Women's Hands

I actually forgot I was supposed to be back yesterday. Remembered today and put it off until now; it's amazing how rusty I feel. I will ease back in.

As much as I love holidays, and family celebrations, and Christmas at my parents' house in particular, having a five- and a one-year-old makes the occasion a little more, should we say, chaotic. More magical. Less restful. My mother, who somehow manages to be the primary caretaker for, well, everybody, when we are under her roof, has been sick--laid out in bed, barely able to sit up--for two full days, adding to the sense of chaos.

This afternoon, Lily, my father and I drove to my grandmother's house, two miles up the street, to pick her up and bring her over here to spend the rest of the day with us. My mother has been preparing my grandmother's meals for some time now, filling her freezer with homemade meals and helping her fix a tray twice a day, or more. We had brought her breakfast, and my aunt had made shrimp stew for her for lunch while visiting, but she was to have dinner here, which made all of us happy, I think. There is something lonely about the meal tray, even when the meal in question is eaten with company.

Anyway, the day made me realize a number of things, perhaps most of all how mothering, when done well, is a lifetime job. Over the past week-and-a-half, my mother has cared for her own mother daily, including accompanying her to regular doctor's visits, driven to another state to make it possible for me to host two special birthday gatherings for Lily, one of which she designed on her own, created our immediate family's holiday celebration pretty much singlehandedly, invited seven children to a gingerbread house-making party for which she had baked the cookies herself, painted and sent out holiday cards to at least a hundred friends and family members, and had thirty relatives over for a full Swedish smorgasbord on Christmas Day itself. This while working, making art, sharing the care of my two children, and keeping up with her own schedule of appointments and commitments.

My mother's mother is almost ninety-three, I am almost forty, my children are five and one; I don't really see an end in sight for all this mothering. I wonder now, as my perspective has shifted from that of sister, granddaughter, daughter to a more complicated view from my spot in this line of complicated women, how, in what ways, the burdens and pleasures of her role as relates to us have shaped her.

I have always found women awe-inspiring and infinitely powerful. I remember as a small girl noticing my grandmother's hands: sun worn, leathery, even, with long, gnarled, beautiful fingers. My grandmother herself does not have a powerful presence. She is quiet and self-effacing in a crowd, almost always. But her capabilities shone through her hands, in her own way, and even now, her hands can do: Do what they need to, when they need to, even as the rest of her seems more frail, sometimes, when I choose to notice. This morning, when we brought her breakfast, she arranged the food on her tray with her pills and a glass of water. She picked up the tray, balanced it, and started to walk toward her room, where she eats many meals now, at her comfortable chair, surrounded by photographs and books. "Let me take that," I said, reaching for the thin tray. She looked at me, eyes steady.

"You can take the glass of water," she allowed. And so I did.

And for now, that was all.