I have always been fascinated by hands. Large hands, small hands. Hard hands, soft hands. Strong hands, weak hands. For hands show, more than any other feature, the kind of individual one is.
My father's hands and those of his brothers and sisters were sun-spotted, work-hardened. There were no manicures in the Arizona desert where his family farmed in the early decades of the twentieth century. I doubt my father knew what a manicure was, even many years later. For him, for his sister and brothers and parents, there was only work. And more work. There was milking the cows and weeding the garden. There was repairing fences and tending the animals.
My hands have known no such rough work. But they have not been idle. They write. They clean. And they, sometimes, serve others.
So, for today, I am grateful for hands that work.
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