Looking at My Hands

Looking at My Hands By - Roger White Pallid skin, once luminescent, now brown and stained like husks. Gaunt fingers, once straight, now gnarled and twisted like twigs. I lament where my hands have been is not where they are now. Yet, slowly through the epiphany of memory, I see all they have done. These trustworthy hands have guided me through the worst and best in my life. They served this country, kept me going forward when hope seemed beyond my grasp. On our wedding day, they clasped my wife’s hands to say…I love you. Carried babies to bed, wiped away a child’s tears to say it will be alright, patted young men on the back to express my pride in them, held my wife to let her know we will get through this. They shook hands with many family and old friends to say - Hi, good to see you again, and gently touched cold hands to say goodbye for the last time. I now look at my hands differently than I did only a moment ago. I feel a sense of respect for all they have accomplished and expressed in my life. No, let them grow older by the day, they deserve that, and they have grown old so beautifully. We must appreciate our hands. These primitive cages of bone and skin need no evolution, they are the instruments of human evolution. Timeless artisans of human intelligence, art, craft, written, spoken, science, toil, emotion. We engage the world with our hands. Without them, we would be mute of words, incapable of deeds, devoid of creativity, impotent of feeling. We would be feral creatures no more than the animals with which we share this Earth. With our hands we are the architects of our wisdom, the beneficiaries of our existence.