Hands of Time

“I, who cannot see, find hundreds of things to interest me through mere touch. I feel the delicate symmetry of a leaf.  I pass my hands lovingly about the smooth skin of a silver birch, or the rough shaggy bark of a pine.”  ~ Helen Keller

Thumbs up for “old hands” literally and figuratively.  The hands in this collage are the hands of women in their sixties, seventies, and eighties. As time goes by, I’m fascinated with my own hands and how they have served me over the years.  My own hands are in this collage as well as the hands of some wonderful other women I know.

These hands span many countries.  There are Canadian, Austrian, German, East Indian, West Indian, and South American hands here.  There are mother and grandmother hands here.  These hands have worked in schools, libraries, travel agencies, factories, offices, stores, hospitals, and many other places..  There are immigrant hands here,  All these hands have rocked cradles, cooked meals, and given care inside and outside the home to a large assortment of people.

All these hands were once newborn hands and now they are marked by wrinkles.  They are still very beautiful and useful.   We can celebrate our hands and look at them with love and gratitude for all they have meant to us and mean to us now.  I love my hands like I have never loved them in my whole life.  I look in awe at the hands and the lives of the friends who have graciously shared their hands for this collage.

Here is some information on hands that I found on the internet:

From brushing our teeth first thing in the morning to turning off the bedside lamp last thing at night, the human hand—all would agree—is indispensable, not just for everything we do but for those artifacts with which we do them. Every single drop of human culture, from the stunning paintings in the Chauvet caves of thirty thousand years ago to my writing these words, via every dwelling, temple and cathedral ever built, every piece of jewellery that adorned the human body, every musical instrument to have plucked the human soul, was created by the human hand. And we have the hand, too, to thank for our history, for without it our past would have just slipped away unrecorded into the dark abyss of time.

Hope you take good care of your hands and enjoy and appreciate them every day.  This Late Bloomer is now reflecting on just how much I appreciate my hands and those of the people around me.

“As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.” ~ Audrey Hepburn

 

Reference:  The Hand