Knotty blue veins, like curling snakes, like mole tunnels, like the Mississippi Delta.

Her fingernails were never too long, but they were thick with the yellow hue of aging, like leaves turning, like sunshine waning. No polish. Did she ever polish them?

My grandmother’s hands, as thin as paper, and shiny too, she could stretch the soft back skin, I watched her pull them taut, I watched her wring them, her hands, not cartoon-ish like taffy, but taffy just the same.

She held my hand in her paper hand. She held my face so I could look up, so she could see me better, so she could look me in the eye, and smile right down at my little girl face, so she could send her love beams in my direction without them getting lost along the way.

She held my baby too, so sweet, so tender, caressing his cheek with the backs of her knuckles.

Those knuckles like marbles, those fingers like knotty pine branches, like curled Eagle’s talons.

Those hands she used to roll out dough for pie, for biscuits, for bread. Those hands she used to cut through frozen ice cream, producing solid balls of chocolate, of vanilla, of butter crunch, of strawberry, those hands she used for leverage to get those balls rolling, those finger-tips she licked like a child.

Those hands she used to paint cutting boards, and dig garden holes with her trowel, or to fasten the belt of her latest corn husk doll creation. It was the 70s, and corn husk dolls were a thing. They were her thing.

Those hands she used to grasp her crystal-bead rosary, the prayers and counting, when prayers and counting were the only way to deal with wayward teenagers, with children, with their spouses, with her neighbors, with bills, with confusion, with fear, with changes, with corrupt government, with war, with faith.

By the time of her death, she had weathered more than a few “bad” Presidents.

Those hands of which I can only imagine fixed a collar or two, tied a tie or three, swatted a bottom or four, brushed some unruly hair for a dance or the first day of school, zipped up a jacket, wiped a few broken-hearted tears, carried a turkey to a table.

Those hands that stirred a cast-iron pot.

Those hands that made a cocktail, and lit a candle, and planted a seed, and placed a Hummel squarely upon a shelf.

Those fingers that could type like the wind, without a single mistake. Those fingers that held a ball-point pen, and  formed her perfectly uniform Catholic script, inside long letters, inside birthday cards, inside the flaps of envelopes filled with money, inside her final goodbyes to each and every one of us.

My grandmother’s hands, her paper-thin hands, appeared fragile in their decay, in their lack of aesthetic appeal, but my grandmother’s hands, those paper-thin hands were not weak at all.

In fact, they were strong as steel.

~