Hands

Hands

I have peasant hands. Earth hands. I pretend they’re passed on working hands, an ancestral legacy, immigrant hands reborn two generations later, a hands continuum meant originally for turning soil into olive oil, or vegetables, or for gathering Mediterranean flowers planted around spurting circular fountains or were used for tying Sicilian vines onto strung twisted wire rolling endless against an undulating hills horizon, vines that captured sugar from the sun.

I have peasant hands. My father’s hands. Maybe his father’s hands. Or, maybe his mother’s. I don’t know if my dad ever said. Don’t know if he noticed or even wondered. They’re stubby, square. Child sized. The center finger equal in length to the palm. I know little about their timeline, their lifelines, their ocean journey other than my two uncles arrived at Ellis Island with my grandparents to this promised land, my dad the first and only born on US soil. I don’t know what their hands once created or defended in their before here time, if they left any fossilized imprint to show they once belonged somewhere else. Here, my grandparents’ peasant hands, and eventually my father’s, stocked canned groceries on dark stained wooden shelves, stored candy bars in a glass case, and stacked ice cream treats in top opening coolers towards the front of the store they owned until their peasant hands atrophied into old old. I don’t remember if they sold meat. Don’t recall a meat cooler, but do remember the cellar stairs wore a Down Haven sign.

I don’t know if my ancestors’ hands wore callouses or if their firm grip once shoveled straw or hay or manure. I know they held me through a photographic documentation.

I have peasant hands. Earth hands. Hands that turn and dig soil, hands that plant indigenous native trees, hands that dispense seeds to grow wildflowers. Once they grew a Concord grape vine, in a pot made of black fabric.