My Mother’s Hands

I wrote a poem several years back about my mother’s hands. Here it is:

Heredity

Stubby fingers,
Split nails,
Swollen knuckles, . . .
And now age spots.

My mother’s hands
At the end of my wrists.
How did this happen?

At the time, my critique group didn’t get it. How can my mother’s hands be on my wrists?

To me, the poem is perfectly clear. I glance down at my hands sometimes, and they remind me of my mother’s hands—so much so I think I am seeing double. I tried to capture that feeling in my poem.

Both my mother’s fingers and mine are short, something I now rue as I try to reach octave-plus chords on the piano. We both acquired a vertical split in the nail of our wedding ring finger (though hers got better over time—when will mine improve?).

I can pick out differences between our hands, of course. Her knuckles were more swollen than mine, because she did a lot more housework through the years than I’ve done in my lifetime. And she had more age spots, though mine are surely increasing.

Why do I mention my mother’s hands today? Because today would have been my mother’s 87th birthday. It’s an occasion to think about all the ways in which we were similar, and all the ways in which we were different.

Back when my mother’s hands were always busy

I remember my mother’s hands from my childhood, always busy. They cooked and cleaned, they sewed, they tended children. On occasion, they swatted an errant offspring. When she and my father went out, she shook them to dry the bright red nail polish she only rarely wore.

My mother’s hands wrote almost daily—note after note to friends and relations, her social media in a pre-Internet world. They prayed, with and without her rosary beads, making the Sign of the Cross before and after every prayer.

And then they rested.

For the last few years of her life, my mother’s hands did little as she sunk into Alzheimer’s. In her final months at home, she mostly sat on the couch, hands folded in her lap, watching television. She spoke little. She no longer did chores, nor could she do any needlework. We tried to find ways to keep her occupied, but the simple needlepoint kit I gave her was too difficult. She couldn’t master the in and out of thread through canvas, up and down in the proper holes.

The “little guy” my mother fingered in her final months

After she moved to assisted living, her hands did even less. Her fingers fidgeted constantly, but only to rub on the crocheted surface of a little stuffed animal her friend had given her—seeking the tactile stimulation that many Alzheimer’s patients need to calm themselves. She couldn’t dress or feed herself.

Last picture taken of my mother

I watched my mother’s hands lose their capabilities through those years, mourning each loss of function.

And now, when I look down, I worry that my hands, too, will someday be stilled. How long will I be able to type? To play the piano? To cook and sew and drive and dress and manage all the activities that keep us independent?

As I fret about my own future, I miss my mother’s past. And I wonder, how did this happen?

What do you remember about your parents as they aged? How do those memories impact you now?