The way my mind captures memories is strange. The scent of asphalt after the rain. A button-up, fresh on the line, blowing in the breeze. Standing sprinkler water hitting my skin. Laughter after midnight with friends.
I remember family members by their hands. Grandma Dodson's wrist flicking while she whisked dark gravy in her skillet on the mustard-colored stove. Granny Carter's hands folded in her lap on the drive to Oklahoma. Grandma Ayers lifting her index and middle finger to take a drag on her cigarette while she held a kid on her lap. Papa Dodson's age spots on his weathered hands - the way he'd lift his soup spoon to his lips and say softly "hot, hot, hot, hot." Grandpa Ayers's fiddling with a worm on the hook he'd attached to a fishing pole made from a dead tree branch.
Mama's hands cross-stitching and pouring pound cake, scratching backs and braiding hair, holding babies on hips. Dad's perfect nail beds and my brother's thumbs and fingers whooping my butt on the Nintendo. My husband's ring finger when his hand is on my leg. Baby fingers feeling for milk, toddler hands opening cabinets, kid hands holding pencils and pointing us to wonder.
I don’t know why hands are seared inside me. Perhaps they are the extension of our hearts and heads. Maybe they tell the truth about who we are, about where we've been.
My hands are dry. Cracked and bleeding, they ache no matter what lotion I use or petroleum jelly I try. Eczema makes them swell at the joints, painful, and puffy. Makes me think of my great Aunt Fairy, with knuckles swollen in her old age, and ten fingers unable to straighten. Still, I remember her picking flowers and making sandwiches, walking under the quilting rack, and teaching me Bible verses from her Daily Bread box on the kitchen table.
She'd struggle to pull a thin slice out of the tiny rectangle. "You get it, Ashley," she'd say, "And read it to me." We'd share a verse and eat supper. Pimento cheese on wonder bread with one of her famous sugar cookies. We didn't talk about the bent fingers she'd learned to live with or the poverty she lived in.
The people who raised me didn't talk much about pain. Maybe because it's personal. It’s a fairly new phenomenon to tell all the things, all the time.
Anyway, doesn't it feels like hands hold all the stories? That's what I'm thinking about tonight as I get ready to sleep.
I wonder how your mind keeps your memories, how your heart loves to hold on to stories. What smells, textures, sounds, and visuals seem to stick? Are there any themes you can recognize? What brings you to tears? What makes you laugh with joy?
Hold fast to your memories, to the stories about who you are and where you come from. We are so lucky to be shaped by who you are.
Bless you, beloved.
Beautiful.