My Grandmother's Hands...

This is not a picture of my grandmother's hands.  It is, in fact, a photo of my hand today taken with my iphone after a manicure because holding my "big girl" camera up with a heavy lens by just one hand seemed more challenging than I was up for today.

I work in a business where "coiffed" is a write off on your taxes. Yet, I've never managed to get the time (or inclination) to make weekly appointments at the nail salon.  I scramble before a big event, occasionally.  Or I go more often when I'm being urged by friends or therapists or loved ones to "take more time" for myself, wincing at the $12 bucks (yes, Vietnamese salon is the fanciest I enter!).  I think, "what a waste".  I'll end up washing or cleaning or buttoning my jeans in an hour and the polish will be ruined.  I'll wash my hair once or twice (there is a lot of it) and the manicure will be a brief memory and I'll be back to hiding my hands under the table at meetings. 

But, really, as I sit there being pampered I think:  here's what has to happen in the garden tomorrow:

- the coriander needs to be moved to a shadier spot because it's bolting
- the japanese eggplant needs to just be turned over - it ain't happening this summer
- the zucchini needs to have the leaves cut back
- the tomatoes need to be tied
- the nutgrass needs to be weeded
- the blue stone pavers need to be lifted up and the ground graded....

You get the picture.  I berate myself for not planning the manicure better.  But, honestly, there is never a good time when you are a gardener.  Maybe if you just grow roses.  I don't know.  Inform me, Dear Readers.  But, when you are generally just eager to get your hands in the dirt, a manicure is not long for the world.  

I'm generally of the mind that my hands, by today's beauty standards, leave much to be desired.  They aren't elegant or feminine.  I struggle to keep long nails.  And they certainly don't have the appearance as to be some extension of a beautiful sculpture made flesh.  In fact, I doubt any artist in his right mind would ever WANT to sculpt them or paint them or, truthfully, photograph them (see Exhibit A above).  They are for a lack of a more poetic description:  chubby, short, sausage fingered hands.  They are "peasant" hands.  The are gardener's hands.

And, as I have begun to recognize as I'm aging, they are also my grandmother's hands.  They are the hands of my Italian grandmother:  Mary.  Maria.  Nana.  She was worker that one.  Worked from the time she was 16 until the day she died.  She cleaned, cooked, raised children, cut wood, and buffed that kitchen floor every night of her adult life and - while most of the gardening fell to her brother - yes, she gardened, too. 

So, there it is.  Love me.  Love my hands.  They are worker hands.  They are gardener's hands.  They are Mary's hands.