I grew up in a house with no books, no awareness of art except as something that 'others' did. And yet I loved to draw and paint. I used discarded cardboard and cereal packets, as buying paper for a child to draw on was unthinkable, unthoughtof. At 14 in the top stream of a grammar school i was told i had to give up art as a subject and do sciences instead. I was heartbroken. I would never be an artist now. But no one understood so I had to grieve quietly and coped by not picking up a pencil or brush for forty years. Then I did a weekend course in drawing and found it was all still there. I've become pretty good but what is also still there is my family's incomprehension, their refusal to see any worth in it. I got accepted for an MA and they sneered. This time I chose the drawing and gave up the family.
How quietly, insistently devastating those first short paragraphs are. A whole personal and also generational history compressed down. The pressure of it. And then the sorrow of 'for forty years.' Which made my heart soar then at the decision, the decisiveness of your last line. If you have a last name I can add to your profile, just let me know, as well as a link to any of your drawings you have online, as I'd be glad to link to them.
I've now added an editor's note at the foot of your piece with a link through to your compelling sketches. Imagine if you'd never made them (actually I don't want to - only want to share your pleasure in their existing: this creative space you have laid claim to against the odds).
This brought tears to my eyes Stevie and took me back to my childhood. I too loved to create, to sketch and to paint, however it wasn't something that was considered a suitable way to spend one's time. I wanted to go to art college but that wasn't considered a suitable thing to do upon leaving school. Earning one's keep was the only way to go.
So so sad that it took you so long to return to your first love, and then to suffer all over again at the lack of understanding from your family. Isn't it incredible to think that we have to make such choices! Their loss is all I can say and good on you of course!
Home from school, she watched as I practiced my hand writing. “You could be a hand model”, she said. I took it as a compliment, although others later tried to persuade me it was an insult. She knew how to give those, but never to me.
In the care home, an old bloke had threatened her. “You’re too old to punch a hole in a wet Echo”, she scoffed, covering her fear. That was as true for her now, hands crippled with arthritis. She liked to chat and knit, but neither small pleasure was on offer, shut in as she was with the demented, her hands as stiff as her whisky.
She would wait for my visits, threads of stories forming in a mind more active for being trapped in an unwilling body. There was the time she made my cousin a pair of gloves from scraps of old wool, each finger a different colour. Soon they were all the rage. Children would turn up at her door, left over wool in their pockets, asking for a pair to be made. All of them, making ends meet. She, a local hero.
I wanted to be as effortless as she had been, but every time I took up the needles, I counted each stitch as if it were a child, and I, a worried teacher on a school trip. I wouldn’t know what to do if I lost one, so vigilance was key. I wanted to be as bold and as brave as her, but there are things that can’t be handed down so easily.
Like Tanya ,I love how this short story holds so much . As a knitter I can relate to you both. I learnt as a child from my mum and was fearful to start with of mistakes and dropped stitches. That soon faded for me,but I see now how that isn’t always the case.
This is such a complete and powerful story: two lives - yours, hers - and also a whole community compressed into just a few hundred words. It reminds me all over again why I love this kind of short form for true experience - such a concentrate of time, place, memory. Thank you. I've read it out loud to my family. And that last paragraph. Wow. Here is your link:
Thank you! I went slightly off-topic because when I think of hands making anything, I think of my Gran, knitting. It was mesmerising. How cruel it was that her body took away her greatest pleasure, at the time she most needed it. She was a fantastic story teller. I wanted to bring her voice into this, because she knew how to tell a tale. I'm so glad you enjoyed it, and she would have been delighted.
When my son came to live with us, I knew something about what he had experienced at the hands of his birth family. I knew that once, he had been hit so badly that his ears swelled up as if he had been in a boxing ring. I knew that the hospital also discovered a deep cut on the left side of his head, which I imagined had been caused by a belt buckle, or a heavy ring. He was twenty months old.
The first night he was here, aged four, after I had read him a story, I asked if I could stroke his back. I needed his permission.
It might help you sleep, I said.
My son said yes. I gently put my hand under his pyjama top, which was blue and covered in tiny spaceships. His back felt warm and soft. I traced the nubs of his spine, very carefully.
Draw something, he said.
He knew. He knew what he wanted, what he needed.
I drew a cat.
Talk it, he said, and so I did.
This is the head, I said, as my index finger traced the shapes on his warm skin. This is the body.
I drew stick legs, ears, eyes, whiskers, and a long tail. My fingers on his back. The connection was building, the safety, the love.
More, he said. His voice was becoming drowsy. I drew a house with four windows and smoke curling from a chimney. I drew a tree. I spoke the trunk, the branches. His breathing deepened. He was asleep. My hand kept moving.
I am drawing my heart, I said. I love you.
He’s sixteen now. Stroke on my back, he says sometimes, in the mornings, when he can’t get out of bed for college. Most of all he wants me to draw the cat. The first steps we traced together. Our bonding animal. Our love.
And I've been working hard this weekend to refresh all the pages in the story archive over on my book's website, to still better showcase the work of your and others here. I'd love you to take a look, starting on the new-look landing page...
Oh Kerry. Such rituals of care and kindness - and of safety/permission - after the terrible time that preceded it. And written with the same loving kindness. Before I move it to the web site with your name linked to it, I will need to email you with a few editorial questions as I do with any contributions that refer to identifiable others in a way that might present a risk to you as author. Is that okay? It's a good practice run for if you're writing longer lifewriting for publication...
If that is indeed okay, can you send me your email by DM on twitter or instagram?
Hi Tanya...thank you so much for your response...as regards my email, I'm not on Twitter or Instagram, but I think I emailed you on 16th November before I'd worked out how to post on here...so do you have my email from then?
My fingers are barbs that cling onto my world, dig deep into it's fabric and connect to it's core. My fingers guide me in the dark; embrace the earth's textures, slide over a myriad of surfaces and sense the dangers and pleasures that stream over my skin.
I feel through my fingers. " You have healing hands Steve. The touch of an Angel." I have led a tactile life and without touch there is no nourishing of the soul. I have touched and been touched in return; not a fondle, fumble or a false stroke, but a feathery sweep of skin on skin. the faintest of touches that bristles the love layer.
A brief encounter with a stranger's skin, a personal barrier and private space that has my therapists' respect for the profound connectedness between us; the most intimate of human contact will need total trust and faith in the power of touch.
Me, a white coated healer fixing that which was broken; a heart, a friendship, a stream of creativity; re-kindling a fire within that was quenched by sadness. My conducting rod fingers pouring in the fullness of life, repairing and re-balancing. A thousand finger cascade igniting a billion nerve cells, triggering a seventh heaven..
The skin becomes a sensory sieve, filtering the emotions; filleting out desire and arousal, leaving only a blissful landscape for the splendour of a transcendental moment to grow.
Can this really be so? Can a body be so fixed? Can fingers weald such power? Can the body be so easily persuaded? Yes! Yes! Yes! Something deep, profound and primordial bridges the skin divide and bonds after the slightest of touches.
It's all alchemy, the fingers awaken the sparklets of sensation when unacquainted skin fuses with unacquainted skin.
Steve! Your contributions are always so exciting and are unmistakeable. I'd know your prose now I think even without your name attached. It arrives in a week when I'm just planning with excitement the start of my next seven-year journey (events & health willing): to explore body and movement, touch and sensation, as much as I have words and stories for the last seven. So this from you came through with the feeling of a blessing, a confirmation. Words from someone ahead of me on the road. Thank you. Tanya x Here is your link https://thecureforsleep.com/april-issue-hands/#steveharrison
Thanks Tanya, it brought my therapist days back with a gush. Giving someone space to explore their inner sanctum was an exploration of self as much as enabling someone to seek sanctuary within their body mind fusion. Enjoy your journey. Steve.
The human hand has 17,000 touch receptors and the star nosed mole has 6 times that just on the tiny forward facing star, this star that never shines, never grants a wish, a full of feeling star. Think of how my hands might explode when they picked a wildflower if they had this power. What would happen when they scratched my dog behind her ears, this dog full of dirt and bits of burdock and raucous joy? Would they leave imprints on the shell when I pull a warm, freshly laid egg from the nest box, slip it into my pocket, and soon after crack it open for my children’s breakfast? Maybe sing when they pick wild black raspberries and turn them into jam? Sizzle wiping away tears?
I like to think my hands, these hands that brown in the summer, short nails, no paint, plain hands, no taper to the fingers hands, the pointer finger a little pudgy compared to the rest, blue veins popping hands, hands supporting these fingers, these carved away fingers, would sigh with relief as they write my story, each ridge of a fingerprint like growth lines in a tree, another story to tell. Perhaps, on a good day, these hands would giggle with delight, with truth.
