hands

"In the dense blotch of light beneath the table, the kneeling figure looked like a priest engaged in some service of his church. The nervous expressive fingers, flashing in and out of the light, might well have been mistaken for the fingers of the devotee going swiftly through decade after decade of his rosary."

 -Sherwood Anderson, "Hands" 

Most of my youth has been spent behind some kind of wheel. However, I was rarely the driver. The woman responsible for my motion throughout the majority of those years was my mother, who took me to and from copious amounts of practices: ballet, soccer, violin lessons…all without a complaint. On the majority of these drives, when I wasn’t playing with whatever plush toy I had sitting in my lap and when I wasn’t drawing flowers in the fog on the windows as it rained, I focused my eyes tightly on my mother’s hands and how firmly they grasped the steering wheel.

I was always fascinated with them, and how with the slightest inch given either way, we would result in a different place. In my 9-year-old mind, I found it incredible that she knew all of the routes, roads, and expressways in our sleepy beach town. How did she know her way around? How did she realize, perhaps instinctively, that exit 23A would lead you to the lagoon, but exit 23B would lead you straight to a landfill?

Back then, I viewed all roadways as nothing more than slick, concrete spider webs. People would slide up and down them, left and right, all spiders sharing the same home. But then, a collision would occur, completely at random, and then and only then would one realize if they were the predator or the prey, or worse: neither. Just a sad spider stuck in a web that will never untangle. Stuck, having to see the other spiders roam about, up and down and left and right. How terrible it would be to have all of those limbs but all of those limits.

I decided then, riding in the car on the way to soccer practice, that I didn’t ever want to run that risk. I didn’t want to get stuck in a tangle of my own creation just because I wanted to move. I didn’t trust myself. I looked to my mother’s hands, so firm and resolute on the wheel, her eyes occasionally checking the rearview mirror. I admired my own hands: small, pale pink, nails bitten with a few remaining specks of old teal nail polish. They were nothing like my mother’s. I lacked the mole on my right ring finger, the deep nail beds, the slight chip on my left index finger, and the confidence in my palms. Her hands held tightly to the wheel, but there was a small space between her C-shaped grip and it. My mother knew where she was going; everything was OK. I looked down to my own hands in disappointment. Quickly, discreetly, I tucked them under my thighs and sat in silence until I reached the soccer fields, watching with intense awe at the slow and purposeful rotations my mother made with her hands as she drove.

Years passed, and my fear and disappointment of my own hands naturally grew. I had interests, hobbies, favorite things and the like, but even when my hands were not in tight little fists or tucked beneath my legs (I preferred them here because after a while I could not feel them anymore) I still kept my eyes away from them, fearful of having to see my own fears and doubts, of my potentials and my limits. I never wore rings or bracelets. My nails were always short and swollen from the biting and picking, and suffice it to say I never painted them.  I figured that as long as I was able to forget my hands, I would be able to avoid making choices: left or right, up or down.

For years, I buried my hands in my pockets. And for years, I hid my head in the sand like an ostrich does, viewing my fears and doubts of myself as abnormally large and flightless wings. And because of this limited vision in sight and scope, I spent the majority of high school as a buoy, floating listlessly and aimlessly as others passed me in the waters. I never sank, but I never really went anywhere, either. I was just a mark. I entered college with much of the same disposition, occasionally being pushed forward by the effects of another’s wake, but soon enough returning to rest. I knew what I needed to do to complete the next task, to stay afloat, but beyond that, not much mattered. Where was I going? I didn’t know. Where did I want to go? I didn’t know that, either. But I was fine with that. I never wanted to know.

However heavy and paralyzed I felt during this time, my petrified self had begun to move up and down and left and right at much more impressive rates. My family was driven to teach me the ways of the world and to make me feel at home in any of its many nooks. And so I traveled many places with them: from the shores of Normandy to the pyramids of Chichen Itza to the colossal mountains of the Pacific Coast. I was extremely grateful for all of these opportunities to travel, and I was fine with all of this movement because I was with family. I followed them with my heavy-lidded eyes, I watched as they made their steps up and down the ancient ruins, as they navigated the steering wheel left and right on the scenic highways of Big Sur.

