In my post yesterday, I wrote about my daughter's hands. Today I was looking through an old writer's notebook and found a snippet about my son's hands. Here is a slice based on that snippet.
Mitchell's hands are the hands of a typical 11 year old boy. He doesn't bite his nails. In fact, sometimes his nails get longish and he trims them with clippers. Yes, they are often dirty. It is amazing he isn't covered in staph and flesh eating bacteria. He scratches and digs at mosquito bites with those icky nails. He still spends hours in the creek catching snakes and netting blue gill. He comes home with a ditch smell which is different from his muddy b-o smell from football practice.
My son's hands are always busy folding origami dragons, practicing card tricks, and making fishing poles out of rulers and other stuff from the junk drawer. Mitch's hands spend hours combining lego pieces to create miniature robots; all with names, specialized weapons, and are either good or evil. He devotes hours to revising these characters until they are just right. He doesn't like to hold my hand that much any more. Sometimes when I get to hold his hand in church, he squeezes it so hard that I give him the evil eye. He delights in my painful winces. It's better than not holding his hand at all.
It would be so cool to take a picture of the hands of all our loved ones and pair them up with handwriting stories. Lovely.
ReplyDeleteI like the way you have described these hands. There are such great images you have put in my mind. Aren't we lucky when they let us hold their hand?
ReplyDeleteI love the way your detailed description paints this picture of your son.
ReplyDeleteI love the description of your son's hands. What a great idea to focus on one part of the body like that. I may have to think about how I could incorporate that into a mini-lesson:)
ReplyDeleteSharing what Mitch's hands are doing gives me a glimpse into his personality. Excellent wording. You tugged at my mother's heart. MHG:)
ReplyDeleteAhh hands . . . a perfect topic for a slice. It's amazing how quickly they change, isn't it. Us wanting to hold on . . . them wanting to let go. Looking forward to slicing with you,
ReplyDeleteRuth
Dear Diana,
ReplyDeleteI am moved by your Slice of LIfe. I, too, am fascinated by hands and the stories they tell. I am writing this idea down as a "seed" in my writer's notebook, which is not a notebook at all anymore, but an online notepad. Sometimes I miss using pen and paper, and other times I can't be bothered.
Your post also had a nice personal connection for me because it reminded me of my mom. A photographer, my mother loves to take pictures of hands, especially the weathered and wrinkled hands of the elderly. They speak stories to her.
I am reminded of the Japanese aesthetic of wabi sabi, where old, worn and imperfect things are lifted up as beautiful. These objects, like the dirty hands of your son, tell the stories of life, of change and natural grace.
Thank you for inspiring a whole post worth of warm thoughts and memories.
Happy Slicing,
Erin
Love the topic. There is so much story in hands. It reminds me of one of my favorite short stories, the story of Wing Biddlebaum in "Hands" from Sherwood Anderson's Winseburg, Ohio.
ReplyDeleteBoy hands...my son and I used to communicate with hand squeezes - three meant "I love you", four meant "I'm mad at you", two meant "I'm bored". That was long ago, befoe college...now we communicate by texting and gchats. I miss hose hand holding days of old!
ReplyDeleteYour son's hands remind me of my brother. He too is a lot like your son. He was always busy with his hands.
ReplyDeleteSuch beautiful writing. Just yesterday, I was in the car with my son, looking at his hands. He's 15, almost 16 now, and his hands are GIANT, good for throwing footballs and basketballs, but not too long ago, they were catching bugs and digging giant holes in our backyard, and fixing bikes. I may have to try a post like this this month.
ReplyDeleteCarol
I have three sons and I am constantly marveling at their hands and feet. They grow so quickly. When they were babies I would hold them and rub them, smell them even, for hours at a time. I miss that!
ReplyDeleteI love hands too, and have used them in countless pieces of the fabric art I do. I love the image of your son's nimble fingers doing what he loves to do. I love that he squeezes you in church.
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