Excuse me – I’m looking down and realizing that some old lady left her hands behind and they’re stuck on the ends of my arms. When did this happen?
I’ve always had big, manly hands. It’s never good when your 6′ tall father gives his hands to his 5’3″ daughter. But my hands were generally smooth and the skin actually grasped the bone. Now it’s falling away, as if hanging on just isn’t important anymore. I have lazy skin, and I don’t appreciate it. Come on – have some epidermal integrity!
And don’t even get me started on the veins on the top of my hands that seem to be pumped up. I look like a steroid user. The good news is that all lab technicians LOVE me when they have to take my blood. They could throw a dart across the room and hit one of my veins.
As I wonder about how I became the recipient of these appendages, I must confess using Hawaiian Tropic Triple Magnify the Sun lotion while living in California. My sister and I would lie down on Reynolds Wrap until we could literally hear ourselves broiling. Sometimes we actually put iodine in Baby Oil and added it to the mix.
Even with the best body work in the world, you can always tell a woman’s age by her hands. I failed to recognize that sleeves cover arms, and pants cover legs, and turtlenecks cover the neck. What about the hands? You can’t wear white gloves all day without looking a little crazy, so your hands just stick out of your sleeves screaming “She didn’t take care of us when she was young!”
Maybe I should just change my perspective. Play with the veins like I did when holding my Grandmother’s hands as a child. I also used to use them as a map with little greenish-blue routes that my Matchbox cars would follow. I also used to pull the skin up off my hand and show people how far it could stretch. Not a good idea in retrospect, but certainly a conversation starter. I could become a real life Stretch Armstrong.
Oh well, at the base of these old hands is the pulse of a warm heart. In honor of that heart, I’m going to continue to make a list of the positives of old hands. If you have any ideas, please feel free to share them. 🙂