Hands

I lay in bed, a bundle of 10 fingers, 10 toes nestled in the crevice of my arm. Tiny, still, but growing bigger and more alert with each passing day.

I watch her raise a hand to inspect it. She turns it over to examine the front, then back to her palm again. She wiggles each finger individually as if just now registering her own superpower in controlling their movement.

She proceeds to throw her arm around wildly, hitting me, then the bed beneath us, then herself. She is thrilled by its power. Then she returns once more to the hand—turning it back and forth, back and forth.

Her hands are mine. They are my mother's before me, and her mother's too. They are distinctive in their deep creases, their weathered texture.

I have never liked my hands. Despised them, actually. They do not match the rest of me—aging far before their time. The deep wrinkles ugly and aged. Each knuckle glaringly defined. But now, watching my daughter, all of 6 months, I reconsider. I pick up my own hand and raise it next to hers, beholding it with new eyes.

These are the hands that held this baby for the very first time, not so long ago. The hands that daily pick her up when she cries and lather her with soap in the bath. The same hands that plunged countless needles deep into the soft flesh of my belly, preparing my body for her. The hands that clasped each other tightly, morning and night, praying desperately that she would come. Someday, please.

And now she is here, in my arms. Finally.

As I watch her delight in her own body, I plead that she never stops. That she grows to love herself with the same ferocity that I do. As did my mother before me, and her mother too. As every mother does.

My hands are cracked and worn and wrinkled, yes. But they are mine. A gift from the generations of women who came before. And now, they are my daughter's, too.

How could I not revere them, just as she does? How could I not marvel in wonder at their power, their potential? All these days spent imagining how I might teach her; discovering instead that I must first become her student.