What I Think

I remember my mother's hands. Like a lily, they were smooth and ivory. They were beautiful and I worshipped them.

My mother's hands did amazing things.

Their knuckles were never cracked or nails bitten.

They turned the pages of "The Berenstain Bears and the Messy Room" so many times that I swear the ink got rubbed off of one or two passages.

They kneaded soft white bread dough so adeptly that I still feel like I am cheating when I use my Kitchen Aid.

They french-braided my hair and brushed it. A few times, after a lice scare at school was long forgotten, they were coerced into running through my hair, strand by strand, to check for things like nits, which sounded dangerous. Only much later, in Microbiology, did I realize that nits are eggs and not baby lice.

They held my hand on walks.

They stunned me by actually catching pale, spindly sand crabs at the shore.

They wore a simple gold wedding band for 38 years.

They washed dishes, sometimes in over-sized yellow or green rubber gloves, but usually bare.

They used to squeeze out frothy shampoo bubbles into smiley faces on my tummy at bath time, even when I was old enough to remember.

They exchanged hard-earned money for school clothes for me that I had wanted for weeks but which she had wanted for me long before I even laid eyes on them.

They filled out hours upon hours of paperwork, in my behalf, for school registration, library cards and permission slips for field trips or bus passes for sleepovers. I now wish that I had not spent even one single night in a house that was separate from her.

They bathed dogs and cats, and they still drove me home from practice when an untimely veterinarian visit left them red with Virginia clay and scratched from claws. I'm ashamed that I was embarrassed at the clay and cuts.

They administered many doses of antibiotics and other medications for various ailments I acquired. They even spoon-fed me maple syrup once, when I had the stomach flu, because my mother had heard somewhere that it would stop vomiting in its tracks. It didn't.

They folded patiently in her lap and even clapped when I performed "shows" for her from my bed or, much later, on stage.

They wrote me precious letters, signed "Mom".

They decorated hundreds of birthday cakes with many hues of frosting and various candies, always with a hidden heart, which was a joy to find.

They made pancakes for dinner on Shrove Tuesday.

They gathered firewood with us.

They cooked on a wood stove in blizzards and carried floatable flashlights during mountainside treks in floods.

They wiped nine little noses and held nine little babies close, each one her favorite.

They typed at an astonishing speed, first on a gray electric typewriter, then a computer keyboard of the same color, to write emails, once enjoyed, now cherished.

They scratched my back the best.

They held me close the night before my wedding, as we both cried at the changes life brings.

They clasped in prayer with my hands many, many times.

They dialed my different phone numbers every March 15th, so that she could tell me to "Beware the Ides of March", and held the phone for hours while my mother and I talked about everything. Quite literally, everything.

They steered vans and trucks and little burgundy cars through all sorts of weather, through several states and sometimes, deafeningly, without a muffler.

They held my head as she kissed my neck the last time I saw her, when I visited home last May and they were folded calmly at her waist when my sisters, brother and I dressed her for her funeral.

They never held my son.

They will always inspire and encourage me and even sadden me a little.

In contrast, I crack my knuckles and bite my nails, and my skin is usually dry, but my hands work hard and play hard and I like to think they look like hers in some vague, small way.