Day 129: Hands are Beautiful Things

Should be Day 165.

Some people have parents who are neurosurgeons or bank managers.  Some own businesses or control large corporations.  Other kids at my school have parents who do cool things, like sell Tupperware or build furniture.  My friend's mother is a teacher.  My mother is a cleaning lady.  Now I know what you're thinking.  We must be poor or my mom must not have finished high school.  That's true for most people, but not my family.  We're not rich, but we're comfortable, if both of my parents work.  My mom just needed a small job.  She could work in retail or even have a computer science job if she wanted, but she prefers it this way.

"Mom," I asked her once.  "Why on earth do you want to be a cleaning lady?  There's plenty of better jobs out there that aren't so..."

"Humiliating?"

"Yeah," I hung my head.  

"Tammy, look at the end of your arms and tell me what you see."

"My hands?" I wasn't sure if she wanted such an obvious answer.

"And what do you do with them?"

My eyebrows twisted high as I stared at her earnest face.

"I eat with them.  I can brush my hair and pick up things with them."

"Those are the obvious answers.  What else?"

"I can...do chores?"

I could hear a soft giggle.  "Tammy, when I was a little girl, I used to stare at my mother's hands and think about how beautiful they were.  It's not that they were lovely to behold.  The beauty was in what they did.  Those hands held me when I was first born, bathed and took care of my as I grew up, wiped away my tears, squeezed my own tightly when I was afraid to get my shots, prepared my meals, cleaned up my toys, kept the house clean, washed my clothes, drove me to school, wrote down the answers to my homework when I was sick, and embraced me every night before I went to bed.  I decided long ago that I wanted to be a servant the way my mother's hands were.  Cleaning houses and babysitting seem to be the closest way to achieving that."

"That's pretty cool."  I stopped my mom before she walked away.  "Hey, Mom?  Thanks, for all you did for me with your hands."