Hands
Memories of parents taken before my coming of age.
My heart is heavy with her absence as if it were yesterday. Mum has been gone forty-six years. I do not have a well of memory to draw from, to drink the life of her and fill me with a sense of who I am through who she was. Her voice is soundless. Her smell could be anything: clean deep ocean, first breath after quiet snow, orange dust from the stamens of Stargazer lilies or the sweet burst from the beach roses bordering the sandy sidewalk. But she did not wear perfume. I take comfort in the idea I may smell just like her because we share the same DNA.
I would sit in her lap after dinner, maybe I was four or five. Trace her hands with my fingers. I remember her hands, so alike in shape to mine, with a slightly crooked third finger. I pulled her wedding ring off and on, off and on. Played paddy-cake with her hands while her focus was elsewhere. Talking with my father at the other end of the table or just sitting quietly, tired from the effort of cooking dinner for a family of twelve. Her hands were compliant, heavy. The wedding ring now sits on my finger with the engraving, Dave to Betty 1948. Maybe there was not enough room on the band for love.
I remember her navy wool cardigan. Cabled wool with circular balls for buttons. A crisp white oxford underneath, paired with her cranberry tweed skirt and penny loafers. When I think of her, I see her in this same outfit, as if they were her only clothes. Hiding in her closet, I ran my hands and face along a forest green satin swing coat, a pearl colored gown with splashes of color running all over as if spattered with a paint brush. Black velvet something and a jewelry box with pearls and clip on earrings. Her shoes were double narrow size 6.
I remember her most when each of my breaths were labored from asthma. When kissing me goodnight, I would hold her face in my hands, squishing her cheeks or lightly tracing the fine arch of her cheekbones; run fingers across the brow, etched with lines of worry like tide wrinkles in sand.
I want to know who that woman was in the green satin coat and the designer dress. I want to have dinner with her on a lovely summer evening. Just the two of us. We will have champagne and chocolate for dessert. Take a long walk on the beach and watch the orange sun kiss the horizon goodnight. Maybe we will hold hands.
I remember most everything about Dad. Dad has been gone thirty-six years. The well runs deep. Although short by American standards at 5’8, everything else about him was big: his baritone voice, the Old Spice smell wafting from his neck, Merchant Marine calloused hands — which later held an architect’s pencil, his comedic presence in a room, his golf swing, his love of God, his hopes and dreams and love of Mum.
As a child, my love for him was also big. I was set apart from the others being the littlest one, they were set in groups of Irish triplets and twins (born one right after the other) — no place for me in the pattern with three years’ space. I sat to his left at the long kitchen table, Nana (his Mum) sat to his right. Sometimes we played the ‘hand stacking’ game: staking our hands one on top the other, whoever’s hand is on the bottom pulls it free lightning fast and back to the position on the top, and so on. He and I made funny faces and sometimes threw peas, much to Mum’s dismay.
Those hands rubbed mine when frozen from sledding as I sat cuddled in his lap, my nose tingling from thaw, whistles piercing the air from the football game on the television. Those hands held mine as we walked the church aisle for his weekly communion. Back in our pew, he kneeled close and whispered, “say a prayer for Catherine,” (The second baby gone too soon). I pretended I knew the prayers, but did not as yet. He gave me quarters for the alms basket. The weight of them heavy in my sweaty palms, clutching them fiercely, until the long handle of the wicker basket passed under my nose and I let them loose amongst floating bills and mountains of coins.
On our annual trip to Old Silver beach, where the Atlantic water was warmer than in Minot Massachusetts and the waves larger, he would take me out beyond the sandbar. My arms clinging to his neck as he made deep tugboat sounds as the waves crashed upon us. I cackled with glee and a bit of fear, swallowing salt water and hacking it up, his hand lightly slapping my back. “Do you want to go in?” I tightened my legs around his middle and answered, “NEVER!” We ate sandwiches Mum made from rib roast and sat in big circles with all the cousins. But I stayed by his side, always.
The other weekends of the summer he could be found next door at Hatherly Country Club playing golf and having round after round of gin and tonics in the clubhouse. Mum often sent me over to corral him for supper. Red faced from the sun, eyes glowing with buzz, he’d gather me onto his lap, his deep voice resonating under his golf sweater:
“This is the baby of the family, isn’t she a beauty? He’d order me a coke and I’d soon forget my mission, cuddled on his lap like a trophy. Soon enough, Mum would send other troops. Usually The Little Fellas, the boys closest to me in age at ten and twelve.
Sometimes, when I smell fresh cut grass and the tic and sputter of industrial lawn sprinklers, I’m overcome with the loneliness of the child buried deep within. Longing to be close to my father. To be taught the game of golf by him, like the boys.
What happened to us? Him and me, little hand in big? Our life went round the bend and our hands lost their grasp. My love for him turned upside down. The force of the wave dragging us under.
