They look like my grandmother’s hands, but no, they are mine. Where did all the wrinkles come from? I used to think I had nice hands; they were young, and smooth and not wrinkled.
I remember my great-grandmother and my grandmother’s hands. They were looked like mine do now. Yet, theirs washed clothes in a black kettle of boiling water with lye soap. They rung the clothes out and hung them on the line to dry. They then ironed those same clothes with an iron they put on the wood burning stove to heat up.
They carried water pumped from a well outside, heated that water on the wood stove to fill our tub for baths; and for water to do dishes. They scrubbed the kitchen until it was sparkling clean, and scrubbed the floors with those hands, on their knees.
They shucked corn, harvested vegetables from the fields and put up can goods. I watched my grandmother ring the necks of chickens – boil them and then pluck the feathers off their bodies so that we could have them for a good home cooked fried chicken dinner.
They sewed clothes before they had a sewing machine, bathed babies, loved their husbands and ruled their children. My grandmother had nine children. That is a lot of ruling! She had a really hard life. Because of that she worked at home and then got a job at a café also.
My mom was the oldest girl, so when grandma went to work she took up the job of being the mom to older brothers and younger sisters. She did the chore's my grandmother used to do.
When my grandmother would come to visit us I would look at her “transparent” hands, because you could see all the veins and they were so wrinkled, yet I thought they were beautiful.
When I got married, I loved my husband with my young, strong, soft hand but I didn’t have to do the other things they did. I had the modern conveniences of a real refrigerator, running water and indoor bathroom, washer, dryer and later a dishwasher. I did some canning but only because I wanted too, and only for a few seasons.
Yet, when I had twins, I had cloth diapers and I used to soak them and wrung them out before washing them. (With twins – that was a LOT of diapers.) I wiped dirty faces, wiped tears and fixed boo-boo’s. We played children’s games; I read them books and sang them songs.
I have planted flowers to make my yard look nice, cleaned my house and cleaned other people’s houses. I sew, paint, scrapbook and play on the computer and loved my pets.
