“When did all my gloves become the left one? Digging into a gardening bucket, I could have sworn I had a pair. So that’s it, I’m going to have to throw a cord of dry, splintery wood, without ideal equipment. But my hands are not badly cracked, yet, or crippled by joint pain, they’re a solid duo game for work. Filling my days, as well as my dreams, with many such hands working together. Hands gripping bike handles, or walking sticks; picking herbs for tincture or tucking in sheets to make up a bed. Where words fall short, when the complexity of our lives defies an accurate accounting, hands keep moving, finding useful occupation. Gently weaving strands of light as our surface life is pummeled by shadow, disgrace and the deformity of pretending, because we don’t feel good enough without creating some pretense of who we are. Hoarding what we have, bragging about things we’ve embellished with falsehoods over time, still trying to impress “the cool kids”. Yet hands are too busy for all that: cooking, cleaning, lashing, whittling, smoothing, stirring and making things right. There’s no duplicity, in hands. The bigger the log, the wider the grip is all. Not a boast, not an inflated sense of self importance, covering self loathing. That was a winter I remember, alone with 10 cords tossed to the rafters as in “testosterone mountains”, with one small plastic sled and suddenly, no husband. One small load at a time, in the dead of blizzard weather, and not when I was in the mood or feeling chipper. Not when I was feeling rested, not when I was fully sated, not when I had nothing better to do. Slow work, tedious, brilliantly angry or meditative according to my mood, not earning any advanced college degrees, but putting a serious dent in a serious pile - I can say, by the end, I would always feel better. Because to make fire, thru resentment, thru self pity, thru fear and near half crazy - with just that much effort, I could live to the next day, and know that I’d contributed towards my own survival, despite the bad attitude. So that eventually, and according to the laws of the wild west, perhaps, the hands themselves become supreme. If all you can do is get up and use your hands, then do. Which is perhaps why my life runs on the forward motion of my hands, as I type, as I grip the wheel, as I stroke the leaves of plants, and grab them by the nape. My hands, grasping clipboards, pens, shovels and water cans. Prying lids off buckets, coaxing trowels to balance mortar, wringing sponges, patting artwork, washing brushes, breaking twigs. All the powerful feelings of maternal love and loss, coursing through me, as if each blessed flinging of my own self at inert or biologic materials could ever make up for having had to let my children go. As if by pounding and scraping and digging with my fingers, I could unearth love from some lover that would never be given, if by twisting trunks and tubers or by any rotation, I could alter a parent withholding affection until his dying day. No, I guess not. But the answer is clear. One hydrangea on my hip, much like I used to carry my babies, another clasped firmly with a chokeberry in between, I’m striding down a meadow, to a hump that needs my fixing. Call it a septic mound, or a sleeping monster, or swale of old, there is some work to do, the put things right. Call them ley lines, or jackasses, or moments of collusion with the lesser gods. I’m really beyond caring. My hands just want to work, and I will follow, like a donkey, heart in pieces, heart in tow.”
