Hands, making

on leaving the hands that raised me, for my own handmade life

a woman in a red dress is pouring tea, by Thai Nguyen Anh

“Hands are for other human hands to hold. They should not be reserved exclusively as perches for hawks. And the wild is not a panacea for the human soul; too much in the air can corrode it to nothing.”

– Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk

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This is a story about —

three generations of hands, and the shapes they formed out of life;

the bridges we build, between the hands of the women before us and our own; and

the handmade connection between head and heart

𓏋

This is a story birthed under the sun and moon of Taurus season,

a season bathed in the essence of weaving timelessness out of time

~ Hand-cooked ~

the story of my grandmother’s hands

to let time fall in droplets — image by Nguyen Dang Hoang Nhu

“You can always tell the life someone has lived from looking at their hands,” my grandmother would say to me, over the years I spent growing up in her care. “Don’t ever let your hands become like mine.”

As if to emphasize this, she would always proceed to show me her hands, pointing out what she called the knobbly bits, the peeling skin, the red hills of swelling from soaking in dishwashing and laundry detergents, the intensely dark ink stain-like blots under her fingernails that she introduced to me matter-of-factly as fungal rot, from having her hands soaked in decades of household cleaning and management.

Don’t ever let your hands become like mine.

In this one line held all her hopes and dreams for me — to study hard, do well in life, and keep my hands pristine and beautiful, the way hers had been, once upon a time.

Every morning that I stayed with my grandmother, I watched her hands crack open two astonishingly beautiful and perfectly half-boiled eggs for my breakfast.

Each morning a different abstract painting of yellow and white, with its own unique decoration of marble swirls of soy sauce and sprinkles of white pepper.

My hands never learnt or tried to replicate making eggs in this way, because they knew, somehow, that this act would seal the fact that I could no longer eat the eggs she made for me.

One day, that became the truth anyway.

Still, I refused to seal it as truth with my own hands.

I knew from the time I was a child, that there was magic in my grandmother’s hands, and it flowed into the food she cooked for me.

~ Hand-pressed~

the story of my mother’s hands

my mother held me the only way she knew how, like red sliced fruit — image by Shane

My mother’s hands needed to learn toughness and shock absorption from a young age.

Perhaps all the shock they had absorbed needed to be released somewhere, somehow.

Over the years, she brushed her teeth so furiously that the enamel chipped away and got worn down.

Still, her hands continued moving in the same way, applying the same instinctive pressures.

I learnt that she believed applying pressure to things and people would help them perform in the way they were intended to.

I learnt that those hands stopped cooking in reaction to judgment, but later found solace in baking.

Sometimes I watched my mother gardening, and sometimes I watched my mother painting.

Most of the time, I wasn’t around to see my mother gardening or painting.

But always, I understood that the gardening spade and the paintbrush had more knowledge (the kind that mattered) of my mother’s hands than I did, or maybe ever would.

Perhaps one day, I would learn from the spade and brush about my mother’s hands.

But in fact, there was an unspoken agreement between my mother and me (although perhaps to different extents) that her ways with gardening and painting had, whether by reason of nature or nurture, not been inherited by me.

As my grandmother and my mother had hoped (although perhaps to different extents), I grew to become a woman of words and the mind, rather than of the hands.

~ Handmade ~

a story being told, by my own hands

to travel the world for wildflowers — image by Tony Sebastien

With my own hands, I dragged heavy suitcases stuffed with the most important possessions of my life, all around the world, from continent to continent.

My hands were full of suitcase, and I was full of hopes and dreams.

Nothing has changed much between the ages of 18 and now, 40.

Except that somewhere between the ages of 30 and 40, I discovered that my hands were demanding more of me. They demanded more than to be applied to typing words and numbers that meant millions or billions of dollars to others, but that meant something less than nothing to me.

My hands demanded more of me, if I were to live, instead of merely survive.

I learnt, for the first time, that my hands could support the weight of my body if I positioned myself like the plank of a fallen tree, parallel to the ground.

I learnt, for the first time, that the amount of magic that flows into cooked food has a correlation to the amount of heart that goes into the hands cooking the food.

I learnt, for the first time, that bliss is handmade.

Such as, the hanging up of freshly washed laundry on a hand-strung clothes line, up on a rooftop balcony, under the Sevillan sun, while being watched lazily by a sunbathing calico cat, and accompanied by the soundtrack of a flamenco class carrying on next door.

Such as, the gathering of wild flowers on the way home and arranging them in a vase carefully handpicked from a vintage thrift store, because this vase had been handmade in a previous century exactly for these flowers that bloomed today.

Such as, the slow brewing of leaves from an ancient tea tree growing on the same land where my grandmother’s grandmother used to walk, and hand-pouring tea into cups sitting on a little wooden table. A little wooden table that’s been weathered in all the ways that mirror the weathering of the people who sit around it for tea.

Such as, the slow learning of how to handmake a life, while unfolding myself free from the pressures and clutchings of all the hands that raised me, but that are not my own.

A handmade life that is, in the end, a tribute to all the hands that raised me, including my own.

These are the things I am learning how to make, these days, with my own hands.

𓇢𓆸

What are the stories that live in your hands?

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If you’re called by stories about re-invention, renewal, and reclamation, you may enjoy these other stories, too :)

⟢ Stories I Wrote While Waiting for You To Tell Them To Me

— on the connections between food, art, and self-becoming, explored through stories and poetry born out of the kitchens in my life

⟢ Wednesday’s Child

— on inheriting and rewriting the stories that shape us, explored through the mythological and cosmic archetypes of Mercury, the Valkyries, the fairytale of The Wild Swans, and Scorpio

⟢ a birth of snow from spring

— on evoking courage to choose life after rupture, explored through the mythological and cosmic archetypes of Aries, Mars, and Chiron

Stories I Wrote While Waiting for You To Tell Them To Me

Wednesday's Child

a birth of snow from spring