Today’s prompt: Choose something. Anything. The more ordinary, the better. Shoes. Kitchen table. Garden hose. Bookshelves or tea pots or underwear drawers. Choose anything as your subject. Write: I remember…
I remember . . . what? Hands. Cooper was born with big hands. By the time he was two or three, his hands were bigger than Logan’s. At that young age, Cooper’s hands reminded me of Grandpa Clark’s hands–thick, wide, working hands. I was happy to see that connection to my grandpa.
Cooper’s hands morphed, though. They grew to resemble my dad’s hands–longer than Grandpa’s had ever been, but still thick, still wide, still strong. In fifth grade, this emerging gentle giant could palm a basketball, a skill that helped make up for a lack of speed; he’d hold the ball out of reach over his head until some speedy help ran by. It worked.
Cooper’s hands knew trauma. He broke eight fingers, one at a time; only thumbs were safe. His hands bore scars from cuts, burns, wild parsnip, and so much more. His hands had character. What had started out as stubby Grandpa Clark hands had grown into battered-but-graceful hands that suited the man Coop became.
One of the things I loved the most and now miss the most is putting my hand to Cooper’s, the feel of his fingertips as they bent over mine. Some nights, when sleep won’t come or has already come and gone, I lie in the dark and put my right hand to my left, cheating down enough that I can bend my left fingertips over my right. In the dark, I can almost imagine the feel of Cooper’s hand. Almost.
In those moments, in those staged, imagined moments, I feel Cooper’s hand of many years. I do not feel his hand of last summer.
Last summer, after his time in the Shawnee, then in the hospital, and finally trying to regain strength, Cooper’s hands grew smooth and fragile. The calluses he’d earned through weeks and months and years of hard physical work were gone, and with them, their protection. Cooper’s hands were left defenseless, unprepared for the labors he’d face. In the absence of hardened calluses, blisters formed, burst, and bled. In the absence of hardened calluses, he had open wounds.
In the end, Cooper died by his own hand, but it wasn’t the hand I recognized. He died by a defenseless hand laden with blisters that wouldn’t heal, a hand wanting the comfort and familiarity of its calluses.
Woods Writes 