(Facts about touch receptors and the star nosed mole from Great Adaptations by Kenneth Catania.)
Wow! Sheila, this is such an exciting piece of writing. A pure prose poem that has all my senses wide awake. I've read it aloud several times into the quiet of my writing room and it is making me smile and feel full of renewed energy. Thank you so so much for responding to this month's theme as you have, and I hope to be surprised and delighted by more words by you if any of the other themes interest you to try! The link to your piece as I've now curated it onto the book story archive is as follows:
Tanya, Thank you so much for your response and encouragement. I have been smiling since I read it. Your book was beautifully written and life changing. Also thanks for providing this opportunity for all of us, so kind of you!
We walked through the dark fields, following the beam of my father’s torch, and scanned the small flock. The light focused on one ewe, over by the ditch, and we headed in that direction. Even to my child’s eye, it was obvious that she was in some distress. I can still see the whites of her eyes rolling in the beam of light, and hear her ominous grunts.
“She’s in trouble, said my father. “Hold the lamp.” I directed the torch as instructed, and my father examined the sheep.
“The lamb is stuck and my hand won’t fit. I’m going to need your small hands here,” he said.
Though I was a farming child, I was quite innocent and had never been involved in the birth of an animal – we only had sheep, who were generally trouble-free, and horses, who were usually taken away to the stud farm for the births. I had seen them being scanned, but no more than that. I had a general idea of the process, but wasn’t prepared for this.
Shining the torch on the sheep’s vagina, my father directed my hand. I initially baulked at the gory sight and sensation of the moist redness, but I understood that it was this or lose the lamb and maybe the sheep, and my father was patient. Thankfully, once my hand entered the birth canal, I quickly felt a leg, and followed my father’s guidance to find a second one and to pull straight outwards at first. Once the feet were out, my father took over and delivered the lamb hind legs first.
As he checked the mother and baby, I gazed in wonder at my small, mucus-covered hands, utterly awed by their contribution to the safe delivery of this little creature into the world.
What a beautiful memory, beautifully-written. Lit like an old master painting. I came close to your words, I mean, looking at the light, there with you. A country child too, I've been present at these kind of births gone wrong, but never been brought into this sense of my own hands having been a help. What a powerful experience to have had at such a young age. Real magic in this piece. Thank you Tracey. If you'd like your last name added to your piece, just let me know and I will update. But your link is already live as follows. Tanya x
I pick up the needles and it all comes pack - in, out, pull through, push the stitch off. And I wonder why I’m so awkward, so clumsy, and how I will ever figure out how to knit the pattern backwards on the purl side, because I could never be like a Shetland lady and do it as easily as breathing. And I try and I try, until one day I think, ”Why not put one colour in your left hand?” It feels all wrong but I persevere, pink on the left, green on the right, and suddenly the circle is closing, the tube is growing, a little clumsy but I’m getting there. And then I remember, or maybe I realise for the first time ever - my granny taught me to knit (or tried to). And she was right handed. She taught my mother too, and my mother was left handed, like me. My mother remembered the teacher coming around the class and taking her pen out of her left hand and putting it into her right, over and over. Sometimes the problem isn’t us at all. It’s other people.
What a perfect piece of flash writing you've made here. How tactile, how fully felt it all is, then that brilliant leap of the last line into a big statement about how we live. Like good haiku does. I love this. Thank you. Here is your link... Tx
So constant aren’t they, our hands? We see them so very often, a look at or a glimpse. They are such a reminder of ourselves. What we’ve written, touched, held. How we’ve loved and how we’ve got through the days.
I never used to like mine. So critical of them, too old looking, too dry, too chubby. Nails too long or too short. Not a bad dislike, but no real affection there.
But I’ve changed my mind. Now I’ve grown to love the familiarity with them. What they’ve experienced.
That scar on the knuckle of my right index finger where I scraped the skin along the school radiator. At Y-Bont-Faen where I’d play in the toilets at play time, crawling on the floor to sneak under doors. Not really sure why, but we felt so naughty; me and my friends.
These same hands I type with now held on to dad’s, mums, Cousin Emma’s. They picked daisies, they made dens from sticks and moss and drew with felt pen on those pattern pads we all had in the 70’s.
They’re a constant, aren’t they? These days my Welsh gold wedding ring feels a part of my left hand. The ring we chose in Cley that day amongst the paintings and the pottery. Feeling so adult as we admired the simplicity of the design at the choices we had.
They’ve also been pivotal in the many jobs I’ve had. From the cook at the old people’s home to the teacher to the camp America nurse and the nanny to Richard in 1985.
The most important though has been to hold my own beautiful boy. And now to reach up to his grown neck and hug him, to feel his back bigger than mine while I tiptoe to hug him.
Louise, I related to this so much, the judgement of my body (I'm 53) and all of it's changes but then when I look at it like a map, which is what this piece felt like to me, I'm much kinder. I loved how this had examples from throughout your life, what gave it meaning. I live in the states and my son (I'm also on tiptoes) is in the air force. I hadn't seen him for nearly a year and a half, he's home on leave now so I really felt those last two lines. Thanks for sharing this.
Louise, this is a such a beautiful mediation, handled with such lightness of touch and yet also such strong authorial presence. You've used the prompt of hands to show the shape of your whole life. I love how much you've done with it, I mean. And it's especially moving to have this be your first contribution since we met in person at Chipping Norton Lit Fest in the Place & Belonging Workshop. Afterwards, driving home, I remembered that there is more than one Louise who has taken part in this ongoing project, and yet when you said at the session's end that you were already a contributor here, I said, immediately 'Louise Stead?' didn't I?! It's been so special meeting both you and also (in Devon, in April) Sarah Connor who also contributes here so often. I'm thinking that a free online event for us all in autumn might be lovely - giving anyone here who wants a chance to read one of their pieces perhaps, and for us all to do a live write to a theme maybe?
But for now, and with thanks again, here is your link:
I am so evolving as a writer as I have joined in here. I was thrilled to hear you say “Louise Stead” ….I have felt heard by you ,someone whose writing I love …it’s just so encouraging .
I also just love the community feel ,that seems strange ,but it’s what you’ve created here and so we all get to have glimpses of each other but in story form . It’s become a bigger thing for me now ; writing and reading differently with more engagement . Thankyou (& yes please to online write/read thing!)
After his eyes, it was his hands that I fell for. Pressing my stubby fingers firmly along the edge of a table to increase my span, I would watch the silken skin slipping over neat knuckles to the tips of his slender fingers which effortlessly spread tobacco along the length of a fine cigarette paper. This he would then roll, lick and light with elegant precision.
In time we worked side by side. My right hand would move between thin black pens and thick white paper, while his soldered a circuit board or shaped the stamens of a Fuchsia bud, in silver.
His were hands that could turn any screw and mend the washing machine, stretch the thinnest dough for a pizza base and fillet a mackerel, build a tiny model of an enormous factory and ease the bellyache of a sick cat. Mine could play Philip Glass on the piano and sad tunes on the tin whistle, dye calico and shape it into dungarees, gild the Lord Chancellor’s carriage or restore a broken urn.
My freckled fingers sat comfortably in his strong hand.
When our children were little my hands held them to my breast, to my flesh, to safety as we crossed the city streets. He would sit them, in turn, on his right hand which he would raise slowly to the sky. There they would balance, like the torch in the hand of the Statue of Liberty, surveying the world below.
This evening it is quiet; lightly rustling leaves, a small fire crackling, a supermoon rising. On the shore a curlew is calling as waves whisper against the sand. My hands are putting a new ‘D’ string on my guitar. His hands are holding a penknife which he is using to fashion driftwood into the handle for a rake.
My god, this is writing and these are lives I would never tire of reading about. Do you know Light Years by James Salter - a book I return to more than any other, although I can never write with such rich detail of domestic intimacy? What you've written here is completely your own and yet gives me the same deep admiration and pleasure as his book does. I'm thinking too of Edmund White's trilogy of his growing up, and how he too can write of a relationship between two people in this same unforgettable way so his people feel as real to me as those I'm myself in relationship with. Oh Sheila, please do tell me you are writing a long work in this register?
I have added this one to the Hands section of the story archive, but I'm also - for the first time - adding a story to a second place, as I think it also speaks to this month's theme of skill...
