Handled with Love

I am fascinated by my children's hands. I love watching their fingers manipulate things, grasping and reaching and functioning without too much thought.

I love the dimples they have instead of knuckles. OK, Milo's are starting to look like kid hands and not preschooler or toddler hands, and they are long past baby hands. But I love the pad of fat on the backs of their hands, the extra softness that gives their small bones substance. Both of my kids have pale, pale skin. Pale and pink. Their fingertips are pink, pink fingerprints, pink fingernails.

Milo's palms are like Scott's: broad and sturdy, meant for a lifetime of power tools and implements. His fingers are more like mine: long and tapered, not thick and rounded like his daddy's. The combination of Scott's large palms and my long fingers has given my man-cub BIG paws. So big that I don't foresee him playing a delicate mandolin, but instead a resonant upright bass. His hands fly over a computer keyboard, write his name, and build the most amazing sculptures.

Violet's hands are so graceful. It's hard to think of a two-year-old with graceful hands, but hers have always been that way. They float and flutter above what she's doing, always gently brushing her surroundings. They move precisely -- even as an infant her baby signs were completely accurate, her fingers drawn in perfectly, like two gently kissing flower buds for the sign "more." She patiently uses them to pry apart Legos, to guide markers and crayons, and to shove her wild hair from her face.

I don't know why their hands hold such mystical power over me, but from the moment an infant Milo first reached for my face, their little hands have held my heart; their fingers have left smudges on my soul.