All you need is love. My husband of fifty years taught me this. It is a familiar phrase from an early Beatles song. Around our house, the tempo of our lives is graced with those well loved Beatle lyrics playing in the background. Indeed this past year of pandemic, political crisis and seemingly hopeless divide has sorely tested the truth of “all you need is love.” And yet when life narrows down to simple everyday existence, and all the things we seemingly thought we could not do without are gone, love remains. Think on that! I recently read the words of a friend who reflected on how the simplest of ordinary things have become beautiful and dear in this time of pandemic isolation. She admits to smiling fondly at her coffee cup. Perhaps she has lost her mind? She invited the reader to reflect on the small things which have become beautiful and dear. After my chuckle at her reflection I found myself noting certain small, beautiful and dear things as well. Consider my favorite wintertime companions, the birds: how the cheerful Carolina wren holds its jaunty striped tail feathers up high like a salute; how the scarlet cardinal males with their garnet grey partners cause the bare branches of my crabapple tree to bloom; how the snowbirds (juncos) nestle in the snow covered branches of our discarded Christmas tree to munch on bagel treats which we hung there.
February is an in-between month. Winter lingers on like a visitor that has outlived its welcome. We look to see if the groundhog sees its shadow, and begin to yearn for spring. The snow has lost its charm. I tire of the indoor tasks which were so beguiling in late autumn: reading, knitting, writing, drinking endless cups of tea. I sort my seed packets and count the days until I can begin to push those embryos of life into the waiting soil. Yet the days pass slowly. I make homemade valentines and treat my feathered ladies to a special heart shaped seed cake. I hang the carefully cut out hearts where Christmas decorations and snowflakes were. I studiously avoid my sewing room where a quilt is waiting for my silver needle to flash in and out, in and out. I drift as lazily through my days as the snowflakes which aimlessly float in the air outside my window.
In recent winter issue of Bella Grace magazine I came across an article entitled “Beautiful In-Betweens” by Elle Harris, a writer I much admire. https://thisquotablelife.wordpress.com/ She invites the reader to reflect on the “in-between” times in life. In particular one such invitation invites the reader to examine their hands. Think of what evidence those hands provide of a life well lived. What a small, seemingly ordinary thing to cherish: one’s own hands. Yet if I look closely at my own not so young hands, they do provide a kind of roadmap and I looked up a journal entry I wrote not long after my mother passed away. I will share parts of it:
Journal Entry: Hands (summer 2014)
Today I had to move a box into Mom’s old closet. To make room I had to dismantle a box of framed photographs which she had had at Serenity Care. As I went through the photos, mostly of her great-grandchildren, I got such a sense of time passing. It seemed so recently that these sweet children were just born, yet that was ten to twenty years ago. Where have the years gone? It seems I blink and a year goes by. I found photos of my oldest son holding his firstborn in his arms, my second granddaughter as a baby in a Moses basket, wedding photos, and one precious photo of my son at age four dressed as a clown for Halloween, my daughter’s senior photos. My what a beauty!
I found Mom’s baby pictures, deeds to property, checkbooks, my last accounting of her estate, jewelry no one wanted. That is what is left of her: a paper trail, a lock of hair, a strand of crystal beads.
I found the rings I had to take off last summer when my arthritis got so bad. My twenty-fifth wedding anniversary emerald, my fortieth anniversary ruby. I thought —maybe?? My hands are not as bad this summer. I slipped each on the ring finger. They stopped at each enlarged knuckle. No.
I am reminded again of my age. My hands are just like my mother’s: wrinkled, brown with age spots, mountain range of blue veins traced across the top. My own Blue Ridge.
These Hands
These hands have cradled babies’ heads,
and stroked my mother’s tear-streaked face,
kneaded warm smooth mounds of fragrant bread dough,
dug into the garden’s rich deep earth
to weed and plant seeds,
clapped with pride at a concert or swim meet,
typed endless lesson plans,
grasped firmly a child’s hand to give a lift up,
stroked a silky golden retriever’s fur,
strummed a dulcimer’s plaintive lament,
patted a chicken’s down fluffed breast,
wound around a husband’s strong shoulders,
folded in prayer for a friend,
laid idly while river dreaming,
twisted long red locks in agitation,
curled around a pen to record life’s questions,
composed a letter of comfort or a poem,
pressed on a keyboard to send a missive
bearing connection and love.
These hands.
