BEAUTIFUL HANDS

My Nan has the most interesting and incredible hands... even in her old age, bent slightly with arthritis and wrinkled with age... nothing has kept them from being the most beautiful hands I have ever held.

They are the same hands that endlessly stirred the pea soup and pushed down the button for peanut butter toast when I came to visit as a girl... the same hands that wrote beautiful cards with incredible pictures and hysterical rhymes to everyone and for every event throughout her life... these are the same hands that danced with animation as she never grew impatient of my endless curiosities and prods for more stories... the same hands that waved through the air like a conductor when she sang to us... they are the same hands that rubbed my back for hours as a hard to put to sleep child.

They are also the same hands that worked and toiled through the depression... and the hands that held my grandfather's ring after they got married, his heart all through they're life together, and his hand all the way until he traded this place for heaven... those hands held her second love's through the last part of his journey too... those hands have fed hundreds over a life time, and wiped away thousands of tears- no matter their cause, she treated every one with utmost importance and care.

I have watched them closely all my life... with great curiosity, great admiration and great love. Even as she sleeps tonight, as close to death as one can get without passing through it, I cannot help but hold her hand and think how beautiful it is...