FocusOnTheFamily

Oma's hands

Written by Michelle Dwyer

In my first job as a legal assistant I wore suits and high heels every day. I grew my nails long and wore what I thought was a sophisticated red polish. I took great delight in my nicely manicured hands.

Decades have passed and I recently noticed my hands at a glance, almost as if they weren’t my own, and what I saw were my Oma’s* hands. I was gripped by emotion as a vivid memory washed over me. A little girl, I was barely able to see over the edge of the kitchen counter. In the quiet warmth of her kitchen, I watched with fascination as Oma scraped potatoes, her hands moving deftly, swiftly removing only the peel. She always scraped with a paring knife, never using a peeler. To use such a contraption would waste too much flesh of the potato; she had good reasons for not wasting a smidgen of anything.

Her hands were aged by years of loving service. These were the hands that raised my father – with a tender touch and a bit of tough love, too. These hands had done their best to feed a family in wartime. Hands that were always thrifty, never wasteful. Hands that sometimes fed and dressed me, that taught me how to sew.

And now my hands look just like hers: square palms, blunt fingers, the same lines around the knuckles – a small detail only a child would notice – and I am strangely warmed. I would have expected to be a little disappointed at the loss of my smooth, sophisticated hands. But I was quite delighted to find my hands looking like Oma’s.

No longer motivated by vanity, these hands are shaped by love. They are washed dozens of times a day after wiping bottoms, washing faces, cleaning bathrooms, chopping vegetables, kneading bread and wiping up spills. Now they have short nails, calluses, and a few dry, scratchy spots in spite of the regular application of lotion.

Unexpectedly, I am proud of my hands, pleased to be carrying on Oma’s legacy of love.

*Oma is Dutch for Grandmother

Michelle Dwyer moisturizes her hands and still paints her toenails ginger red in Beaverlodge, Alberta.

© 2007 Focus on the Family (Canada) Association. All rights reserved.

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