My Grandfather's Hands...

I carry many snippets of early memories in my childhood, but age three was when I began to remember full events...and without a doubt, what I remember is that I was my grandfather's shadow and partner in crime.  You see...after I was born my mother dropped me on my grandparent's doorstep...my grandfather became my guardian...on that day began our love affair...We were inseparable...everyone knew that he adored me and I him.  He was this huge man with graying red hair...big white teeth...booming laugh and he looked like Chef Boyardee...literally...I never missed my mother and she was never there...so I'm guessing the feeling was mutual.  As far as I was concerned, my grandmother was mom...and my grandfather was my hero.

My most vivid memory is of the day that I followed along his immense person to the rabbit hutches to feed what would eventually become dinner...down the road.  With one massive hand, he gently held me back and with the other he reached into the cage to feed the half wild beings.  One jumped at him and bit the back of his hand.  As he jerked his hand back, mumbling fierce words behind clenched teeth, I saw the rich, ruby liquid well up on the back of his hand.....and, I began to cry...sobbing cries...reaching up with chubby toddler hands..."hurt, Grandpa, hurt."

He reached down with his other warm hand and brushed my hair out of my eyes and caught my tears with his thumb.  "Would you feel better, if you had a hurt too?"  I nodded and he bent over and dripped his blood onto the back of my hand.  "Now your hand is just like mine...let's go see Grandma and have her fix our hurts and our hands."  We walked back to the house, hand in hand...as I carefully watched his hurt and he watched mine. Grandma washed both of our hands and gently placed a band-aid on both of our hurts.  He drank his cup of coffee, with a drop of milk and I drank my cup of milk with a drop of coffee..because "I was a big girl now, with my first big hurt."...our mirrored hands wrapped around the porcelain mugs....

The other night I was cleaning house...emotionally...and throwing out things that were painful and I came across the box that holds everything about my grandfather...the music he wrote...the recipes he used for cooking...his schematic drawings for the house he never built, but wanted to...the Pennsylvania Dutch stencils he used to decorate my grandmother's cabinets....the clippings of things he wanted in life...a drawing of a Spanish Galleon with great sails that he had dreamily drawn on scratch paper...and his prayer book.  His hands created so many things...held so many things...they were the early shapers of my life and the pathway to great dreams never realized....

My mother thought he was a fool and a buffoon...a jack of all trades and master of none...yet, he is the one who first taught me unconditional, fierce, unending love.  The day he passed...he said his prayers and his hands gently slipped the bookmark into his prayer book...April 24th..my birthday...and he closed his eyes.  And...even as I held his old prayer book the other night...it wasn't his face I remembered...but his hands...the great hands of a great man who no one knows and few remember...

He would be so proud of what I am doing with my hands...I am leaving my mark...I am dreaming...I am creating...I am loving...I am so much like him....I am my grandfather's hands....