Hands

I want you to hold your hands in front of you and look at them. Look at the backs, but look especially at the palms—and ask yourself this question: "Where have these hands been and what have they done"? If a camera or video had documented their actions, every day, every hour beginning the moment they were first formed—what would you see?     

I venture to say it would show just about anything and everything—all the beauty and all the ugliness, all the cleanliness, all the dirt, all the lovingness and all the hurt, all the brilliance and all the stupidity.  The whole range of human activity would show—all the creativity and all the destruction with all that’s hard and all that’s soft—everything and everywhere.

I want to include my hands, too, in this exercise. They must have clenched and opened in their warm, red, liquid world even before birth. They must have flailed wildly in the air when pushed out of their dark sanctuary and out into that harsh, cold light to where their body was delivered.  They must have grasped at first clumsily for the doodads that hung in the crib. And before that they grabbed mother’s breast in desperate hunger for the warmth and touch of soft flesh and milk and “mouth-filling” nipples. Or was it a warm, hard bottle? If that were so, would that explain my obsession even now at age 80 with full female breasts?

Then they began handling food and drink, and joyful slopping over everything within reach, accompanied by shitting and pissing whenever and wherever I damn well pleased.  What joy!   Not to care— just let go and let be!  But it did get uncomfortable unless discovered in time.  And there were those wonderful noises from banging spoons and throwing toys—and screaming! God how I could scream! Everybody came running. What a brilliant discovery!  It worked every time—even now!

Toys, these hands grasped toys and little cars, and pencils and Daddy’s glasses, and Mom’s hair, and sister’s clothes. What fun! I could pull all these things to me; I was stronger than any of them!

And all this time the hands were learning more and more—how to point, how to hit, how to make a fist and smash things, how to hurt (when finger nails came in), how to make marks with crayons and paint, and much later little pictures of things and people. And all this time I never thought about these hands. They just did things. In fact I haven’t thought about it much even up to now, that is, until I thought of writing about them. Isn’t it interesting—to have used these hands day and night for all these years and never thought much about what they did—just used them?  Now they’re covered with bruises and red spots and scars and wrinkles and loose flesh and callouses, even some crookedness from past injuries. They’ve been around.

Long ago they learned how to balance blocks a couple feet high—very gently, with slow, careful manipulations, then how to drive nails and cut wood—hard, forceful stuff, then came books and the careful turning of millions of pages, and pens and typewriters, and swimming, and climbing, and fighting.  Bicycle handle bars they grasped, they sweated, and grew callouses from shovel handles and picks and horizontal bars in the gym. So many injuries, so many cuts and bruises, and always they recovered and reformed like new—until recently that is.

How many miles of finger nails have been cut off and thrown away? How many pounds of flesh has shed and reformed in these eighty years? How many buckets of dirt have they acquired and had washed off? How high in the sky have these hands been, and how low into the earth?

Then there was the time of rifles and bullets and hand grenades, and khaki this and khaki that, and military truck steering wheels and tires, and oil and gasoline, and aluminum mess kits and tents and pants and belts and buttons and shirts, and hats, and gloves and ski poles, and airplane controls, and triggers—lots of triggers. These hands have killed, usually animals and birds and snakes and rabbits and bulls eyes. They’ve built thousands of fires—on farms and in fireplaces, and camps and stoves and ovens, and tepees, in woods and mountains and cities and homes.

It seems they’ve been everywhere and done everything.

How many firm young breasts have they caressed—and warm bellies, and moist “softnesses” between legs, and faces and hips and derrieres and legs and shoulders, and feet—and other hands.

Yes!  Other hands!  How many other hands have they touched?  Men’s hands, women’s hands, baby’s hands, teen age hands, and paws—cat paws and dog paws, and horses hoofs and tails and necks, and elephants and camels and chickens, what have they touched in zoos and libraries and men’s rooms?  Ah yes!  My own penis—how many times have these hands handled that?  Well, the right hand at least.

Then there is the whole array of tools—carpenter tools, auto repair tools, wrenches, sockets, ratchets, electric drills, car jacks, tire chains, then painting tools, brushes, paint cans, lids, knives—lots of knives of all kinds, and plumber tools, pipes, threads, solder, wires, saws, it goes on and on. They have grasped them all, yielded them skillfully, dropped many—even built some.

What have they climbed? They have climbed trees, poles, ropes—I used to be able to climb gym ropes all the way to the ceiling without using feet—in seconds! Chimneys—they even climbed a 175-foot chimney once, and fences, wooden fences, wire fences, barbed wire fences, concrete, masonry, stone, fences.

What kinds of temperatures have they endured in Cheyenne’s 40 degree below weather? snow and ice, and Chicago’s 1300-degree molten metal steel furnaces and cigarettes and cigars, and hot Pacific suns, and “roughnesses” and “smoothnesses” and “slipperynesses,” bricks, rocks stones, baseballs footballs, wood of all kinds—rifle stocks, tree barks, sanded surfaces, stains, grains, wheat, barley, rice, beans - all the foods imaginable. How many times have they been burned?

This is like an encyclopedia or a world history book, where these hands have been and what they have done.

And it’s true of all of us—wartime work, peacetime, careers, love making, child raising, pleasure, pain, illnesses, things dead and things alive.  What a history!  What a drama—and all lived out within arm’s reach and seldom noticed.

Isn’t it amazing?  Isn’t it awesome?  It’s both sinful and religious what our hands have done and where they’ve been.

Someday they’ll wear out—unless something else does first.  And after that they’ll just lie there—just bones, folded comfortably over bodies—until in the distant future they will disappear, never to be seen again in this form, after long and faithful service.

What a blessing to have hands!

Are you still looking at them?

                                                                                      Robert Rock