So. Hands, huh?
Three things come to mind, as I think of hands. The first is teaching Sunday school classes, at a small church on W. 11th St, in NYC, years ago. The second is sitting beside my friend James, as he lay napping and dying, in his bedroom in Seattle WA, in 1995. The third thing is a bar of soap.
I volunteered for the Sunday School gig, mostly because it gave me regular access to crayons, and because it gave me a (semi-) respectable reason for missing half the Sunday service each week. I also tend to relate more easily to children, I think, as their agendas are usually more transparent and immediate, than those of their older human relatives.
But this group of kids was unusual, especially by Sunday School standards. They were being temporarily housed in a shelter, and could only come to participate in our program if they'd 'been good' that week. Many of them seemed, to me, to have been damaged a great deal already, in their young lives. So, although I'd been urged to tie our Sunday School activities to the church lectionary, it quickly became clear to me that, given the sporadic attendance that was the norm, we would all be better off, and happier, if we just did a simple art project, and then had cookies and juice.
Each Sunday, then, I would arrive early, to set up the tables and lay out the supplies -- crayons and markers and colored construction paper. Some decorative hole punches, some small bottles of glue. And rubber stamps, with ink pads. There'd be a sudden stampede of small feet on the stairs, a quick shedding of coats and hats, and the spate of hello's and other greetings, as the kids took their seats. Everyone would get as calm as possible, and then start, by selecting a piece of colored paper, and, very carefully, tracing onto that piece of paper, one hand.
As they attacked this simple task, the kids would spill over with things that had gone on that week -- why Joel wasn't there, what Sarah said at lunch, whether Sammy would be going home again the next day. The outlined hands, weak or emphatic, shaky or direct, would fill up with other imagery -- planes and bombs, palm trees and vibrant birds, or a string of little boxes, each filled in as neatly as possible. We might add some punched-out shapes, of hearts and stars, with splotches of white glue. The rubber stamps, of leaping dolphins, or angels, or giraffes, were especially popular, bounding onto their work. I would remind them to add their name, in big letters, so everyone could read it.
And when it was time to clear the table for treats, they would help me decide where to tape their new pictures -- we had created quite a collection, really, that was stretching around the walls of the little room -- and the kids usually pointed out another hand, made by a friend who wasn't there any more, or those they'd done themselves, a month earlier, on a different colored backgrounds, with different animals leaping about. We would say a simple grace of thanksgiving, and eat cookies and drink juice, surrounded by little hands, pressed against colored surfaces on all sides, reminding us that they'd been there before. And might be back again. Maybe.
My friend James was sick. Those few of us who could spend much time with him were expecting him to die, any time that week. I'd flown in from Rochester NY, and tried to keep myself busy, making soup, or helping with laundry, or sweeping the driveway. Crushing ice cubes wrapped in a kitchen towel, on a cinder block just outside the kitchen door, beating on the cold things with a hammer, and trying not to make too much noise.
James was napping mostly, lying alone in his big bed and having what he called 'Fifties Dreams'. From his slurred descriptions, it sounded as though he was trapped in an endless loop of production numbers from 'Soul Train', with lots of big skirts and big hair, follow spots and reflections, acres of turquoise and pale yellow and hot pink. But the dreams wouldn't stop, or even slow down enough, so that he could get a grip on them, make sense of them. He needed to make sense of things.
Under the top sheet, pulled up to his chin to keep him warm, his gorgeous dark hands would fret and worry. It was as though they knew they should be sharpening another length of draughting lead, and then hovering over a sheet of fine French paper, laying down line after line -- transcriptions almost -- that would, upon accumulation, resemble the many rain-spattered airplane windows James would have seen, peripherally, walking up and down the aisle of some United flight to Newark, passing out napkins and collecting trash. Instead, his hands were reduced to scrabbling noiselessly, curling and uncurling, reaching and releasing, like spoiled pets impatient for their master to come home and let them out, just one last time.
The soap is on the sink in the bathroom on the second floor, at the studio. It's one of two bars, really, but I remark this one because it's pink, and has a faint almond scent, like the Jergen's Lotion my mother used to use. It's also worn, and cracked, from caring for who knows how many dirty hands, but smooth overall -- looking curiously like a semi-precious stone, a kind of dulled opal, or a bit of moss agate. I especially like the lines on the one side -- a long dark trail, horizon to horizon, like stubby trees in the distance, and maybe a faint road running alongside, and all suffused in an improbable pink light, like the midnight sun in a high overcast sky above the Arctic circle. Odd, I think sometimes, that an ordinary process -- wet, grip, swirl a few times, rub and rinse -- can lead me to so many different times and places, all at once. Because I want clean hands.
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