply grateful I was raised by the remarkable hands of my remarkable mother.