worker man hands

Worker man hands. Stout, sausage like fingers, one permanently crooked from getting jammed with a softball – and he never would have such a trivial thing looked at by a hand surgeon. He just rigged up a homemade finger splint and got on with life. Broad backed hands. Almost like a farmer. A firm grip. The winters took a real toll on those hands with constant exposure to sub-zero temperatures, ice, snow, tools, and gas meters – I NEVER remember seeing my dad wear gloves. According to him, he couldn’t get a grip with gloves.  Again, his famous interjection, “What are you going to do when winter gets here?”, uttered in a middle of a howling blizzard just showing the highland-border-collie-type love of the elements and tireless hard work that characterized his life.

Every year – they’d come back…deep splits on his knuckles, in the creases or on his finger tips. Those open splits were always raw and tender…no matter how much goo he’d put on them at night. They weren’t big – not always noticeable. By the time the weather would turn, he’d usually have a reprieve and slowly but surely, his hands would be good as new.  

I look down at my own hands. After 20 years of on again/ off again, unexplainable blistering, deep under the skin which then turns to insatiable itching, followed by peeling, drying and finally cracking – the genius I am, figures – I have eczema. I’ve tried tracking it over the years and I know it is not solely stress induced.  There have been times where I’m under tremendous stress and I have zero problem.  Then when it flares up, I get those same kind of splits and they hurt like the dickens. If I so much as touch certain things to the tips of my thumbs, it can be riviting pain.  Lemon juice, cutting tomatoes or hand sanitizer are not advisable when they are flare up. 

It will generally take a few weeks before they start to heal up and I can get back to using my hands as normal without having to be very careful with them.  They are still my hands.  The fingers all work, they move ok.  I don’t have a fever.  There is no pill to take.  I just have to wait it out – till they aren’t so tender.  I still have to wash dishes.  I don’t get a free pass every time they bother me.  Certain movements really make me wince in pain.  But I’ll get over it.  Very slowly – imperceptibly they get better.  And my life goes on till the next cycle.  I know what to expect – know what it feels like – know when it is starting up again.

I just wasn’t prepared for this morning.  CNN is the background white noise in our house every morning.  And the whine of the lone bagpiper playing Amazing Grace in memory of those who died in the attacks of 9/11 brought a knot to my throat and instant tears spilling out of my eyes.  My personal wounds are still tender.  I just have to wait it out.  Eventually it will heal over and I’ll be able to go about my business without thinking.

Even in the throws of happy hospice hallucinations – those hands were working.  He was fixing things.  He asked us to hand him tools.  He was having trouble with a gas meter repair and needed another hand.  Glad to help.  He’d do the same for me…split fingers or not.