I have my father’s hands and feet.
And his face, but that’s another story.
Whereas my mother and sister have sleek, elegant hands, I have chunky palms and stumpy sausage fingers which are routinely garrotted by rings. They’re proper peasants hands.
“Darling, they do a lot of work”… my mother reassures me, when I bemoan how sore and cracked they get.
“You have a well-developed thenar eminence, probably from all the kneading”…my massage therapist says, whenever she works on them (the thenar eminence is the fleshy bit of palm under the thumb).
Since my dad died three years ago, I’ve come to love my hands and feet. They’re not just similar – they’re exactly the same as his were. It’s like a little piece of him that I can never lose. When he was alive, we’d often put our hands together and compare – every finger was the same length, every nail was the same shape.
. . . . .
I’d like to think they were my grandmother’s hands as well, even though she died before I was born. By all accounts, she was very clever with her hands. It can’t have been easy feeding nine children through the Japanese occupation of Malaysia in the 1940s. My grandfather was the local Presbyterian pastor, so money was always tight.
Dad once told me that his mother brought in extra income by taking on small sewing jobs, and that she donated a lot of this money to folks in need in her little village. None of her family knew about it until the day of her funeral, when strangers arrived, weeping. She slipped away peacefully in a diabetic coma, and they found her, kneeling by the bed, in the middle of saying her prayers. No-one had any doubt where she went.
. . . . .
I don’t have my other grandmother’s hands – they were small, strong, and oh-so-clever. She would come and stay with us for six months at a time when I was young. She was always making something – crocheting daisy squares, or threading tiny beads, or folding paper.
Ah Mah would sit at our dining room table, sorting glutinous rice, one grain at a time, to make joong, little parcels of rice and meat, wrapped in bamboo leaves. Just for me, because she knew that they were my favourite. My strongest memory of my maternal grandmother is her seemingly endless patience. When I’m sewing or crafting something intricate, I try to follow her example, and to slow down and work more carefully, rather than rushing to finish a project.
. . . . .
So now, when I look at my hands, I no longer see ugliness.
Instead, I see the legacy of my father and my grandmothers. In many ways, my lifelong urge to create – to bake, craft, sew and cook – is inspired by the examples that they set for me. I’m incredibly grateful for such an enduring gift! ♥
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 