Daddy's Hands
My father’s hands are the hands that define beauty to me. They are like the hands of Michelangelo’s David – disproportionately large, square with long fingers, powerful, steady, calming, sure. My father sliced off the tip of his middle finger on his left hand, at an angle where he didn’t lose length but lost the fingernail, when I was 6: a freak lawn-mowing accident. I prayed for his hand to be whole again, I hurt to see those perfect, artist sculptured hands marred. I suppose at that point in time I believed enough to make it happen. The nail grew back, thick, grey, ugly, but whole.
My father’s hands are the hands that cared for me: brushed my teeth, bathed me, oiled my little brown body after baths, put up my hair in rollers before bed, pulled me near for hugs and kisses. They are the hands that hurt me: spanked me, slapped me, tapped on my breast bone relentlessly when he wanted to drive home his righteousness and demand penitence from an unrepentant stubborn little bubella.
Those same hands are surprisingly soft, softer than my own. I learned to read palms on my father’s hands, in fact, from his hands. The mounds of his hands cushy and ripe, evidence of voracious appetites he passed on to his little girl. I still hold them, surprised at how tender they have grown. I measure my own hands against his, and fall short every time. Mine are long, also disproportionately large, built for command and authority, unaccustomed to nurturing.
Instead, they are hands that want to speak. – that want to create harmonies and themes and dynamic haunting refrains that tickle eyes and ears – but don’t quite know how.
It’s funny how hands become the focus after bed and bodies have been exhausted. The last man I was with repeated over and over again as his own hands held mine above my head while he explored my nooks and crannies, “what beautiful hands, what beautiful, beautiful hands” until I was convinced he knew no other words.
My own father wrote a similar tribute to his father’s hands. Pictures of my grandfather’s hand dominate the landscape, they cast their own shadow. Legend – and it is legend, I never knew the man – has it that they were larger even than my father’s. People who knew him never fail to mention the size of his hands.
I’ve read another son’s homage to a set of fatherly hands and cried at the familiarity of it; a tribute written by my daddy’s hands.
My father’s hands are the hands that cared for me: brushed my teeth, bathed me, oiled my little brown body after baths, put up my hair in rollers before bed, pulled me near for hugs and kisses. They are the hands that hurt me: spanked me, slapped me, tapped on my breast bone relentlessly when he wanted to drive home his righteousness and demand penitence from an unrepentant stubborn little bubella.
Those same hands are surprisingly soft, softer than my own. I learned to read palms on my father’s hands, in fact, from his hands. The mounds of his hands cushy and ripe, evidence of voracious appetites he passed on to his little girl. I still hold them, surprised at how tender they have grown. I measure my own hands against his, and fall short every time. Mine are long, also disproportionately large, built for command and authority, unaccustomed to nurturing.
Instead, they are hands that want to speak. – that want to create harmonies and themes and dynamic haunting refrains that tickle eyes and ears – but don’t quite know how.
It’s funny how hands become the focus after bed and bodies have been exhausted. The last man I was with repeated over and over again as his own hands held mine above my head while he explored my nooks and crannies, “what beautiful hands, what beautiful, beautiful hands” until I was convinced he knew no other words.
My own father wrote a similar tribute to his father’s hands. Pictures of my grandfather’s hand dominate the landscape, they cast their own shadow. Legend – and it is legend, I never knew the man – has it that they were larger even than my father’s. People who knew him never fail to mention the size of his hands.
I’ve read another son’s homage to a set of fatherly hands and cried at the familiarity of it; a tribute written by my daddy’s hands.
posted by annaghela at 9:15 PM
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