work of my hands

my hands do a lot for me. sometimes they ache and the joints get all wobbly and they need to be held up by sterling silver braces to keep them aligned, but despite all of that, i try to remember why i love them.

my hands write and flip pages, they thumb through papers and leave encouraging notes to push my kids to go further each day.

my hands color, draw, and paint, in the safety of my home as well as at work. they gather information and they cut and paste and they catch falling pencils and wipe tears and start oranges and erase whiteboards.

they hold other hands, too, small ones. they help children cross streets and climb bars and build toothpick bridges. they trace lines and wipe down tables with non-clorox antibacterial wipes. They hand out tissues and pencils and erasers and opportunities.

My hands squeeze out hand soap and lotion, they peel open cheese sticks and milk cartons and crackers. They count down from five, they clap and snap, make rhythms and set beats for call and response. My hands open band-aids and lay them with care. My hands dial phone numbers and shake other hands and fill out reports with data and observations. They peel stickers and applaud and make wings and point.

my hands do a lot for other people. but for me, they make music that comes from my pen and hits page after page, notes floating high. for me, they tap out pitch after pitch until everything is just right and only then do they pull the words that they wrote together with melodies and harmonies and bridges.

my hands aren't pretty. my fingers are round, my joints often swell. my nails are thin and bitten down, and they're always inescapably covered in marker and pen. but they do a lot for me, and right now what i need is to find balance between them working for others and for myself. after all, we only get one set of them. might as well extend my helping hands to my personal life, too.

But who knew? a teacher's hands perform miracles every day, and every one of the thousands of tiny decisions adds up. 'Many hands make light work...' Sure, but I think it could also be said that 'Steady hands make life's work.' In my case, my life's work just happens to be helping tiny humans make their lives.