Hands

Today while driving Claire to dance class, I found myself unexpectedly choked up in tears.

She was holding my hand, and then started to feel my bones and look at my fingernails. She was pushing the skin together (“I’m making your skin have wrinkles, Mom.”). 

I found myself thinking—and I told her about—how I used to play with my dad’s hands when I was a little girl. The veins in his hands would sometimes get big—like mine sometimes do—and I loved to sit by him and push them around, play with them. 

At the same time, Claire and I were listening to a song in the car by Lori McKenna that I love titled “You Won’t Even Know I’m Gone,” and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. It’s a song about a mother who’s preparing so that when she’s away, her children won’t notice her absence.

“I pray that every prayer I pray will reach you, every wish I make will keep you safe and warm.

And may God forgive the things I do that put one mile between me and you—

To thine own self be true, to thine own self be true.”

That is a prayer I hold for my children, and it’s probably dad’s prayer as he cheers us on from where he is.

And it is in these little things that I find him—the smell of pie baking in my kitchen, the feel of dirt on my fingers as I plant geraniums, a particular hymn, the way I rock a baby, a favorite carol, a late night grocery store run. He is with me when I rake leaves and make apple butter in the fall, as I listen to conference, when I carefully place years of tradition on my Christmas tree. I could go on and on.

Dad, I do feel your absence.

But you are also here every day and I love your hands and the ways they were used—your talents, your hugs, your time, your service—to bring so much love and goodness to my life and the lives of others.

You are in us and through us and a part of us.