A Man's Hands
by Sandra Miller - Long

A man's hands are sexy. Just in the look of them, the veins and tendons, the shape of the nails, how the tips narrow or splay. How they fall at rest, how they hold things. Hands that convey sensitivity in the curve of the fingers. Hands that are expressive. Hands that touch lightly, gently, or probingly, as the needs are expressed. A workman's hands, a musician's hands, a basketball player's hands - it doesn't matter. They are hands you want to grasp, caress, kiss. The tips of the fingers invite your lips and tongue to play.

They are not just sexy but telling, too, in other ways. You can see surprises and promise in a man's hands. I've been led to see fineness in a man I thought was crude merely on the basis of his hands. And brutality
in a man I had thought was very fine.

My dad had huge hands, with fingers big as bratwursts, I remember thinking when I was a little girl. Even so, they were very handsome hands, with strong, large, elegant nails. His hands showed the artist as well as the workman. As he got old, his skin turned red and purple, reminding me of bratwurst again, and it bruised easily. Patches of it tore away when he brushed against a door jamb, and he had to wear bandaides a lot.

There were scars on his hands from all the accidents he'd had with power tools, minor deformities from playing hardball without a glove. Calluses from holding pencils. They were a kind of map to his life, his hands were. And there was something else there, in the beauty of them, that reminded me of the dreamer he had been, too, when he had the chance.

When he was dying of cancer his hands remained strong, and as I held them, he held back, giving me the comfort he always had, so much more than I could offer him.

Ah. But some things are just so evocative. Aren't they. Like smells. And music.

And a man's hands.