Thank you for your generous comments, Tanya. I don't know James Salter but will look him up now and will also re-read Edmund White with fresh eyes. John McGahern's 'That They May Face the Rising Sun' is a book that made a big impression on me, in its way of evoking a world where nothing and everything is happening. As for a longer piece, I'm currently midway with an MA and trying out all kinds of approaches to writing. However they tend to return to that place of presence we can find inside ourselves when the world beyond is moving fast, so we'll see. I really enjoyed writing this for your wonderful collection, and am delighted to have included in two places. With big thanks and all best wishes, xs
For Season Three of The Cure for Sleep with Tanya Shadrick…
As you know, I’m wanting to begin featuring pieces from the story archive, and hope also to share some thoughts from their authors.
I’ve been trying to create a form for this purpose, but it’s getting too complicated. Instead, if you’d like to be featured, please may I ask you to give the following information here in comments?
Where are you based (country or county is fine)
Your bio (no more than 50 words; written in third person)
A link to your website or social media – only if you’d like that to be included
(Remind me of) The piece you’d like featured
Where are you in your creative journey right now – and how does writing for this story-sharing community support that? (no more than 100 words)
Is there anything else you’d like to say about how you came to join this community? (no more than 100 words)
Beautiful, gentle writing under which is so much emotional meaning. I could "see" both your and your partner's hands. Got a chuckle out of the Philip Glass bit!
I look at my hands and see the hands of generations of women. I look at my hands and I see my mother’s hands. I took a photo of them a few years back whilst she was in the depths of dementia. She’d allow me to massage them with scented hand cream, to trim and paint her nails. We sat quietly together in communion. No words, just touch. A connection that I’d found hard before she got lost in her own world. She’d look at me with eyes filled with gratitude. My mother’s hands were always busy with needle and thread, embroidering the most exquisite things that have outlived her and surely will me. I learned so much about craft from her. Her legacy to me.
I look at my hands and I remember my grandma’s hands, her ridged nails, her raised veins, the age spots all of which I have now. I remember how she’d massage my hands one finger at a time, gently pushing back the cuticles, taking care of me in a way I’m not certain she did for herself. She taught me to take care of my hands. My grandma’s hands were often covered in earth from tending her garden. I remember the smell of tomatoes on her hands as she brought them into the kitchen to make the most delicious tomato sauce, the recipe for which sadly went with her to the grave.
I’m told by the nurses that my hands have good veins as I offer one up to be cannulated for my weekly chemotherapy. My hands now have bruising and puncture holes along with the age spots and brittle nails. I remember to look after my cuticles and massage hand cream into them at night.
These hands of these women have held and nurtured children, caressed lovers, they have wiped away tears of both joy and sadness, they have created meals and knitted sweaters. These hands have planted seedlings and made homes. My hands have touched my heart in gratitude and been pressed together in prayer. I look at my hands now with the deepest love and respect for all they’ve done for me these past almost 60 years.
Rebecca, it is moving and good to feel this project is offering you a way to write again as you go through your cancer treatment... your way of writing and conveying deep experience is so strong: reading this by you gave me the same satisfaction I get from some of Adrienne Rich's poems, where I feel - as I do in your piece - that honouring of generational female experience, both embodied and passed on through rituals.
Do you know this passage in her poem Integrity about hands? Your beautiful words had these ones come back to mind...
'The cabin in the stand of pines
is still for sale. I know this. Know the print
of the last foot, the hand that slammed and locked the door,
then stopped to wreathe the rain-smashed clematis
back on the trellis
for no one’s sake except its own.
I know the chart nailed to the wallboards
the icy kettle squatting on the burner.
The hands that hammered in those nails
emptied that kettle one last time
are these two hands
and they have caught the baby leaping
from between trembling legs
and they have worked the vacuum aspirator
and stroked the sweated temples
and steered the boat there through this hot
misblotted sunlight, critical light
imperceptibly scalding
the skin these hands will also salve'
Here is your link, with my thanks again for how you have joined us here Txx
Ah dear Tanya thank you for your encouraging words. They mean a lot. I’ve been diving into Adrienne Rich as a result and funnily (as the way life works) she popped up on a thread I was reading in The Marginalian the other day. I’m grateful for you and this space xx
The Marginalian! I haven't looked at that for a good few years now - back when it was Brainpickings. How many good artists and authors I found through MP's work there. I will return there over Easter... xx
In line, our hands were demanded for viewing. Our Brownie uniforms placed us on a Tuesday afternoon around the mushroom of shame. Remarks of disgust tore at my soul, just as I had bitten my nails and picked at my quicks. I was constantly reminded of my ugly hands, so I swooned at long painted nails in magazines. The disdain my mother expressed was for nails and hands like mine as well as the luscious red-lacquered elegance of ‘harlots’ and ‘common girls. Herein began my neuronal pathways of all-or-nothing mattered threads.
I busied my hands with making, they became my heart’s reflection. Ideas materialised into clothes made of face-washes and hankies, shoes of masking tape and a cork floor-tile that snapped on first step, forcing a second-generation design of wood with a butterfly embossed leather top. I knitted, crocheted, sewed, painted, drew and created endlessly. My father helped with my more unusual inventions, his broad solid hands, so like mine, were just bigger, rougher and male.
Making became me, I became the maker.
Later in life I had my nails done, red and shiny, stunning bits of fabricated extensions earning me the sophistication I dreamed of and the ire of Mother. But making went clumsy. Yet again and again throughout life I would see my ugly hands, my ugly self and succumb to the cycle of false nail elusion. I’m late middle aged now. My hands are still broad, my fingers still short, my nails worn down. But my heart is woven from the warp and weft of the love of making, softened through time, coloured with the fabric of ideas, and blessed with my long sought acceptance of hands that gift me beauty from the studio of imagination.
I hung on every word of this, as someone whose hands have always been large with bitten fingers and a need to make things. I think you express something so core to so many women's experience here. Thank you. Here is your link:
It was so unexpected; the move to the theatre, the cesarean, her words - "Can he be put straight in my arms", then, "Give him to Mum, please. I'm going to be sick".
And there you were. Such beautiful eyes. A squshy, messy, bundle of newness.
And there were the scissors. It was not a gentle snip. That cord was gristle and strength in my hands. I needed help to sever you, to finally help to deliver you into our world.
Measured and tested then back to your mum. In her arms where you belong. And me, hands still helping.
So very good to have you/your writing return to the project, Jean. How much you've done here in just a few sentences. And what a rare experience you're describing. Here is your link:
I saw my mother trying to kill herself while I was making bread this morning.
I took the eggs out of the fridge, laid them gently in the pink bowl that she had stolen from my grandmother. She didn’t actually steal it. My grandmother had left it at the old house when she moved, and when she realised that she had forgotten her bowls, told my father that she wanted me to have them. My father went back to get them, and now they’re my mother’s bowls.
I poured the warm milk and yeast into the big white bowl and saw the water filling the bathtub. I cracked the eggs and loosened them with a fork, before letting them plop into the milk. Her short, dumpy legs dipped into the water and made gentle waves that reflected the opened window on the top left of the bathtub. I stirred.
A pinch of salt, two cups of flour, and she turns the tap off. My hands cupped ever so slightly, as I mixed everything together. A blue metal wire we used to hang clothes on makes a loop. I kneaded. She climbed up. I kneaded some more.
I waited for the dough to rise while my aunt’s muted voice shouted. I punched and folded while my aunt peeled the blue metal wire we used to hang clothes on off of my mother’s face. I waited again.
The oven dinged and the air filled with the flavour of hot milk and yeast.
“Smells good,” my mother said, as she came into the kitchen, in her bathrobe and a towel, twisted on the top of her head.
Another beautiful and also haunting piece from you, Lisha. Before I curate this one however I just need to check a bit about the background to this, given it’s a non-fiction project I’m offering - and as such there’s a need to be careful when speaking of identifiable others in a way they might object to. (This a constant & large challenge to memoir writers and we are put through many stringent legal hoops before our publishers can send our work to print). With a number of contributors here I know already whether they are speaking of a living or deceased family member; I don’t yet know the facts of your family life (and for most stories I don’t need to). In this instance however I need to ask if your mum is still with you - and if not, do you have any relatives who might object to your first line about your mum? Txxx
Thank you for taking the time to explain all this to me, I really appreciate it. In my case, my mother is still with us, and her suicide attempt when she was very young, much to my horror, has in fact been used as the rest of the family's satirical anecdote. When I write about it, I want to give it the weight it deserves. I am mulling over your question on whether any relatives might object to it being told in a "different" light than how they would have told it.
There’s no rush for you to get back to me… part of why I structure this project in the unusual way I do without deadlines, and with all themes staying open, is to give people a safe and unpressured space for thinking through what they are able/comfortable sharing in a public forum (albeit a modest one). Once a story is curated on the book site, that’s when it/you appear in search engine results on Google - and so for your sake and mine I need to exercise probably more caution than a large publisher would, given I don’t have a legal team to support us! So I err, yes, on the side of caution. xxx
First off, the public forum you have provided for us is absolutely important.
