Mandy Rose
The average male hand is seven and a half inches long from the wrist to the tip of the middle finger, and 3.3 inches across the widest part of its palm. The average female hand is six and three quarter inches long with a breadth of 2.9 inches. If you’re measuring horses, a hand is exactly four inches. For “The Cajun Chef,” Justin Wilson, the cupped palm of his hand measures one tablespoon. My grandmother’s hands were the perfect size to use her thumb to measure the thickness of biscuit dough when she rolled it out on her wooden table. Cayenne pepper and horses, the thickness of dough—we use our hands to measure.
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As a single mother, I often wonder whether I measure up. My hands do the caring and carrying for two, and at night I clasp them together to pray for our family of three. Sometimes, it would be nice to have someone else to do the heavy lifting. As a single woman, perhaps the thing I miss most is another pair of hands.
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We know people and directions like the back of our hands. To get a hand in is to begin to know something, to get it hands down is to master. If not, things get out of hand and we might need someone to lend a hand. Hand over fist is to proceed or take quickly, but a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. We do not bite the hand that feeds us. If you are guilty, you may be caught red-handed. To grasp something, you need a handle, but to get a handle on something, you must to be able to understand it. To be a dab hand is to be very clever, which is the opposite of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. If you overplay your hand, you are likely to lose. To turn your hand to something is to take it on, to tip your hand is to give away more than you intend.
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We work with the hand we are dealt and we race the hands of time. We attribute curses and blessings to the Hands of Fate or the Hand of God, pressing our hands together in faith, gratitude or joy. Tracing hands on paper, my daughter said, “Mama, mine are shaped like yours.” This means they are also shaped like my father’s, and his mother’s before him.
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We give each other a hand up, though some call it a hand out. Giving a hand can mean helping or clapping. One hand washes the other, and if you’ve ever given a three-year-old a bath, you know they can be a handful. The best work is done by hand, and we are supposed to hand-wash delicates. You hand down clothes or a verdict, hand-pick your successor, or throw your hands up in frustration. To be handy can mean getting too personal at the end of the date, but it can also be the ability to fix what is broken—to be a right hand man.
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One afternoon, my daughter said she liked holding my hand, but didn’t know why. She said it just felt like bedtime. I know that one day she won’t want to hold my hand anymore, so I try not to grip hers too tightly. My son counts on my hands when he runs out of fingers or when he needs help untying knots. He uses me to reach what is beyond his grasp. When they are sick, their hands play with my hair as they fall asleep and I let them stay tangled.
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We hand down heirlooms and personality traits like we hand off footballs, fill baby books with handprints and the handiwork of children who grow too quickly. We write about an infant, discovered his hands, forgetting the shadowy profile of a baby in the womb, sucking on his thumb. Within moments of being born, each of my babies grasped my fingers with theirs and refused to let go, something they continued to do, even while sleeping.
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Once, you could tell a writer by the barrel shaped indention of a middle finger, by the stain of graphite or ink. These days, we rely more upon wrists rested on a keyboard, the tapping of fingers on keys. Wrists rested too long run the risk of hands that no longer work. Celebrities place their hands in concrete, hoping their marks will last forever. A palm reader once told me my hands had the writer’s mark, but I tell myself I can’t remember if I had ink on my fingers that day.
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My dad had the hands of a worker, fingertips toughened by manual labor. He couldn’t palm a basketball, and a college education was out of his reach, but he did hand down gentle advice and the way my hands rub circles on the backs of my children when they are scared or on their stomachs when they are in knots. He taught me that hands are not for hurting and how to fix a problem before it gets out of hand. Under his guidance, I learned to keep both hands on the wheel, how to use hand signals when driving, and how to measure the distance on a map when it is time to start over or say goodbye.
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We move our hands differently when they are decorated. Have you ever noticed a woman, newly engaged—the way her left hand gestures more often than before? Or a man turning his wedding band for comfort when he is nervous? It was during my divorce that I began noticing hands more, and the way mine suddenly felt light. Wearing his rings for six years left an impression which took two years to fade. Sometimes I still feel them. He sold insurance, told his clients they were in good hands as he shuffled signatures and palmed paper. After his hands hurt our daughter, we sat in a courtroom, waiting for the judge to hand down a verdict. I looked over in time to see his left thumb turning a ring no longer on his finger, and wondered how long it would take him to stop seeking comfort in a missing band.
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My girlfriends tease me about my obsession with hands, assuming I instantly register the presence or absence of a ring. I don’t tell them I’m really trying to figure out if those hands have bathed a baby in the sink or rested on a forehead to check for fever—if they have consoled a crying woman and rubbed slow circles on her back. I notice whether the hand is holding a smaller one, especially if his hands keep hers safe. They think I am looking for a gold band while I look for the impression left behind.
A friend once told me, “Never marry a man with dirt underneath his fingernails,” but some of the gentlest men I know have hands stained by their willingness to get dirty, to do the work, to be handy. I don’t admit that I imagine I can tell if a man is gentle by looking at his hands, or that I am trying to find out if he knows the value of fixing what has been broken.
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I have dated, but it took a long time to be able to hold hands with a significant other. Holding hands seems intimate, almost sacred, now, and the hands that touch mine are important. We hold hands when we are in love, scared, or praying—when what happens next is out of our hands.
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My dad died just hours before Father’s Day, 2011. A lifetime of working with his hands and a series of health issues took their toll, and I spent the week leading up to his death sitting by his bedside. I read to him and traced the lines of his palm with my fingers before closing his hand around mine. I thanked him for teaching me to not be afraid of getting my hands dirty, and for showing me, by example, how to be a gentle parent. When we had to let him go, I made sure the last thing he felt was me, holding his hand.
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Mandy Rose studied creative writing at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado, where she lives with her two young children. Her work has most recently appeared in A Poetic Inventory of Rocky Mountain National Park (Wolverine Farm Publishing 2013), an anthology of poetry and prose dedicated to the species in the park. She recently served as the Poetry Editor for The Greyrock Review and as Assistant Editor for A Poetic Inventory of Rocky Mountain National Park.