Mother's Hands

The theme of our church's Mother's Day banquet this year was "Mother's Hands" and it got me thinking about my own mother's hands. One of my earliest memories is the feel of Mom's hands on my feverish forehead. They were cool and smooth and I was comforted and confident all would be well because Mom was there. I remember watching her wipe away over and over
the spiders Scott thought were crawling on him one night when he was so sick he was delirious.

When I was a youngster I had a headful of the snarliest hair imaginable. Mom used to tell me I had rats' nests in my curls. Her hands carefully untangled the mess day after day, smoothing my hair into long banana curls or pigtails.

Her hands bathed me and my brothers nightly after we'd spent the day in the sandbox or in Jeff's case, tramping through the pasture. As luck would have it the three of us got the chickenpox all at once and I have a vivid picture of her hands gently washing us, careful not to cause any more trauma to our very itchy selves. Scott requested that she wash the pox off but not even a mother's hands could do that!

Mom's hands were rarely still. They were always rolling out pie dough, spooning cookie dough onto sheets, ironing basketsful of shirts and pillowcases, holding books as she read to us, administering cough syrup to one of us, dishing up supper, or pulling weeds. Making jam; canning jars and jars of tomato juice, green beans, and peaches; washing mountains of laundry, sewing dresses for me, then teaching me to sew for myself; all these were accomplished by my mother's hands.

Little has changed in the intervening years. Her hands are still busy as ever, often in the service of others. They still bake cookies and pies, do laundry, sweep, dust and scrub bathrooms. Often when she tells me what she has accomplished of a morning I am ashamed of my own pitiful accomplishments in the same time.

"She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also and he praises her. Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all." Proverbs 31; 27-29

Happy Mother's Day, Mom!