I've had a good long think about this piece, and although it is special to me, I don't think it is worth any more of our time and attention so we're not offending anyone, or be liable to a lawsuit down the line. (I am sure it will not lead to anything like that, but I get passing on this risk onto you if I were to have this sort of work published in my platform. So, I'm thinking, let's pass on this one, and move on to the next one.
I would like to thank you for this lesson in understanding the legalities behind publishing a memoir sort of writing anywhere. I shall proceed with this in mind from now on. Thank you!
My dad had made himself proper working hands- gnarled and roughed through heavy use as a joiner. Tools and wood had hammered and shaped them, honed their seasoned character.
I every so often rub my finger tips over my hands and feel again just how different mine are to his- delicate, soft, never mastering labour.
There’s a story my mum told of how he stopped me using my left thumb. I’d sucked on that thumb possibly from the moment the family doctor advised her to stop breast-feeding me as the cure for too much milk leakage. One day when we were out walking somewhere, my dad just said- Tommy, that's dirty - and the story goes that I never sucked that thumb again.
The one time our hands joined in work together was when he got the job of making a wooden casing for cement to fill on the wall down by our local chip shop. The cement was to be put in there coming to a point at the top to stop children walking along the wall. I could see this was the purpose and felt like a traitor but was still so glad to be up early and working with my dad.
I'm not sure how useful I was to him but I did take pride over the years at seeing the fruit of our labour.
He's gone now. At his funeral I gave a eulogy cased around the lyrics from his beloved Neil Diamond’s famous song Sweet Caroline. I didn’t have this memory in the eulogy but now I see it’s there - hands touching hands…reaching out…touching me…touching you…
I'm rarely back up our housing estate but it’s still there, stopping the few kids left from walking that wall, the cement memorial of our work together.
Tam - it feels such a privilege to have received two eulogies now from you: for your mother, your father. And depending where you've got to with my book, you'll know how hard this piece hits home for me, having an absent father from whom I would have learned so much if he - mechanic, gardener, fisherman - had stayed beyond my second year. What you're describing is what I yearned for all my life: just to work quietly alongside someone skilled, who was 'good with their hands' as my dad was. Although that phrase diminishes the intelligence that goes with that ability to build, repair cars, wire electrics...
Here is your link and my thanks once again for joining us here. I feel you are going to do further wonderful things with the prompts in the archive.
Aw thanks Tan that means a lot. I can only imagine what that loss must’ve been like. It’s my dad’s birthday this Friday so it’ll be great to be able to share the story then. I also have new photos of that very wall, still there, that my brother took for me last week when he was up in Clermiston. I’ll share that then too and start looking for my next prompt. Thank you! Tam x
So.. I made that change for you... but then changed it back to work. As a reader I responded to 'work' - that being what the child alongside the father would have felt? Whereas handiwork is perhaps a diminutive? A slight pulling back from the pride you feel? But only issuing this as a light editorial challenge, as my book editor did for me! If you want handiwork then I will make that change happily!
Aw thank you Tan, I see what you mean ( though had to look up diminutive! ) and certainly go with that. I thought I was being clever getting two words into one when I was slap bang up to the 300 limit and mused…that’s handy! But me sort of being the diminutive, mostly watching my dad reads better with work. So thank you for showing such interest- it’s so brilliant to have an editor!
I’d love to show you the photo of the wall but can’t post here. It’ll go up on my IG and FB on Friday when I post the link for my dad’s birthday- think he would’ve been 90, I’ll check x
My hands have made up my face with black liquid eyeliner and silver or gold sparkly eyeshadow and black mascara, as a mask or defence to head out into the world
My hands have made seemingly endless cups of tea, slightly less coffee, and have filled hot water bottles during winters that seemed to last endlessly themselves
My hands have made abstract paintings, with plastic cards scrapping the paint across the canvas or paper
My hands have mended my husband’s tartan pyjama bottoms with a patch, sewed lovingly.
My hands have mended my own fractured mind, by writing down my hurts, rants and other frustrations into numerous journals
My hands have broken teacups, fallen out of hands onto hard kitchen floors or cracked in washing up bowl as they have bumped into other crockery.
My hands have broken up stitching from recent attempts to remember how to knit, as my late mother taught me.
My hands have been busy creatures - making, mending and breaking many things. How much more will they do in the next half of my life?
I savoured every detail in this, Sharon. So much life and love packed carefully into it - love how you've used the theme to honour yourself, your family, the things around you that you have made and mended. Thank you again for being part of this project. Excited now to begin Season Three next week... Tanya xx
I had my hands full. Fourth child, a busy one. Always getting into things and climbing anything he could grip with his chubby hands. A surprise mole appearing as if by magic once the true baby fat unfurled a crease at his wrist. How could I be expected to knit an entire hat with the others at this mum and tot class? Their children crawling gingerly about and plunking down contentedly with a basket of silks for the hour, whilst my hurricane knocked over block towers and grabbed at the knitting needles attempting to insert them into his ever-exploring mouth. I was sweating, the teacher scowling as I attempted to negotiate my stray needles from his firm grip.
Haltingly, I knit a few rows each week, intermittently redirecting my son, and glanced enviously at the progress others were making on their seemingly flawless creations. Once my son was down for the evening I worked feverishly on that hat until I hit a snag my novice hands could not repair. Then, forced to let go of my completion anxiety, I’d wait until the next class to sheepishly ask the parent mentor to set aside her project and help me repair mine. The thrill in my fingertips as she handed my project back to me. A relief to be knitting again! I wondered at this strange new urge for “busy work”, my mother mockingly called it, for repetition, the feeling of fabric growing in my hands. Now, many stitches later, I revel in the meditative process of knitting and sense, when I cast off, a drop of regret mixed with the pride of accomplishment.
That first hat fit perfectly. He called it his night cap and wore it to bed unfailingly for years. It magically stretched just enough to grow with him.
Oakley! How lovely to have you join this project after our meeting this year in our other shared online community. And what a beautiful piece you've contributed to the story archive. I know that it will be read by many who remember those early mothering years - the way so many of us had a strange kind of new and unstructured time in which to feel ourselves in awkward comparison, even as we began to develop new and surprising skills that would create lasting objects and memories and good new ways of being. You say so much about all this in so few words here. And the way your making was dismissed as 'make work'. Yes, so so familiar to me. I began to make soft toys and to knit when my son was a baby, having never been taught or feeling the urge to do before. I soon learned that it gave me thinking space even while it left my attention open to respond to his constant strivings. I read sometime later that children enjoy this kind of activity happening close by them in a way they can't stand us on our phones because it is close in kind to the sort of camp/nest maintenance humans will always have had to do around their young. Can't remember the source and it might be absolute nonsense but it made sense to me at the time. Gave me a feeling that I was doing something good for myself and my children both. And like your son with his magical hat, they have bedspreads that were made back then.
I love how you've written here - as you can see from all the thoughts it has released in me!
Here is your link, and I hope you will write for other themes here...
I grew up in a house with no books, no awareness of art except as something that 'others' did. And yet I loved to draw and paint. I used discarded cardboard and cereal packets, as buying paper for a child to draw on was unthinkable, unthoughtof. At 14 in the top stream of a grammar school i was told i had to give up art as a subject and do sciences instead. I was heartbroken. I would never be an artist now. But no one understood so I had to grieve quietly and coped by not picking up a pencil or brush for forty years. Then I did a weekend course in drawing and found it was all still there. I've become pretty good but what is also still there is my family's incomprehension, their refusal to see any worth in it. I got accepted for an MA and they sneered. This time I chose the drawing and gave up the family.
How quietly, insistently devastating those first short paragraphs are. A whole personal and also generational history compressed down. The pressure of it. And then the sorrow of 'for forty years.' Which made my heart soar then at the decision, the decisiveness of your last line. If you have a last name I can add to your profile, just let me know, as well as a link to any of your drawings you have online, as I'd be glad to link to them.
Here is your link to your words:
https://thecureforsleep.com/april-issue-hands/#stevie
Thank you for this powerful contribution.
Tanya
And thank you for your insightful words. I have stuff on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stevieclay322/?hl=en
I've now added an editor's note at the foot of your piece with a link through to your compelling sketches. Imagine if you'd never made them (actually I don't want to - only want to share your pleasure in their existing: this creative space you have laid claim to against the odds).
Stevie, in such a few words I feel an understanding of the power of the feelings your family pushed upon you. Enjoy your drawing.
This brought tears to my eyes Stevie and took me back to my childhood. I too loved to create, to sketch and to paint, however it wasn't something that was considered a suitable way to spend one's time. I wanted to go to art college but that wasn't considered a suitable thing to do upon leaving school. Earning one's keep was the only way to go.
