Hands

It's her hands that I remember the most.

Not because her eyes didn't shine with the love she felt for me, or her smile wasn't warm and contagious, because they were, but it's her hands that after all of this time that I remember the most.

The fingernails always painted. A ritual she shared with my sister and I. It was a treat, and I can still smell the strong scent of polish as I see the memory in my minds eye. We'd sit at the small table in the tiny mid-west farm house that felt more like home than my own. She'd let us pick out a color and try to paint our own but was always there with help if we needed it. I was always fascinated by the ease in which she managed the brush spreading the color only on the nail and not the actual finger. To this day, I still think of her every time I paint my nails. In fact, now that I think about it I often find that when I feel lonely or aching for something I can't seem to name, I am often driven to find a new color at the local target.

I wonder... am I hoping that the as the new bright color spreads across my nail, hope and comfort will soon follow?

She wore rings you know.

A ring on almost every finger and she never took them off. It wasn't because she didn't wish to change them, but for the most part they had become part of her in more ways than one. In her old age, she became burdened with arthritis, and her knuckles became swollen and deformed and even though you could spin the rings round and round her weathered fingers you could not get them past her painful knuckles.

I would sit on her lap, and she would rest her hands in my lap her arms around me, and I was content for as long as she'd have me there. I would play with her hands, study the wrinkles and the lines, inspect with awe the gaudy giant rings and beg her to let me try them on. I remember pulling on the weathered skin, wondering why it was so "loose" I could squeeze it together to form a raised line on the back of her hand, and watch as it very slowly went back to it's normal shape.

"Ma? Why is your skin so loose? Look what I can do with it."

"Ahh." she'd grumble. "I'm old."

And it hit me.

It hit me with a force so hard it seemed I would never be able to catch another breath for as long as I lived. I was suffocating.

Some day she would not be here.

Some day I would be without her.

Some day I would not have her to love me, who's arms would comfort me then?