A familiar roadmap...

Mother reaches for me as I help her get to her feet. I feel the cool strong grip of her tapered skeletal fingers curl around mine. She holds on tightly, but when her hands tremble slightly it reminds me that she is very old.   She nestles her hand in mine as if grateful that I am here. Her hands have grown thin with bulging large purple veins etched in distinct patterns visible through transparent skin. They remind me of the gnarled roots of ancient trees growing in intricate designs above ground.

Mother’s hands are bony and not soft.  She proudly tells me that all her life they have been put to use.  She remembers growing up with a mother who could not loosen the lid on a jar, and a Victorian grandmother who wore gloves and had ladylike pillow smooth hands.  Unlike her fashion conscious older sister, Mother never used colored nail polish although her clipped oval shaped fingernails and half moon cuticles were neatly groomed.

I felt her love for me when she stroked my forehead as a child sick in bed with fever. Her hands held my favorite books as she read aloud to me. She deftly maneuvered scissors cutting out intricate paper dolls and her nimble fingers learned to stroke the white keys and memorize the bass buttons of the accordion as we played duets together. Her fingers expertly braided my hair and coaxed and fed shiny fabric through the old Singer sewing machine when she made me a fairy cape to wear one Carnival in Buenos Aires.  At Christmas she would whip up a batch of taffy or boiled syrup and I’d watch her dexterous buttered fingers pull and fashion candy and popcorn balls.

As a child I loved to trace the lines on my palm and hers as she talked about how they might predict longevity and what I might expect from my life. Mother’s palm is deeply indented with a strong line centered in the middle of the right palm attesting to her 94 years and a life of good fortune.

There are no rings on mother’s hands any longer.  When she was young she wore an engagement and wedding ring until she accidently lost them down the drain in the bathroom in Saigon where she and Dad lived in the 1972.  Dad bought her a new wedding ring in Hong Kong on her first trip around the world and she says that was worth losing her rings for.  Now the Hong Kong ring is put away like a stored memory because her finger is too thin to keep it on.

Mother’s hands are wrinkled and withered with age like dried leaves that have fallen to the ground. Sometimes they feel cold as a radiator that has been suddenly turned off. Delicate bones protrude sharply from her slender fingers but her strong grasp is like a familiar roadmap of her life and mine.