So so sad that it took you so long to return to your first love, and then to suffer all over again at the lack of understanding from your family. Isn't it incredible to think that we have to make such choices! Their loss is all I can say and good on you of course!
Thank you for sharing x
Home from school, she watched as I practiced my hand writing. “You could be a hand model”, she said. I took it as a compliment, although others later tried to persuade me it was an insult. She knew how to give those, but never to me.
In the care home, an old bloke had threatened her. “You’re too old to punch a hole in a wet Echo”, she scoffed, covering her fear. That was as true for her now, hands crippled with arthritis. She liked to chat and knit, but neither small pleasure was on offer, shut in as she was with the demented, her hands as stiff as her whisky.
She would wait for my visits, threads of stories forming in a mind more active for being trapped in an unwilling body. There was the time she made my cousin a pair of gloves from scraps of old wool, each finger a different colour. Soon they were all the rage. Children would turn up at her door, left over wool in their pockets, asking for a pair to be made. All of them, making ends meet. She, a local hero.
I wanted to be as effortless as she had been, but every time I took up the needles, I counted each stitch as if it were a child, and I, a worried teacher on a school trip. I wouldn’t know what to do if I lost one, so vigilance was key. I wanted to be as bold and as brave as her, but there are things that can’t be handed down so easily.
Like Tanya ,I love how this short story holds so much . As a knitter I can relate to you both. I learnt as a child from my mum and was fearful to start with of mistakes and dropped stitches. That soon faded for me,but I see now how that isn’t always the case.
This is such a complete and powerful story: two lives - yours, hers - and also a whole community compressed into just a few hundred words. It reminds me all over again why I love this kind of short form for true experience - such a concentrate of time, place, memory. Thank you. I've read it out loud to my family. And that last paragraph. Wow. Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/april-issue-hands/
Thank you! I went slightly off-topic because when I think of hands making anything, I think of my Gran, knitting. It was mesmerising. How cruel it was that her body took away her greatest pleasure, at the time she most needed it. She was a fantastic story teller. I wanted to bring her voice into this, because she knew how to tell a tale. I'm so glad you enjoyed it, and she would have been delighted.
It's a brilliant piece of writing and if you ever develop it into a longer one, I'd love to be an early reader.
When my son came to live with us, I knew something about what he had experienced at the hands of his birth family. I knew that once, he had been hit so badly that his ears swelled up as if he had been in a boxing ring. I knew that the hospital also discovered a deep cut on the left side of his head, which I imagined had been caused by a belt buckle, or a heavy ring. He was twenty months old.
The first night he was here, aged four, after I had read him a story, I asked if I could stroke his back. I needed his permission.
It might help you sleep, I said.
My son said yes. I gently put my hand under his pyjama top, which was blue and covered in tiny spaceships. His back felt warm and soft. I traced the nubs of his spine, very carefully.
Draw something, he said.
He knew. He knew what he wanted, what he needed.
I drew a cat.
Talk it, he said, and so I did.
This is the head, I said, as my index finger traced the shapes on his warm skin. This is the body.
I drew stick legs, ears, eyes, whiskers, and a long tail. My fingers on his back. The connection was building, the safety, the love.
More, he said. His voice was becoming drowsy. I drew a house with four windows and smoke curling from a chimney. I drew a tree. I spoke the trunk, the branches. His breathing deepened. He was asleep. My hand kept moving.
I am drawing my heart, I said. I love you.
He’s sixteen now. Stroke on my back, he says sometimes, in the mornings, when he can’t get out of bed for college. Most of all he wants me to draw the cat. The first steps we traced together. Our bonding animal. Our love.
Kerry, I've just now added your absolutely compelling piece to the story archive, with the edits as agreed:
https://thecureforsleep.com/april-issue-hands/#kerrywhitley
And I've been working hard this weekend to refresh all the pages in the story archive over on my book's website, to still better showcase the work of your and others here. I'd love you to take a look, starting on the new-look landing page...
https://thecureforsleep.com/beyond-the-book/
So very very glad you are writing for the archive.
Txx
Oh Kerry. Such rituals of care and kindness - and of safety/permission - after the terrible time that preceded it. And written with the same loving kindness. Before I move it to the web site with your name linked to it, I will need to email you with a few editorial questions as I do with any contributions that refer to identifiable others in a way that might present a risk to you as author. Is that okay? It's a good practice run for if you're writing longer lifewriting for publication...
If that is indeed okay, can you send me your email by DM on twitter or instagram?
Txx
Hi Tanya...thank you so much for your response...as regards my email, I'm not on Twitter or Instagram, but I think I emailed you on 16th November before I'd worked out how to post on here...so do you have my email from then?
Thanks again.
Kerry x
SO powerfully moving. Tears.
Touch.
My fingers are barbs that cling onto my world, dig deep into it's fabric and connect to it's core. My fingers guide me in the dark; embrace the earth's textures, slide over a myriad of surfaces and sense the dangers and pleasures that stream over my skin.
I feel through my fingers. " You have healing hands Steve. The touch of an Angel." I have led a tactile life and without touch there is no nourishing of the soul. I have touched and been touched in return; not a fondle, fumble or a false stroke, but a feathery sweep of skin on skin. the faintest of touches that bristles the love layer.
A brief encounter with a stranger's skin, a personal barrier and private space that has my therapists' respect for the profound connectedness between us; the most intimate of human contact will need total trust and faith in the power of touch.
Me, a white coated healer fixing that which was broken; a heart, a friendship, a stream of creativity; re-kindling a fire within that was quenched by sadness. My conducting rod fingers pouring in the fullness of life, repairing and re-balancing. A thousand finger cascade igniting a billion nerve cells, triggering a seventh heaven..
The skin becomes a sensory sieve, filtering the emotions; filleting out desire and arousal, leaving only a blissful landscape for the splendour of a transcendental moment to grow.
Can this really be so? Can a body be so fixed? Can fingers weald such power? Can the body be so easily persuaded? Yes! Yes! Yes! Something deep, profound and primordial bridges the skin divide and bonds after the slightest of touches.
It's all alchemy, the fingers awaken the sparklets of sensation when unacquainted skin fuses with unacquainted skin.
Steve! Your contributions are always so exciting and are unmistakeable. I'd know your prose now I think even without your name attached. It arrives in a week when I'm just planning with excitement the start of my next seven-year journey (events & health willing): to explore body and movement, touch and sensation, as much as I have words and stories for the last seven. So this from you came through with the feeling of a blessing, a confirmation. Words from someone ahead of me on the road. Thank you. Tanya x Here is your link https://thecureforsleep.com/april-issue-hands/#steveharrison
Thanks Tanya, it brought my therapist days back with a gush. Giving someone space to explore their inner sanctum was an exploration of self as much as enabling someone to seek sanctuary within their body mind fusion. Enjoy your journey. Steve.
Thank you Steve. It's good to have your company here - and that of other good people on here who've joined me in this online experiment.
The human hand has 17,000 touch receptors and the star nosed mole has 6 times that just on the tiny forward facing star, this star that never shines, never grants a wish, a full of feeling star. Think of how my hands might explode when they picked a wildflower if they had this power. What would happen when they scratched my dog behind her ears, this dog full of dirt and bits of burdock and raucous joy? Would they leave imprints on the shell when I pull a warm, freshly laid egg from the nest box, slip it into my pocket, and soon after crack it open for my children’s breakfast? Maybe sing when they pick wild black raspberries and turn them into jam? Sizzle wiping away tears?
I like to think my hands, these hands that brown in the summer, short nails, no paint, plain hands, no taper to the fingers hands, the pointer finger a little pudgy compared to the rest, blue veins popping hands, hands supporting these fingers, these carved away fingers, would sigh with relief as they write my story, each ridge of a fingerprint like growth lines in a tree, another story to tell. Perhaps, on a good day, these hands would giggle with delight, with truth.
(Facts about touch receptors and the star nosed mole from Great Adaptations by Kenneth Catania.)
Shelia reading this prose, just feeling the words as I see it all in my mind's eye is such a sensory delight!
Pure joy!
Thank you for sharing
Tracey x
Thank you for that. It was fun to write and I think the first writing that I posted here. I was so nervous, always makes me happy when it resonates.
Sheila
Definitely resonated for me too!
