Mother's Day: Being Hers

I remember her hands, speckled with freckles and age spots, soft but strong, dry in places from all the washing and working, nails that angled up just so, painted a sensible pink. And I remember sitting next to her at her least favorite place on earth: the beach.

We sat where the water laps the shore, wearing matching floral Lands End bathing suits, and even though I was old enough for matching bathing suits to deserve a good eye roll, I liked being hers, so I tolerated it. I'd taken a break from boogie boarding with my dad and three brothers and she was making the best of having to be hot and sticky and "sandy in places I didn't even know I had."

She grew up in Florida, so she'd done the beach. A lot. It didn't feel like vacation to her as much as a drag back into an earlier version of "normal." Nothing to see here; move along. But she went with us every year just the same, which I now realize was about the most loving thing she could do. And she put on a bathing suit, which she hates, and she sat in the heat, which she hates, and she tolerated it all. For us. And I knew that.

We Wharton Women had to stick together, so I walked over and sat by her, and I'm sure we talked some and I soaked it in because alone time with my mom in a family of six was pretty hard to come by, but what I really remember was a quiet moment when I studied her hands while she looked at the ocean. I'd seen them for a decade but had never really taken them in, and the veins and scars and spots captured me. They're lovely, I thought as I wondered what my hands would look like when I was a mother.

~

The other week my son poked my hand with his pudgy finger and said, "Beeeeep!" because, of course, one of my sun spots was a button. I smiled--not just amused by his comment, but because my hands, I realized, are my mother's--freckled and worked and strong and storied. And while my nails are shorter than hers and never painted, I still have the hands I've wanted since I was ten years old.  Because I still like being hers, and she's so very, very lovely.

*Apparently we NEVER take pictures together because the one above is the best of three I found of us over the past nine years. You know it's bad when the "best" is a picture of yourself going home front the hospital 30 lbs. over your normal weight. Gonna work on getting the two of us captured a little more often (and flatteringly).