Old Hands

 OLD HANDS

The photo above of my wife Carol and me holding hands (her hand is on top) brought back a strange memory. Here it is.  

I took Latin my last three years in high School.  For two of those years, I was the only student.  The mother of one of my classmates taught the first year, which was attended by three students in addition to me.  The remaining years were taught by a tall, thin, bespectacled man who met with me Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in a tiny classroom off the library—in essence, he was my private tutor.  What triggered this recollection was the veined roadmap of her hand.  Very like my Latin tutor.  

Let me explain.

I was a fat kid, not obese, but by no means svelte.  The curse of extra flesh has been with me in various manifestations my entire life: flabby upper arms, double chin, spare tire around my gut — you get the idea.  It remained my nemesis even after I began playing high school sports and working summers on various farms near my home. It seemed that the extra flesh wouldn’t disappear even after my muscles developed into high-school-athlete tone.  The body part that annoyed me most was — you guessed it — the backs of my hands!  No matter how much my palms and fingers roughened with a working man’s callouses, the backs of my hands remained smooth with no visible veins.

I look at hands.  Hands are what I notice first about a person I’m meeting. Hands are what I notice in: crowded rooms, restaurants, trains, planes, … you get the idea.

I am obsessed with the backs of hands: when someone shakes my hand, the hand of someone as they are writing, or resting on a desktop, holding a door, any motion draws my attention to the hand.  I never stare.  A quick glance is all I need to check out the hand.   What I'm looking for is the blue highway of veins like Carol's, or my Latin teacher's.   I look at them with both admiration and envy.  I admire their structural beauty, their completeness.  The envy is in my wish that I had hands like that.  When I look at mine, I see one or two faint, short vein pieces that have no visible source or apparent destination. At three plus years Carol''s senior it seems decidedly unfair. 

Maybe in another few years they will shed their minuscule layer of baby fat and grow blue highways.

Til next time,

Namaste