Wow! Sheila, this is such an exciting piece of writing. A pure prose poem that has all my senses wide awake. I've read it aloud several times into the quiet of my writing room and it is making me smile and feel full of renewed energy. Thank you so so much for responding to this month's theme as you have, and I hope to be surprised and delighted by more words by you if any of the other themes interest you to try! The link to your piece as I've now curated it onto the book story archive is as follows:
https://thecureforsleep.com/april-issue-hands/#sheilaknell
Very best, Tanya xx
Tanya, Thank you so much for your response and encouragement. I have been smiling since I read it. Your book was beautifully written and life changing. Also thanks for providing this opportunity for all of us, so kind of you!
Love this Sheila ! Your imagination is captivating. I’m a teacher and it would be a great inspiration for writing ….what if…..
thanks
Louise, what a lovely comment, a good remark from a teacher is always the best! Thank you!
We walked through the dark fields, following the beam of my father’s torch, and scanned the small flock. The light focused on one ewe, over by the ditch, and we headed in that direction. Even to my child’s eye, it was obvious that she was in some distress. I can still see the whites of her eyes rolling in the beam of light, and hear her ominous grunts.
“She’s in trouble, said my father. “Hold the lamp.” I directed the torch as instructed, and my father examined the sheep.
“The lamb is stuck and my hand won’t fit. I’m going to need your small hands here,” he said.
Though I was a farming child, I was quite innocent and had never been involved in the birth of an animal – we only had sheep, who were generally trouble-free, and horses, who were usually taken away to the stud farm for the births. I had seen them being scanned, but no more than that. I had a general idea of the process, but wasn’t prepared for this.
Shining the torch on the sheep’s vagina, my father directed my hand. I initially baulked at the gory sight and sensation of the moist redness, but I understood that it was this or lose the lamb and maybe the sheep, and my father was patient. Thankfully, once my hand entered the birth canal, I quickly felt a leg, and followed my father’s guidance to find a second one and to pull straight outwards at first. Once the feet were out, my father took over and delivered the lamb hind legs first.
As he checked the mother and baby, I gazed in wonder at my small, mucus-covered hands, utterly awed by their contribution to the safe delivery of this little creature into the world.
What a beautiful memory, beautifully-written. Lit like an old master painting. I came close to your words, I mean, looking at the light, there with you. A country child too, I've been present at these kind of births gone wrong, but never been brought into this sense of my own hands having been a help. What a powerful experience to have had at such a young age. Real magic in this piece. Thank you Tracey. If you'd like your last name added to your piece, just let me know and I will update. But your link is already live as follows. Tanya x
https://thecureforsleep.com/april-issue-hands/#tracey
Thanks so much, Tanya!
You did a great job of showing the wonder of a small child and the kindness of your father. I could see it all happen as I read it.
I pick up the needles and it all comes pack - in, out, pull through, push the stitch off. And I wonder why I’m so awkward, so clumsy, and how I will ever figure out how to knit the pattern backwards on the purl side, because I could never be like a Shetland lady and do it as easily as breathing. And I try and I try, until one day I think, ”Why not put one colour in your left hand?” It feels all wrong but I persevere, pink on the left, green on the right, and suddenly the circle is closing, the tube is growing, a little clumsy but I’m getting there. And then I remember, or maybe I realise for the first time ever - my granny taught me to knit (or tried to). And she was right handed. She taught my mother too, and my mother was left handed, like me. My mother remembered the teacher coming around the class and taking her pen out of her left hand and putting it into her right, over and over. Sometimes the problem isn’t us at all. It’s other people.
What a perfect piece of flash writing you've made here. How tactile, how fully felt it all is, then that brilliant leap of the last line into a big statement about how we live. Like good haiku does. I love this. Thank you. Here is your link... Tx
https://thecureforsleep.com/april-issue-hands/#MirandaRWaterton
So constant aren’t they, our hands? We see them so very often, a look at or a glimpse. They are such a reminder of ourselves. What we’ve written, touched, held. How we’ve loved and how we’ve got through the days.
I never used to like mine. So critical of them, too old looking, too dry, too chubby. Nails too long or too short. Not a bad dislike, but no real affection there.
But I’ve changed my mind. Now I’ve grown to love the familiarity with them. What they’ve experienced.
That scar on the knuckle of my right index finger where I scraped the skin along the school radiator. At Y-Bont-Faen where I’d play in the toilets at play time, crawling on the floor to sneak under doors. Not really sure why, but we felt so naughty; me and my friends.
These same hands I type with now held on to dad’s, mums, Cousin Emma’s. They picked daisies, they made dens from sticks and moss and drew with felt pen on those pattern pads we all had in the 70’s.
They’re a constant, aren’t they? These days my Welsh gold wedding ring feels a part of my left hand. The ring we chose in Cley that day amongst the paintings and the pottery. Feeling so adult as we admired the simplicity of the design at the choices we had.
They’ve also been pivotal in the many jobs I’ve had. From the cook at the old people’s home to the teacher to the camp America nurse and the nanny to Richard in 1985.
The most important though has been to hold my own beautiful boy. And now to reach up to his grown neck and hug him, to feel his back bigger than mine while I tiptoe to hug him.
Louise, I related to this so much, the judgement of my body (I'm 53) and all of it's changes but then when I look at it like a map, which is what this piece felt like to me, I'm much kinder. I loved how this had examples from throughout your life, what gave it meaning. I live in the states and my son (I'm also on tiptoes) is in the air force. I hadn't seen him for nearly a year and a half, he's home on leave now so I really felt those last two lines. Thanks for sharing this.
Louise, this is a such a beautiful mediation, handled with such lightness of touch and yet also such strong authorial presence. You've used the prompt of hands to show the shape of your whole life. I love how much you've done with it, I mean. And it's especially moving to have this be your first contribution since we met in person at Chipping Norton Lit Fest in the Place & Belonging Workshop. Afterwards, driving home, I remembered that there is more than one Louise who has taken part in this ongoing project, and yet when you said at the session's end that you were already a contributor here, I said, immediately 'Louise Stead?' didn't I?! It's been so special meeting both you and also (in Devon, in April) Sarah Connor who also contributes here so often. I'm thinking that a free online event for us all in autumn might be lovely - giving anyone here who wants a chance to read one of their pieces perhaps, and for us all to do a live write to a theme maybe?
But for now, and with thanks again, here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/april-issue-hands/#louisestead
Txx
I am so evolving as a writer as I have joined in here. I was thrilled to hear you say “Louise Stead” ….I have felt heard by you ,someone whose writing I love …it’s just so encouraging .
I also just love the community feel ,that seems strange ,but it’s what you’ve created here and so we all get to have glimpses of each other but in story form . It’s become a bigger thing for me now ; writing and reading differently with more engagement . Thankyou (& yes please to online write/read thing!)
HANDS
After his eyes, it was his hands that I fell for. Pressing my stubby fingers firmly along the edge of a table to increase my span, I would watch the silken skin slipping over neat knuckles to the tips of his slender fingers which effortlessly spread tobacco along the length of a fine cigarette paper. This he would then roll, lick and light with elegant precision.
In time we worked side by side. My right hand would move between thin black pens and thick white paper, while his soldered a circuit board or shaped the stamens of a Fuchsia bud, in silver.
His were hands that could turn any screw and mend the washing machine, stretch the thinnest dough for a pizza base and fillet a mackerel, build a tiny model of an enormous factory and ease the bellyache of a sick cat. Mine could play Philip Glass on the piano and sad tunes on the tin whistle, dye calico and shape it into dungarees, gild the Lord Chancellor’s carriage or restore a broken urn.
My freckled fingers sat comfortably in his strong hand.
When our children were little my hands held them to my breast, to my flesh, to safety as we crossed the city streets. He would sit them, in turn, on his right hand which he would raise slowly to the sky. There they would balance, like the torch in the hand of the Statue of Liberty, surveying the world below.
This evening it is quiet; lightly rustling leaves, a small fire crackling, a supermoon rising. On the shore a curlew is calling as waves whisper against the sand. My hands are putting a new ‘D’ string on my guitar. His hands are holding a penknife which he is using to fashion driftwood into the handle for a rake.
My god, this is writing and these are lives I would never tire of reading about. Do you know Light Years by James Salter - a book I return to more than any other, although I can never write with such rich detail of domestic intimacy? What you've written here is completely your own and yet gives me the same deep admiration and pleasure as his book does. I'm thinking too of Edmund White's trilogy of his growing up, and how he too can write of a relationship between two people in this same unforgettable way so his people feel as real to me as those I'm myself in relationship with. Oh Sheila, please do tell me you are writing a long work in this register?
