Barbara's Hands

My Hands


I think anyone would be hard-pressed to infer what I do for a living from my hands. My hands are long. The fingers are longer than the hands themselves. I don’t know if this is a rare phenomenon or not. To look at my hands you would swear I have never done manual labor—and you would be right. I have no wrinkles or visible lines on the backof my hands. Their skin is smooth; the nails well-manicured. The only anomaly, on them is what used to be a large callous on the third finger of my right hand. Now it is barely visible, but you can still see it if you look closely, especially after I have written in pen and ink (I am an incurable letter writer. I believe that part of the soul and spirit is transmitted when one writes on paper in pen and ink, much more so than on a word processor. The callous also shows up after gardening if I fail to use gloves because the dirt grinds into the crevices that are still there like the sediment one can see in glaciers. I am awkward with my hands. I can paint, draw, write and even drive a nail or pull up a bush with them, but I feel they rebel when such action takes place. Turn my hands over and my palms stare you in the face. Again, no wrinkles, definitely no callouses, but many, many lines.
Fortune tellers would have a field day with my hands, but I do not frequent that profession. Life is a mystery to pursue the future through a third party obviates everything I believe in.

Hands Exercise for Week 1

Paste your first writing exercise here and press "publish post" when you're finished.