When I was about 6 years old we moved next door to my grandparents.
Grandad owned a small farm, Mum and Dad wanted to build their own place, and so they bought a section of his land. (Family rates maybe? I wasn't old enough to catch the details.)
What this meant for us, as kids, was that we had two homes. We wandered in and out of both as we pleased. I guess it effectively meant we had four parents, too.
The presence of my grandparents became as familiar to me as the contours of my own skin. Their physicality was a balm to me. Everything about them comforted me. Enchanted me.
I reserved a particular fascination, however, for their hands.
I spent hours observing their hands.
I knew every buckle and ridge of Grandma's fingers (I had no concept that these 'knots' were caused by arthritis and gave her a lot of pain). I loved the way that, when she was in a reflective mood, she would sit with her hands in her lap and stare out the window, rubbing the pad of her thumb lightly over the knuckle of her index finger. It was such a quiet, private gesture, that seemed to me to speak volumes.
I loved the way that Grandad's hands were brown all year round. Midwinter, midsummer, his hands were always the same colour: years spent outdoors had weathered them a permanent dark bronze.
I loved that his hands had crazy hollows where his tendons were thickened and raised like rope. I longed to place my own hands in his, and follow the depressions with my fingers.
My grandparents belonged to a generation uncomfortable with physical demonstration, however.
I learned every inch of my grandparents' hands -- every line, every pore, every furrow -- through years of grave, surreptitious observation.
Perhaps this is why, even now, hands are the first feature I will notice in a person.
Hands mesmerize me.
I memorize them, imbibe them, learn them by heart.
They're like a map, or a landscape where the essence of a person's life and character are etched deep.
Hands -- and a person's laugh -- characterize, for me, the very weave and texture of love.
When I think of someone I love, and about what makes them uniquely, genuinely them, it's their laugh and their hands that most readily spring to mind.
