Now My Hands are Ugly

My hands are old.

I saw the future when I was younger.
When I was very young, I saw the hands of my mother and grandmother.
Big hands, but not so big, just big with apparent bones. Mostly big knuckles, ropey veins that bulged like veins pushed away from muscle of a thick body builder. Bulging like there is no room for veins between hard muscle and skin, so as the skin must give way, veins, strong with life, pump anyway.

My hands were always odd. I hid them in long sleeves. Sweaters, button down oxford cloth girls' white blouses. Constantly pulling at sleeves, hiding hands, I hoped, "Don't look, don't look, don't look please, people, don't look." Pulling long sleeves longer. From grade school to college, to married, to now; old. Boney. I was boney, skinny, knuckley. Then, before now, those hands were not too big. They were small as I was small and petite. A child not yet gaining height or length, or leastwise not until after youth; then arms and legs dangled past hems.

My mother's knuckles grew large, the bones of her fingers still narrow. My mother turned her rings, twisting them back from their slippery upside down place. Diamonds in spidery, silver-gold, a heavy domed setting like a muffin top, they turned around again, and she was forever twisting rings back. Many times her first pointer finger scrubbed the thumb's webbing, at the knuckle at the base of her thumb and now I do the same. Now I think of her when my hand curls to a soft fist.

My hands reach towards lost mother and grandmother. I watched them age, always youngish, beautiful, but hands accelerating into swollen old hands before they were old. My hand veins bulge, my knuckles grow, my ring no longer comes off without sudsy warm soap to assist.

"You look so young, too young to be your age.", I'm told. At 12 I looked 6, skinny, awkward, with boney hands. At 59, I look young with hands of an old man. My mother's hands, and her mother's. But my father's mother had lovely old hands, pearl smooth, holding violin while singing a ringing high soprano; who loved her namesake granddaughter, fussy and delicate as she was. Delicate as I am inside, rough hands or not.

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