Elderly persons' hands as indicators of life history

¶ … elderly person's hands tell the story of a lifetime. Each spot, each crack, each wrinkle is a memory. That memory is permanently etched in these hands, which reach out and touch the world. Those hands scare me at first. They remind me that I will be old one day, too. Then I realize that those hands are trying to tell me something. I look at my own hands and try to listen. When I look again at the elderly person's hands, I see past, present, and future woven together in the story of time.

She is an infant, crawling on the floor. Her hands reach out to touch an object daddy dangles in front of her eyes. It makes a funny noise. She keeps one hand on the floor and reaches toward the object, opening and closing her fist. Daddy lets her touch it. The object is round and smooth. Overcome with curiosity, she grabs the round thing with both hands and falls sideways. Daddy laughs, but she cries. She has failed to reach her goal. Daddy holds the object in front of her again, and this time, on her back, she takes it in both hands and giggles. Success!

She is three. She picks up a crayon, as she watches big sister draw. She holds the crayon in her fist without taking her eyes off sister and the colored lines coming off the crayon onto the paper. She presses onto the paper with her crayon, just like big sister. "Stop it!" cries big sister. "You're messing it up!" She does not understand what big sister means.

She is five. Mom sits across from her at the table. She draws the "S," which flows into the "h," and then the "a." A few seconds later, she has written for the first time her name, Shahin, in her own handwriting. She smiles, and can feel her mom's pride. She writes it again, her small fingers gripping the pencil like a chopstick.

She is fifteen. Her hands work vigorously over the keys in typing class in school. She looks around her at all the other students, and then back at her hands. Her nails are chipped. She needs to redo her polish before going out tonight. She wants to see Brian, maybe they will hold hands again tonight like they did last time.

She is eighteen. Her hand and Brian's are entwined. They have been dating for three years. Without letting go of her hand, he looks deeply into her eyes and says, what she has been waiting to hear for three years. "I love you too," she says. Their hands become disentangled, and then they are wrapped around each others' necks, chest, torso

She is twenty-two. She holds her baby in her arms and strokes its downy hair. Brian is there, too. She reaches out and he takes her hand as he also pets his new son's head. She holds their son out, letting her hands become both gentle and strong. They are the hands of a proud, confident, but humble mother.