I originally wrote this poem
for my mother and grandmother about 10 years ago.
Our Hands
By Beth Dotson Brown
My hands
are the hands of my grandmother,
the daughter of the Belle of Vincennes,
a beauty in her own right.
She could have modeled minks
on a runway in
but Grandpa asked her not to.
So she rubbed oil on my mother's infant body
as they sat on a sun-splashed blanket in the park.
She let her neighbor show her how to shape balls of gingerbread
into pieces of a cookie house
that the family could break and eat on New Year's Day.
She embroidered pillowcases
and sewed Batman capes
for her laughing grandchildren.
And when I, her first granddaughter, graduated from high school
she removed her aunt's ring which had lived on her hand
and I made a home for it on my finger.
My hands
are the hands of my mother,
the daughter of parents
who showed her she was loved.
She could have been a nurse
comforting the sick,
but the nuns didn't recommend her for the school.
So she studied elsewhere
learning to type and take shorthand
before she began diapering babies, knitting booties
and making a gingerbread house of her own.
She was the first one who baked the cookies
that would become my favorite,
before she taught me to use a mixer myself.
While Grandma and Grandpa gave me a nail care kit,
it was Mom who showed me how to polish them.
And when I, her daughter, said I wanted to be a writer
Mom read my stories,
corrected my spelling
and told me I could be anything I wanted to be.
Copyright by Beth Dotson Brown
are the hands of the women who came before me.
Long fingers wearing only one or two rings
that have to be big enough to get over the knuckles.
Nails polished so nicely that people ask if they're real.
Blue veins that crisscross the bones that help me type.
My hands have forgotten how to embroider and how to knit,
but not how to apply sunscreen or to make a gingerbread house.
They have learned to page through a passport
and to control a computer mouse,
though no one has ever asked me to model a mink
or take dictation in short hand.
My hands scribble notes then write articles
that my grandmother and mother want to read,
except it's mostly up to my mother
because Grandma doesn't see well anymore.
But she does remember at least one story from my childhood --
when I sat at her kitchen table with a pencil and paper
and told her I would be a writer.
My mom shakes her head when she hears the story again.
She's no longer sure if that ever happened.
And I don't know what my hands looked like then,
but I do know what they'll look like when I'm 83
and when I'm 61.
They'll still be the hands
of my grandmother and my mother,
the women who taught me and loved me
and helped shape the hands
that I write with today.