When I was at the wheel of my own car (as reluctant as I was to begin driving a car of my own), my fears of collisions turned into fantasies as I allowed my mind to wander to the place where one keeps questions of “What if?” More specifically, questions like “What if I drove into the next pair of headlights I see? What would happen then? What if?” While I never took these questions too seriously, I would often imagine what I would look like in my hospital gown, and who would come to visit my bed. Sometimes, I would wonder who would bring flowers and if I would warm to hospital food. But the part of these questions I lingered on the most was what it would feel like on the impact. I wondered what it would feel like to be thrust from my car and into oncoming traffic, to be weightless and free, to no longer be a buoy but rather a bird, even if it only meant returning to reality a few moments later, and then to feel nothing once again. Forever.You know, the moment when you can feel darkness creeping slowly into your cellular membranes, and one by one yet all at once, all the living cells in your body vanish like flames on birthday candles. I've always wondered what that feels like. I've always wondered what it feels like to die.

However high my morbid imagination would take flight, there were other questions that aided in their eventual descent. One day, while driving and imagining what kind of scrubs I would like the nurse in my room to don, I gripped the wheel so tightly that I could see the whites of my knuckles staring back at me like ghosts. My hands began to ache. Shaking my head, I looked back to the road in front of me, laughing nervously at the next car I saw pass me in the other lane. Silly girl.

During that time, my thoughts finally drifted down from what could be to what was, they fell from visions to memories. I recalled with ease the afternoon I spent gazing in awe at the city of Paris after climbing to the top of the Sacre Coeur, the electric flush on my face after whispering the words “I love you” into the ears of another for the first time, and the steadiness of my mother’s hands on the steering wheel while we drove on a steep, narrow road up the Blue Ridge Mountains of West Virginia. Up, up, up, we went, and so did the memories in number. I began to wonder, then, what future memories I would miss if along with my imagination's flight, I took my body. That question, to me, was much more disturbing than any other questions I could have ever asked myself. And sure enough, I decided I had had enough driving that way.  Looking to my hands, then throbbing and white, I cut my trip short and drove home.

That evening, I walked to a nearby elementary school playground. I sat on a bench and watched the sunset, occasionally drawing flowers in my notebook. This was the same playground where my grandfather re-learned to walk at age 72, after spending months in a hospital bed. I recalled how difficult it was for him to move and how often he had to stop to sit on a bench. The goal was never anything major: make it from the monkey bars to the swing set at the end of the lot. His pace was erratic: some days he would walk to the swings, and other days, when little children would go flying past him playing tag, he would lower his head in resignation, saying that he was short of breath and needed to rest and wanted to go home. I would always sit with him while he rested, never speaking or questioning his reasoning. I just stopped and listened to him breathe. Eventually, I would stand and extend my hand to his. He would laugh and then stand, too. And then together we would walk slowly to the end of the playground, sometimes stopping, sometimes going.

This was also the same place where I practiced parallel parking. My mother used two of our floral lawn chairs as markers. Some nights, I would spend close to an hour perfecting the art of a parallel park. And other nights, I would grow frustrated quickly and give up, embarrassed and wanting to hide my face from the older teenagers that were smoking cigarettes on the swings. I would throw my hands in the air in disgust, stopping the car and pulling up the emergency brake. And mother would stop, too, and let me breathe. And then we would try again. Sometimes stopping, sometimes going.

This evening, there were no screaming children and there were no jaded teenagers. I watched as the wind would occasionally make one of the swings move forward slightly and then back in place. I watched as the sun’s rays caused changes in the shadows of the fence, moving left to right. I looked to the monkey bars, remembering the day my grandfather was able to make it from the slide all the way over there on his own. I remembered the bright reflection of his teeth as I caught him smiling on the drive back home. I looked to the parking lot and remembered the day I took my driver’s test on my own, passing the parallel parking section without the floral lawn chairs. I was so happy that day. All of a sudden, my hands began to ache.

I removed them from under my legs and looked to them: to my knuckles, to my thin fingers and joints, to my short nails. I put one hand in the other and felt their weight. I had forgotten how calloused and strong my fingertips had become from playing the cello and violin. I stared at them intently, pondering what they could do and where they could take me. I remembered my grandfather walking step by step, trudging like a 6’”2 baby, sometimes stopping, sometimes going. I remembered him taking my hand. And so, hand clasped in my own, I stood. Arms swinging at my sides, I walked toward the sunset.

Where am I going? I don’t know. Where do I want to go? I don’t know that, either. But I’m fine with that. I never want to know. With a head out of the sand and a heart in my hands, I am in motion. Sometimes stopping, sometimes going.