I remember them,

the wrinkly folds, knobbly knuckles

immensely ancient to my gawky eyes.

How you seemed to peel ‘tatoes, prune roses, weed flower-beds non-stop;

those veiny hands horse-handling skilfully, with sensitive attunement.

Their texture, chapped and rough

 for a bathful of little, bare girls:

holding scuffed bed-time story-books

alive with Mrs Tiggywinkle and Tigger.

I also noted how they curved so softly around a babies downy neck,

but most of all, on steering wheels!

How old they were

as barely mid-aged, you drove us

on all those errands;

to the bakery, with its heavenly smells,

the village store, with its dusty shelves,

chin-level counter - mops, tins, biscuits,

post-war rations of sugar and flour…

to black-smith, church, and newsagent.

Your hands, the salient operatives.

Then, on the school-run, to the surgery,

the pony-club or washing-up;

 to drop violets and honey to lonely old ladies.

In the butchers’ sawdusty domain,

blood-dripping from pheasant or hare,

amongst raw, bald lumps of flesh

swinging on hooks

you waited, in proper Victorian mode,

head-scarved in the queue, your cold hands

clutching that tattered, posh old bag

with its mystery contents of powder-puff - shiny noses, sine qua non -

aspirin, cheque book, purse.

Your hand fumbling therein for a hanky

to, with a dab of maternal spit,

remove unmaidenly chocy blobs

from girly chins and cheeks.

 

Through childhood, I always noticed that turquoise ring on your bumpy finger.

It was ancestral, with a tale to tell:

belonging to a colonial forbear’s wife,

who died in a volcanic eruption

in the Philippines.

Her body was found by this ring on her finger, protruding through the ash.

You gave it to me when I left.

 

At your desk, writing that daily account

of what, who and when:

precisely recorded, year in, year out

 - until, with your ending days

loud gaps emerged, shorthand scrawls

in your fading efforts to keep going.

That life-story of:

bought what, born when, who came;

which cow or child got sick.

According to those diaries,

it was you chopping wood

 - men-folk gone to war, reported missing

that instigated my own dire,

breach birthing.

 

By the fireside with your mending

overflowing your own mothers basket

of genteel, woven wicker, always brim,

fingers stitching, snipping, threading.

My daughter has that lovely basket, now:

upgraded to nesting her crystal bowl.

I still have your battered sewing box

and ponder on my own wrinkling hands

dipping therein.

 

Stoking bonfires of bramble and elder;

head-scarved, down the bridle path,

with plastered thumb.

Bottling autumns fruit, baking scones and sponges to gramaphoney Mozart;

whipping fresh Jersey cream,

hanging out mountain loads of washing,

touching-up peeled scullery paintwork,

 gardening, polishing Church candelabra

those hands of survival’s necessity

endlessly dutiful, busy.

Feet up briefly - an after lunch interlude,

but even then, I registered those fingers sifting thru’ the Times floppy editorials;

They would never stop until you did.

Fullstop.

I know how they look, so telling

 - like my little sisters too -

crossed on your chest, at last stopped.

At rest and peace.