Graf #1 Hands

By now, my hands were just about 11 weeks new. They developed about the 5 week my mother was pregnant with me. I'm sure, by this time, 47 years ago, I had figured out to wiggle and move them about in my liquid environment I was calling home. I may even have sucked on my thumb at that time, although it would never be a habit I would practice after being born. I'm sure as I cried out after being born, that cold January morning in 1966, one of the first actions of my mother would be to place her index finger into my soft newborn hand to offer some sort of comfort for just enduring one of the most traumatic experiences as a human being, that of birth. Although I would grow to realize the security of my mother's physical touch would not always be there to protect me but for the time being, it was soothing. One of those realizations is one of the earliest memories I have, I was being picked on for a small freckle on my right hand, between index and middle finger. Looking back on it now, the boy that made fun of this minuscule dot of pigment on my hand had more freckles on his face than I did on my entire body at the age of 5. However, at that moment I felt as I was the only person in the world with a freckle and I was mortified. He told me that it would continue to grow, like a beanstalk in the children's fable we had just been read. I would have to duck in and out of buildings because it would grow to be 50 feet tall! I wouldn't be able to hide it from prying eyes and everyone would see it and laugh at me. I remember my heart racing as he told me this terrible falsehood and I felt a lump in the back of my throat, my eyes welted with tears. I ran as fast as I could to my mother, and told her all that had been told to me. She then did something I have never forgotten. She took my small five year old hand in hers, kissed it and said, "mine doesn't seem to have grown like that, I have the same freckle in the same spot." With that, my mind had been put to ease by my mother's touch. We share the same freckle to this day. I find myself looking at it every now and again for reassurance in tough times. When the physical touch of my mother is not there, but I can sense her presence and once again feel that sense of  "it's going to be okay". I realize this assignment was to describe my hands and what I see, I must tell you that is the first thing I see on my dominant hand each time I look at it, and nothing else about my hand inspired me to write, like that one lonely freckle.