My Mother’s Hands

My Mother’s Hands

By Hasnain Shah

My mother’s hands were never still.

They were the first map I ever read,

lines folding into valleys of warmth,

fingers tracing circles on my cheek

when sleep would not come.

Those hands lifted pots heavier than her frame,

stirred soup that smelled of patience,

tied ribbons in my hair before school,

and waved me away with a smile

that hid the ache of letting go.

Her palms were always rough,

not because she sought hardship

but because life offered it freely.

She accepted it the way she accepted

every scraped knee of mine,

pressing a cool cloth to the wound,

whispering, “This too will heal.”

I remember how those hands

clapped when I first walked,

steadying me with a gentle push forward.

Later, they hovered near the handlebars

of my first bicycle,

letting go too soon,

teaching me that balance is born

from falling.

At the piano,

her fingers never danced gracefully.

They stumbled over keys,

halting, imperfect—

but she taught me anyway,

and the lesson was never about music,

it was about persistence,

about finding harmony

in the awkwardness of trying.

Time etched its own story

into her skin.

Knuckles swollen,

nails chipped from endless scrubbing,

veins rising like riverbeds in drought.

I used to think those veins were ugly.

Now, I see they were rivers

that carried generations forward,

a geography of sacrifice

mapped across her body.

When I grew older,

I began to see her hands differently.

Not just instruments of care,

but records of survival.

They bore the weight of bills unpaid,

the strain of factory hours,

the scars of accidents she never spoke of.

Hands that sewed dresses

from secondhand fabric,

so I would not feel less

among my peers.

Once, as a teenager,

I pulled away from her touch.

I wanted freedom,

space,

a life that didn’t smell of bleach

or factory dust.

Her hand lingered in the air,

awkward, waiting,

before dropping to her side.

I didn’t look back,

but I remember the sound—

that soft retreat,

like a bird deciding not to land.

Now I am older,

my own hands ache in winter,

my nails break easily,

my skin dries and cracks

as if it remembers hers.

I see echoes of her gestures in me:

the way I fold laundry with precision,

the way I cup a child’s face,

the way I hide my trembling

when the world feels too heavy.

Sometimes, in quiet moments,

I hold my hands out in front of me

and whisper, “They are hers, too.”

I think of the last time I touched them—

frail, birdlike, trembling in mine.

Her grip was weaker,

but the message was the same

as when I was small:

“This too will heal.”

But not everything heals.

Not absence.

Not silence.

Not the empty chair at family gatherings.

And yet,

when I chop onions the way she did,

when I rub lotion into my tired knuckles,

when I soothe a child who cannot sleep—

she is here.

Her hands move through mine,

ghostly but alive,

a choreography of memory.

My mother’s hands were never beautiful

in the way magazines defined beauty.

They were cracked, weary,

etched with years of labor.

But they were beautiful in the only way

that mattered:

they built me,

they held me,

they let me go

so that I could return

and finally understand.

I write this with my hands,

knowing one day

my child will look at them

the way I once looked at hers.

They will see the cracks,

the stains,

the tired trembling.

Maybe they will call them ugly,

as I once did.

Maybe they will pull away.

But someday,

when the air smells faintly of rust and memory,

they will reach for their own hands,

see her in me,

see me in them,

and whisper, “They are ours.”

My mother’s hands

were never still.

Even now,

they continue to move—

through mine,

through memory,

through the generations

that carry her forward.