Handheld Memories

A personal essay that explores what’s changing in my world. It was written while participating in Write of Passage Cohort 9. Special thanks to Malavika Prasad, Alisa Sano, Chris Wong, Parker Thomas, and Abhishek Bindal.

Photo by Jannis Lucas on Unsplash

Hands engrave the story of a person’s life across their fingers and palms like an ancient scribe etching a myth into a stone tablet. Hands tell the story of a person’s loves, their desires, and their defeats. They reveal secrets never spoken. The same hands that can rebuild an engine or stitch ripped jeans. The same hands that can massage a child’s shoulders after a tough loss or defend a person from a violent stranger. Hands hold memories.

Hands also symbolize change - from vulnerable to carefree to responsible to fragile. They grow and take shape over the course of a lifetime. They help pull an infant across the floor. They feel the wall to help the elderly walk.

I vaguely remember my dad’s voice. And in my mind, my vision of him is blurry. But I remember his hands.

My dad’s hands built the house we lived in brick by brick. They repaired refrigerators for old ladies who lived alone in one bedroom apartments and for young families who just moved into their starter home. They stirred pots of boiling water filled with pasta and formed meat into patties for grilling at family parties.

My dad’s hands were soft yet calloused. They patted me on the back when I scored the game winning basket in 8th grade. They held my mother when she learned my grandfather had passed away.

My dad’s hands were hulkish. They could open beer bottles with a simple twist or crush a 16 oz can of tomatoes. They showed me how to shake hands with a stranger while looking the person in the eyes, confident and controlled. When people shook my dad’s hands they knew they were shaking hands with a person who had experienced several lifetimes.

My dad’s hands were thick with tree trunks as fingers. It looked like his wedding ring was sinking into his finger like when a tree swallows a chain link fence. His nails were coarse and sturdy.

I look at my hands now and I see my dad’s hands. 

The contours. The shape. Similar but different. Not as strong. Not as confident. They’re mine. I see the scars on my left hand where the rusty fence gashed my fingers when I was eight. And I tap my fingers against the table just like my dad used to. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Dum. Dum. I see my wedding ring starting to sink into my finger.

I see my hands holding my face as I sat in the funeral parlor when my dad died. I see all the handshakes and hugs from family and friends. I see my hands holding the handle of his casket when I helped carry it out of the church and place it into the hearse.

I see my hands waving good-bye to my girlfriend when she traveled to school in Arizona. I see my hands writing her letters, telling her how much I missed her, how much I loved her. I see my hands holding the ring when I proposed to her. I see my hands holding hers when we shared our vows before family and friends.

I see my hands giving high-fives to students when they did well on a test or shared great news. I see my hands comforting my administrator when we learned one of our students was shot.

On my hands I see the story of my life with so much to be written.

I look at my hands again and wonder if my son sees in my hands what I saw in my father’s.

I held my son’s tiny hands seconds after he was born, massaging his amphibian-like, pink fingers, communicating through touch that I am his dad and everything will be okay. It's our touch babies first remember, not our voices. 

Touch is the first sense we develop. Our earliest experiences outside of the womb are with touch. It’s also the one sense that we miss the most when a loved one passes or we say goodbye to a broken love. We can remember a person’s laugh or a faint scent can recall an entire day spent with someone. 

But it’s the loss of touch that reminds us of the end.

I watch my son’s hands grow from a newborn to a young boy, from waving uncontrollably in the air after birth to catching a football. 

“Dad, let’s play catch,” my son asks everyday. That right of passage, the ultimate father-son routine. 

“Catch with your hands,” I remind him. “As long as you have your hands in front of your face, they’ll protect you.”

He’s young. I’ll teach him how to use his hands to fish, to play basketball, to swing a golf club, to fix a flat tire, to grill food for dinner, and to clean a garage. I’ll show my son how to make memories with his hands. Just like my dad showed me.

It’s been several decades since I held my dad’s hands. 

I often wonder if I held my hands up to my dad’s right now how they would compare. The same lines? The same size? The same scars?

I play the “hold your hand up to mine” game with my son every night. We lay in bed and talk about our day. I raise up my hand and he puts his against mine. Like measuring his height every year on his birthday, I measure how much his hands are growing. The tips of his fingers creep up my hand. It’s hardly noticeable until I stop and pay attention. 

“Almost,” my son says.

“Not quite. But someday you’ll pass mine,” I respond.

It’s the “someday” part that gets me. A little promise to him that his hands, his life, will be bigger than mine. That his life will be in his hands, not mine.

In those quiet moments before my son drifts off to sleep, I stare at his hands and dream about my hands congratulating him when he graduates from high school and college. I dream about my hands hugging him when he marries his true love. I dream about my hands holding his children, so I can compare my hands to theirs.

The journey of life is an adventure through a forest, and I’m midway through mine. There’s a lot of things changing in my life: my hairline is retreating, my desire for a new career pulses inside me every morning, my wife switched jobs and is loving where she works. 

But the hardest change is seeing my kids grow up, watching their hands get bigger.