I have added this one to the Hands section of the story archive, but I'm also - for the first time - adding a story to a second place, as I think it also speaks to this month's theme of skill...
https://thecureforsleep.com/april-issue-hands/#sheiladecourcy
Txxx
Thank you for your generous comments, Tanya. I don't know James Salter but will look him up now and will also re-read Edmund White with fresh eyes. John McGahern's 'That They May Face the Rising Sun' is a book that made a big impression on me, in its way of evoking a world where nothing and everything is happening. As for a longer piece, I'm currently midway with an MA and trying out all kinds of approaches to writing. However they tend to return to that place of presence we can find inside ourselves when the world beyond is moving fast, so we'll see. I really enjoyed writing this for your wonderful collection, and am delighted to have included in two places. With big thanks and all best wishes, xs
For Season Three of The Cure for Sleep with Tanya Shadrick…
As you know, I’m wanting to begin featuring pieces from the story archive, and hope also to share some thoughts from their authors.
I’ve been trying to create a form for this purpose, but it’s getting too complicated. Instead, if you’d like to be featured, please may I ask you to give the following information here in comments?
Where are you based (country or county is fine)
Your bio (no more than 50 words; written in third person)
A link to your website or social media – only if you’d like that to be included
(Remind me of) The piece you’d like featured
Where are you in your creative journey right now – and how does writing for this story-sharing community support that? (no more than 100 words)
Is there anything else you’d like to say about how you came to join this community? (no more than 100 words)
PS My husband read your piece and adored it - the tender way you celebrate your partner's hands/skills alongside your own.
I don't know the McGahern...will find it and add it to my autumn reading. Thank you! xx
Beautiful, gentle writing under which is so much emotional meaning. I could "see" both your and your partner's hands. Got a chuckle out of the Philip Glass bit!
Thank you Anna Marie. Philip Glass offers a multitude, doesn't he?
I look at my hands and see the hands of generations of women. I look at my hands and I see my mother’s hands. I took a photo of them a few years back whilst she was in the depths of dementia. She’d allow me to massage them with scented hand cream, to trim and paint her nails. We sat quietly together in communion. No words, just touch. A connection that I’d found hard before she got lost in her own world. She’d look at me with eyes filled with gratitude. My mother’s hands were always busy with needle and thread, embroidering the most exquisite things that have outlived her and surely will me. I learned so much about craft from her. Her legacy to me.
I look at my hands and I remember my grandma’s hands, her ridged nails, her raised veins, the age spots all of which I have now. I remember how she’d massage my hands one finger at a time, gently pushing back the cuticles, taking care of me in a way I’m not certain she did for herself. She taught me to take care of my hands. My grandma’s hands were often covered in earth from tending her garden. I remember the smell of tomatoes on her hands as she brought them into the kitchen to make the most delicious tomato sauce, the recipe for which sadly went with her to the grave.
I’m told by the nurses that my hands have good veins as I offer one up to be cannulated for my weekly chemotherapy. My hands now have bruising and puncture holes along with the age spots and brittle nails. I remember to look after my cuticles and massage hand cream into them at night.
These hands of these women have held and nurtured children, caressed lovers, they have wiped away tears of both joy and sadness, they have created meals and knitted sweaters. These hands have planted seedlings and made homes. My hands have touched my heart in gratitude and been pressed together in prayer. I look at my hands now with the deepest love and respect for all they’ve done for me these past almost 60 years.
Rebecca, it is moving and good to feel this project is offering you a way to write again as you go through your cancer treatment... your way of writing and conveying deep experience is so strong: reading this by you gave me the same satisfaction I get from some of Adrienne Rich's poems, where I feel - as I do in your piece - that honouring of generational female experience, both embodied and passed on through rituals.
Do you know this passage in her poem Integrity about hands? Your beautiful words had these ones come back to mind...
'The cabin in the stand of pines
is still for sale. I know this. Know the print
of the last foot, the hand that slammed and locked the door,
then stopped to wreathe the rain-smashed clematis
back on the trellis
for no one’s sake except its own.
I know the chart nailed to the wallboards
the icy kettle squatting on the burner.
The hands that hammered in those nails
emptied that kettle one last time
are these two hands
and they have caught the baby leaping
from between trembling legs
and they have worked the vacuum aspirator
and stroked the sweated temples
and steered the boat there through this hot
misblotted sunlight, critical light
imperceptibly scalding
the skin these hands will also salve'
Here is your link, with my thanks again for how you have joined us here Txx
https://thecureforsleep.com/april-issue-hands/#rebeccaperkins
Ah dear Tanya thank you for your encouraging words. They mean a lot. I’ve been diving into Adrienne Rich as a result and funnily (as the way life works) she popped up on a thread I was reading in The Marginalian the other day. I’m grateful for you and this space xx
The Marginalian! I haven't looked at that for a good few years now - back when it was Brainpickings. How many good artists and authors I found through MP's work there. I will return there over Easter... xx
Hands
In line, our hands were demanded for viewing. Our Brownie uniforms placed us on a Tuesday afternoon around the mushroom of shame. Remarks of disgust tore at my soul, just as I had bitten my nails and picked at my quicks. I was constantly reminded of my ugly hands, so I swooned at long painted nails in magazines. The disdain my mother expressed was for nails and hands like mine as well as the luscious red-lacquered elegance of ‘harlots’ and ‘common girls. Herein began my neuronal pathways of all-or-nothing mattered threads.
I busied my hands with making, they became my heart’s reflection. Ideas materialised into clothes made of face-washes and hankies, shoes of masking tape and a cork floor-tile that snapped on first step, forcing a second-generation design of wood with a butterfly embossed leather top. I knitted, crocheted, sewed, painted, drew and created endlessly. My father helped with my more unusual inventions, his broad solid hands, so like mine, were just bigger, rougher and male.
Making became me, I became the maker.
Later in life I had my nails done, red and shiny, stunning bits of fabricated extensions earning me the sophistication I dreamed of and the ire of Mother. But making went clumsy. Yet again and again throughout life I would see my ugly hands, my ugly self and succumb to the cycle of false nail elusion. I’m late middle aged now. My hands are still broad, my fingers still short, my nails worn down. But my heart is woven from the warp and weft of the love of making, softened through time, coloured with the fabric of ideas, and blessed with my long sought acceptance of hands that gift me beauty from the studio of imagination.
I hung on every word of this, as someone whose hands have always been large with bitten fingers and a need to make things. I think you express something so core to so many women's experience here. Thank you. Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/april-issue-hands/#andreaday
Txx
"Would you like to cut the cord?"
Would I? I didn't know.
It was so unexpected; the move to the theatre, the cesarean, her words - "Can he be put straight in my arms", then, "Give him to Mum, please. I'm going to be sick".
And there you were. Such beautiful eyes. A squshy, messy, bundle of newness.
And there were the scissors. It was not a gentle snip. That cord was gristle and strength in my hands. I needed help to sever you, to finally help to deliver you into our world.
Measured and tested then back to your mum. In her arms where you belong. And me, hands still helping.
What a privilege, an honour for you Jean and you have captured so much with so few words! Beautiful indeed!
Tracey x
So very good to have you/your writing return to the project, Jean. How much you've done here in just a few sentences. And what a rare experience you're describing. Here is your link:
https://thecureforsleep.com/april-issue-hands/#jeanwilson
Txx
I saw my mother trying to kill herself while I was making bread this morning.
I took the eggs out of the fridge, laid them gently in the pink bowl that she had stolen from my grandmother. She didn’t actually steal it. My grandmother had left it at the old house when she moved, and when she realised that she had forgotten her bowls, told my father that she wanted me to have them. My father went back to get them, and now they’re my mother’s bowls.
I poured the warm milk and yeast into the big white bowl and saw the water filling the bathtub. I cracked the eggs and loosened them with a fork, before letting them plop into the milk. Her short, dumpy legs dipped into the water and made gentle waves that reflected the opened window on the top left of the bathtub. I stirred.
A pinch of salt, two cups of flour, and she turns the tap off. My hands cupped ever so slightly, as I mixed everything together. A blue metal wire we used to hang clothes on makes a loop. I kneaded. She climbed up. I kneaded some more.
I waited for the dough to rise while my aunt’s muted voice shouted. I punched and folded while my aunt peeled the blue metal wire we used to hang clothes on off of my mother’s face. I waited again.
The oven dinged and the air filled with the flavour of hot milk and yeast.
“Smells good,” my mother said, as she came into the kitchen, in her bathrobe and a towel, twisted on the top of her head.
Another beautiful and also haunting piece from you, Lisha. Before I curate this one however I just need to check a bit about the background to this, given it’s a non-fiction project I’m offering - and as such there’s a need to be careful when speaking of identifiable others in a way they might object to. (This a constant & large challenge to memoir writers and we are put through many stringent legal hoops before our publishers can send our work to print). With a number of contributors here I know already whether they are speaking of a living or deceased family member; I don’t yet know the facts of your family life (and for most stories I don’t need to). In this instance however I need to ask if your mum is still with you - and if not, do you have any relatives who might object to your first line about your mum? Txxx
Hi Tanya.
