1
My granddaughter Rachel writes on her hands. What does she write? Whatever she feels like.
Rachel appears to have the utmost confidence in whatever she does. For example, the last time I saw her, she was wearing a new blouse, but she had pinned the fabric at her shoulders to take up some slack in the material. She had altered the blouse to fit the way she wanted it to.
Rachel went to middle school that day wearing two clearly evident safety pins on her blouse—a thing I could never have done at her age. Or any age, really.
I wondered if maybe Rachel’s safety pins would start a trend and lots of girls in her school would follow and then it would possibly be picked up by girls at other schools and then spread around the globe.
Commentators would comment: “There seems to be a new trend among schoolgirls these days—attaching safety pins to their clothes. Experts have no idea where this fad began.”
2
I see hands like claws, digging into flesh. These hands remind me of my mother-in-law’s hands when she had Alzheimer’s disease. Sitting in the backseat of the car, she would claw at Adrian’s head while he was driving, driving him crazy.
The claw hands also remind me of my own hands when I am desperate and feel like tearing at my flesh.
3
Rachel’s hands are relaxed on the piano keyboard. Her fingers are long and she spreads them naturally to reach an octave higher or lower.
When I play, it’s a struggle. “Your hands look like claws,” the piano teacher tells me. “Relax.”
It’s hard to relax when I am putting all my effort into matching fingers on these black and white keys to the marks in the lesson book in front of me.
I am not a natural musician like Rachel, but I work hard and will myself to do well.
It’s an accomplishment when my hands finally learn a piece well enough to warrant the teacher’s praise.
But we quickly move on to the next piece. “We’ve learned all we can from this one,” she says.
The teacher always wants more from my poor hands.
4
I am secretly learning a piece of music that’s very hard for me: Musikee, Musikee, a Czech song my mother used to play. One of my sisters fortunately saved all the piano music after Mom died and made copies for the rest of us.
I have not asked the teacher to help me learn this piece because I want to do it very slowly and thoroughly. And when I learn it, I want to keep playing it.
I want to learn all the old songs and play them for pleasure.
Then I think my hands will relax and look almost as graceful as Rachel’s.