mother's hands
Saturday, May 10, 2008 at 6:52PM When I was a little girl, I used to sit in church with my mother and hold one of her hands. I’d trace the faint blue lines of the veins that stood up on their backs like long mole tunnels. I’d wonder at her rough skin, short-clipped nails, and plain gold wedding band. How did her hands get to be so old and ugly?
Like many parts of life, motherhood is a funny thing. Because my mother was always so close to me as I grew up, I never knew how to appreciate her presence. We don’t appreciate the ground. But just try to suddenly be without it. A mother is not a person with whom to have a relationship, she is a utility. I asked my son recently why we have mothers, and after some thought, he replied, “Because if we didn’t, how would we get our food?” Mother is such an important part of life that to appreciate her, we would have to consider the alternative, something from which our minds recoil. She is like underwear. Like air.
Then I moved away, married, and set up my own household. And began, I thought, to appreciate what my mother had been doing for me all those years. The laundry, the meals, the encouragement. All these things had to come from me. Man, I thought, she really WAS doing something!
And then one Mother’s Day I sat in church with her again. I was nine months pregnant with my first son, and they were giving out potted begonias to all the mothers. I wouldn’t take one, because I was NOT yet a mother. Momma poked me in the ribs and hissed, “Yes you are, take one of those plants.”
Just over 24 hours later, I had earned my begonia. After all the sweat and agony and panic of childbirth, they placed our child in my arms. Some moments, some emotions, defy words. There are no words to describe that moment, or they are so sacred that I don’t know them. But I knew then that as blindingly beautiful as that event was for me, I was not the only person who had experienced it. In that instant I joined hands with my mother, and countless millions of mothers before me who had seen that moment and treasured it up forever. In that instant, I at last placed my foot on the very beginning of the road to understanding what my mother had always been for me.
This Mother’s Day will mark seven years since I wouldn’t take the begonia in church. Every day I learn just a little more what my mother was doing, quietly, all the time I was growing up. I wash, and bake, and scrub the house repeatedly, knowing that this is the menial labor she did for years for me. I marvel at my children, who take me so for granted that they hardly seem to see me sometimes, and wince to think that I felt the same way about my own mother. I stifle silent tears as I watch them grow and know that she did this also. I turn my face toward heaven, and resolutely gather my family around me, and realize that she is doing this even now.
And I begin to understand how her hands got to be the way they are, hands that held me, cared for me, shaped me, then opened and let me go.
Recently I was sitting in church again. It’s the only time I get to sit down anymore. I looked down at my hands, and it seemed odd to me to see the veins starting to become prominent, my nails cut short, my skin rough. My engagement ring is in the jewelry box, leaving only my plain gold wedding band. The diamond ring scratches babies and gets bread dough stuck in it. How did my hands come to look like this, I thought.
The same way my mother’s did. And I smiled, because I was glad to see that my hands are slowly becoming like hers. Old, and ugly. And beautiful.
~Mother Bird~
Reader Comments (2)
Oh, this is so, so, so beautiful. Thank you.
How wonderful to know someone experiences the same feelings of "mothers lost". I wish everyday I could tell her thank you.
Thank you for putting into words a mother's love.