Gency Brown

The heart is important. The brain is crucial. Eyes oversee everything. But hands pull it all together. It’s through those tools of love, work, and guidance that we’re taught about life.

I delight in looking at people’s hands. Sitting in the airport or a mall, the hands of strangers capture my eye. I imagine the stories they could tell of what they have experienced, enjoyed, endured.

A young lady displays finely manicured nails and a Rolex watch on her wrist. They draw my eye to the cluster of diamonds on the left hand. Is she an executive or socialite wife? Do her hands caress her children as often as they stroke her laptop?

Hard, sandpaper hands with a band aid around the right index finger, grip a duffel bag in the ticket line for an early morning flight. This man must surely be in construction, or maybe a farmer. Buckets of lotion could not restore them to their child like softness. The tools of his trade, the dirt under his fingernails, the sun that baked and cracked the skin all make the man who he is.

I remember the hands of women in my life. Grandmothers, aunts, and my mother. They all toiled in fields and cooked for large families. Those hands held and nurtured me and showed me a prayerful pose. These were the hands that reprimanded me for childish pranks. Hands like those raised me up and showed me the way. I still feel their touch today.

My grandfather, I thought, had the hands of a giant. They were the rough hands of a man who had worked hard all his life. He patted his grandchildren on the head and said, “Bless their little hearts.” His hands were so big, it was like an anvil dropped on us with each pat, but we loved it.

Now my own hands fascinate me with wrinkles, callouses, and spots that were never there before. Have I used them to help and guide others? Have they been productive hands? Crafty, creative, hard-working, and loving? I look at them now and I see the beloved hands of ancestors and acquaintances. As these shriveled, worn hands touch another, may the history and love flow to the next hand, and the next, and thus I, and those that came before, live on.

Thank you for visiting The Little Brown Cabin.

See you next time.