A version of this essay appeared in Catholic Digest in November of 2017.
My mother had lovely hands, long thin fingers, slender wrists. After dinner, she’d run both hands along her legs, her fingers kneading up and down over sore calves, working out the ache of long hours on hard floors. Her legs may once have been as lovely as her hands, but the years had marked them with blue and purple lines, with the throbbing knots of varicose veins. These lines and knots were a roadmap of her life as a nurse, a wife and mother, a woman.
After these few minutes of rest, she’d go to the sink and put her rings on the windowsill, the small diamond glinting in the evening sun. I’d sit at the kitchen table, watching her as she turned on the tap to fill the sink with hot water, the steam rising and drifting out the window, a few adventurous bubbles floating free. She piled the dishes and glasses and cutlery, the mess of seven people, into the sink. Then she plunged her hands into the scalding water, scrubbing away gravy stains and leftover mashed potato, rinsing off the dirt and the soap, and placing clean dishes and forks and knives, glasses and tea cups on the side board to dry. She would be red up to her elbows and I’d wonder how she could do it. How could she plunge her hands into that scalding water over and over again with each dish and day and year? What makes a woman stand on sore legs at a kitchen sink and wash the dirty dishes of her hapless children? What makes her smile and hum while doing it? Of course, there were nights when my mother gave out for the mess and the noise and the work of us. But more often than not, she seemed satisfied with her ordinary, simple life, with dirty dishes and messy children and a husband who adored her. Still, it must have been exhausting and thankless. Who would choose to spend her free moments between dinner and doing the dishes rubbing aching legs?
In his first epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul admonishes them to have charity in all things. Charity is patient, wrote Paul, it is kind. Charity bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. When I was a child, I wondered what he meant. Something grandiose - martyrdom or going to the missions in Africa, giving all my belongings to the poor. These seemed like good things, big and important things. The sort of things that saints do. But then Paul clearly states that “if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.” You may speak like an angel, Paul writes, but without charity you are nothing but noise, a sounding brass, a tinkling cymbal. I was just a girl and I wanted to know how to live. Was giving up everything not enough? Was dying not enough? What did Paul mean when he said that love bears all, endures all? Paul’s words seemed cryptic, perplexing. I looked around for guidance. But, like the Corinthians, I saw through a glass, darkly.
My mother took care of her hands, nothing fancy, no manicures or nail polish. But she filed her fingernails to rounded half moons. She squirted a dollop of hand cream into her palms and dreamily rubbed the lotion in and over and around until her skin was smooth and silky. She wasn’t perfect, but when she touched our arms or wiped our faces, there was no roughness, no sharp edges. When I was a little girl, I thought sitting at the kitchen table and filing your nails and rubbing lotion into your hands was some mysterious, elegant thing, a sign of being grown up and lovely. Now, I am no longer a child. I know that the mysterious and elegant thing is to bear all, to endure all. It is to plunge your hands into the scalding water and be delighted.
💕💕💕this was so moving mary !! love u
Your Mother is beautiful Mary! A beautiful tribute and so very true!