Thank you for taking the time to explain all this to me, I really appreciate it. In my case, my mother is still with us, and her suicide attempt when she was very young, much to my horror, has in fact been used as the rest of the family's satirical anecdote. When I write about it, I want to give it the weight it deserves. I am mulling over your question on whether any relatives might object to it being told in a "different" light than how they would have told it.
There’s no rush for you to get back to me… part of why I structure this project in the unusual way I do without deadlines, and with all themes staying open, is to give people a safe and unpressured space for thinking through what they are able/comfortable sharing in a public forum (albeit a modest one). Once a story is curated on the book site, that’s when it/you appear in search engine results on Google - and so for your sake and mine I need to exercise probably more caution than a large publisher would, given I don’t have a legal team to support us! So I err, yes, on the side of caution. xxx
Hi Tanya,
First off, the public forum you have provided for us is absolutely important.
I've had a good long think about this piece, and although it is special to me, I don't think it is worth any more of our time and attention so we're not offending anyone, or be liable to a lawsuit down the line. (I am sure it will not lead to anything like that, but I get passing on this risk onto you if I were to have this sort of work published in my platform. So, I'm thinking, let's pass on this one, and move on to the next one.
I would like to thank you for this lesson in understanding the legalities behind publishing a memoir sort of writing anywhere. I shall proceed with this in mind from now on. Thank you!
Lovely - and again this is part of what this project is for, just as much as the writing of pieces themselves.xxx
Yes, I totally agree. So glad we get to learn from you, Tanya, thank you ❤️
My dad had made himself proper working hands- gnarled and roughed through heavy use as a joiner. Tools and wood had hammered and shaped them, honed their seasoned character.
I every so often rub my finger tips over my hands and feel again just how different mine are to his- delicate, soft, never mastering labour.
There’s a story my mum told of how he stopped me using my left thumb. I’d sucked on that thumb possibly from the moment the family doctor advised her to stop breast-feeding me as the cure for too much milk leakage. One day when we were out walking somewhere, my dad just said- Tommy, that's dirty - and the story goes that I never sucked that thumb again.
The one time our hands joined in work together was when he got the job of making a wooden casing for cement to fill on the wall down by our local chip shop. The cement was to be put in there coming to a point at the top to stop children walking along the wall. I could see this was the purpose and felt like a traitor but was still so glad to be up early and working with my dad.
I'm not sure how useful I was to him but I did take pride over the years at seeing the fruit of our labour.
He's gone now. At his funeral I gave a eulogy cased around the lyrics from his beloved Neil Diamond’s famous song Sweet Caroline. I didn’t have this memory in the eulogy but now I see it’s there - hands touching hands…reaching out…touching me…touching you…
I'm rarely back up our housing estate but it’s still there, stopping the few kids left from walking that wall, the cement memorial of our work together.
Tam - it feels such a privilege to have received two eulogies now from you: for your mother, your father. And depending where you've got to with my book, you'll know how hard this piece hits home for me, having an absent father from whom I would have learned so much if he - mechanic, gardener, fisherman - had stayed beyond my second year. What you're describing is what I yearned for all my life: just to work quietly alongside someone skilled, who was 'good with their hands' as my dad was. Although that phrase diminishes the intelligence that goes with that ability to build, repair cars, wire electrics...
Here is your link and my thanks once again for joining us here. I feel you are going to do further wonderful things with the prompts in the archive.
https://thecureforsleep.com/april-issue-hands/#tamdeanburn
Tan x
Aw thanks Tan that means a lot. I can only imagine what that loss must’ve been like. It’s my dad’s birthday this Friday so it’ll be great to be able to share the story then. I also have new photos of that very wall, still there, that my brother took for me last week when he was up in Clermiston. I’ll share that then too and start looking for my next prompt. Thank you! Tam x
Second last word I meant to be handiwork.
So.. I made that change for you... but then changed it back to work. As a reader I responded to 'work' - that being what the child alongside the father would have felt? Whereas handiwork is perhaps a diminutive? A slight pulling back from the pride you feel? But only issuing this as a light editorial challenge, as my book editor did for me! If you want handiwork then I will make that change happily!
Aw thank you Tan, I see what you mean ( though had to look up diminutive! ) and certainly go with that. I thought I was being clever getting two words into one when I was slap bang up to the 300 limit and mused…that’s handy! But me sort of being the diminutive, mostly watching my dad reads better with work. So thank you for showing such interest- it’s so brilliant to have an editor!
I’d love to show you the photo of the wall but can’t post here. It’ll go up on my IG and FB on Friday when I post the link for my dad’s birthday- think he would’ve been 90, I’ll check x
So we'll keep work, but if you change your mind let me know! And I will look out on instagram tomorrow for the photo of your dad. xx
My hands have made up my face with black liquid eyeliner and silver or gold sparkly eyeshadow and black mascara, as a mask or defence to head out into the world
My hands have made seemingly endless cups of tea, slightly less coffee, and have filled hot water bottles during winters that seemed to last endlessly themselves
My hands have made abstract paintings, with plastic cards scrapping the paint across the canvas or paper
My hands have mended my husband’s tartan pyjama bottoms with a patch, sewed lovingly.
My hands have mended my own fractured mind, by writing down my hurts, rants and other frustrations into numerous journals
My hands have broken teacups, fallen out of hands onto hard kitchen floors or cracked in washing up bowl as they have bumped into other crockery.
My hands have broken up stitching from recent attempts to remember how to knit, as my late mother taught me.
My hands have been busy creatures - making, mending and breaking many things. How much more will they do in the next half of my life?
I savoured every detail in this, Sharon. So much life and love packed carefully into it - love how you've used the theme to honour yourself, your family, the things around you that you have made and mended. Thank you again for being part of this project. Excited now to begin Season Three next week... Tanya xx
https://thecureforsleep.com/april-issue-hands/#sharonc
Thank you, Tanya. I took my time with arranging this, the order of make, mend and broken seemed v important. Excited to hear about season 3!
I'll be so interested to see if any of the new prompts move you to respond! xx
I had my hands full. Fourth child, a busy one. Always getting into things and climbing anything he could grip with his chubby hands. A surprise mole appearing as if by magic once the true baby fat unfurled a crease at his wrist. How could I be expected to knit an entire hat with the others at this mum and tot class? Their children crawling gingerly about and plunking down contentedly with a basket of silks for the hour, whilst my hurricane knocked over block towers and grabbed at the knitting needles attempting to insert them into his ever-exploring mouth. I was sweating, the teacher scowling as I attempted to negotiate my stray needles from his firm grip.
Haltingly, I knit a few rows each week, intermittently redirecting my son, and glanced enviously at the progress others were making on their seemingly flawless creations. Once my son was down for the evening I worked feverishly on that hat until I hit a snag my novice hands could not repair. Then, forced to let go of my completion anxiety, I’d wait until the next class to sheepishly ask the parent mentor to set aside her project and help me repair mine. The thrill in my fingertips as she handed my project back to me. A relief to be knitting again! I wondered at this strange new urge for “busy work”, my mother mockingly called it, for repetition, the feeling of fabric growing in my hands. Now, many stitches later, I revel in the meditative process of knitting and sense, when I cast off, a drop of regret mixed with the pride of accomplishment.
That first hat fit perfectly. He called it his night cap and wore it to bed unfailingly for years. It magically stretched just enough to grow with him.
Oakley! How lovely to have you join this project after our meeting this year in our other shared online community. And what a beautiful piece you've contributed to the story archive. I know that it will be read by many who remember those early mothering years - the way so many of us had a strange kind of new and unstructured time in which to feel ourselves in awkward comparison, even as we began to develop new and surprising skills that would create lasting objects and memories and good new ways of being. You say so much about all this in so few words here. And the way your making was dismissed as 'make work'. Yes, so so familiar to me. I began to make soft toys and to knit when my son was a baby, having never been taught or feeling the urge to do before. I soon learned that it gave me thinking space even while it left my attention open to respond to his constant strivings. I read sometime later that children enjoy this kind of activity happening close by them in a way they can't stand us on our phones because it is close in kind to the sort of camp/nest maintenance humans will always have had to do around their young. Can't remember the source and it might be absolute nonsense but it made sense to me at the time. Gave me a feeling that I was doing something good for myself and my children both. And like your son with his magical hat, they have bedspreads that were made back then.
I love how you've written here - as you can see from all the thoughts it has released in me!
Here is your link, and I hope you will write for other themes here...
https://thecureforsleep.com/april-issue-hands/#oakleytorrens
Txx