Gentle Hands

I sit at my desk and stare at this photo for several minutes, soaking in the memories.

The couch in the dining room. We had that ridiculous furniture cover on it because the fabric had worn and ripped, but we couldn't afford a new sofa. That cover was always sliding off. Ugh. And the yellow paint on the lower half of the wall? It didn't make any impression on me at the time, but in retrospect, how did my parents tolerate it? lol. I do have fonder recollections of those flowery curtains in the background. Mum liked those, too. She loved flowers.

Mum loved her grandsons, too. In this photo, she's smiling at her younger one, two years old. He has vague memories of her now, but he knows that she loved him. I keep peeking at the look on her face. Scroll up and check it out. Do you see the love and amusement? I do. Maybe it's because I know what to look for. She gives him space, but he knows he's safe with her. It's a wonderful relationship.

I also give attention to her hands. When I refused to stop arguing with my sister M, those hands would reach for Mum's Stride Rite shoes, take one off, and apply a lesson in obedience to my seat of learning. Well, from my age of about six until ten, anyway.

Those hands spent countless hours cooking delicious food and washing endless dishes. Mum taught me to bake when I was young, and I loved spending time in the kitchen with her. As the youngest of her five children, I frequently accompanied her to the grocery store, which included a stop at the bread store and a Hostess or Drake's apple pie for a well-behaved little boy. When we arrived home, I unpacked the brown paper bags and put everything away for her.

Mum's hands played the piano and organ. She loved music. She was my first piano teacher. I played in my first recital when I was six years old, and the song was called, "Henry the Cat." I could hum the tune for you, and that was 50 years ago. I practiced when she was my teacher. I loved playing for her.

She taught music at school, and she was our church accompanist. She was self-conscious of her singing voice, but I loved it. One of her favorite singers was Julie Andrews, and Mum watched The Sound of Music every year on TV. She taught many of the songs from that and Mary Poppins to our music classes in school the years I was her student. I loved it!

The beautiful hands tended me when I was sick. As a child, I had the chicken pox twice, the measles twice, and then whooping cough as an 8th grader. In between my second case of the measles and contracting whooping cough, Mum drove herself to and from the hospital for chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Breast cancer. Double mastectomy. She kept teaching. She missed some work, but as little as possible, and she never complained. Those sweet hands, this gentle legacy.

Those hands taught children to read, to write, and to manipulate learning tools for math. They applauded success. They encouraged perseverance. They comforted the grieving. They caressed loved ones. They cradled her babies and grandbabies. They created gifts. They did not belong to a perfect person, and so those hands clasped in prayer to a perfect Lord.

In the end, which came sooner than I wanted or expected, those loving hands went still, ravaged by bone cancer when Mum was just 51 years old. But the love in her did not stop, and death was not the end. As "they" say, if you know, you know. At the last day, she will rise, and her hands will once again be raised to the Perfect Legacy of Love.