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| In Dreams Gone By, Mixed Media with Color Copy Transfers, Spray Paint & Colored Pencils. © by Ruth Zachary |
My Father’s Hands
After
he passed, it distressed me that I could not
remember
his hands. I looked among old family photos
he
had taken of others, but not of his hands.
He
had developed his photos in makeshift darkrooms.
They
possessed a quality of candid truth, functional
composition;
beautiful, although he would not
have
called them art though I could see that they were.
When
I was small, his hands felt lean, hard, rough
and
calloused, knuckles etched in black, nails stained,
mechanic’s
hands; displayed with pride;
working
hands for honest work.
Long
ago, with my small hand in his, I skipped along
beside
him to do some task, to fix the car, or plant trees.
Once
I led him to a meadowlark’s nest.
Another time
he
showed me how to make a whistle out of slippery elm.
His
hands at rest always held a cigarette, while he told
make
believe stories of his life, me at his feet,
absorbing
his words. Sometimes he stopped the car
on
the way to Grandma’s house to pick wildflowers for her,
and
stopped again on the way home to pick more
for
my mother, as we returned, fists full of blossoms.
We
moved miles away. He worked in a factory.
There
was that photo of him with my mother,
in
her church dress, and him in his one
suit,
like
Michigan Gothic, standing in front of the camera,
for
its timed exposure, his last photo of them.
His
wrists hung too far out of their sleeves, still
farmer’s
hands, though farming and auto repair had failed him.
He
recorded my growing daughters with his camera,
and
sat with them, holding a cigarette, repeating history.
Later
I re-married, and he moved across the
road.
By
then, his hands were thick as roots, still planted deep
in
Michigan soil. He did not notice my own hands,
which,
once long and thinly boned, had become muscled
and
strong, nails stained with printer’s ink, from creating
etchings,
a career he could never understand, even
though
my
hands had clearly sprouted from those hands of his.
Ruth Zachary 031806-011314
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