Working Hands

This morning I filled up a sink with hot water to soak my hands. The tendonitis in my right hand and wrist is so acute that I have to begin my day with this service to myself before I can even hold a toothbrush. It provides a nice moment of enforced stillness.

My hands aren't "pretty" these days. They are bigger than they were a few months ago. I have calloused palms, and the fingernails are trimmed short. There are stains on my thumbs and forefingers from some turning, twisting task I did yesterday while working on the drip irrigation. They are rough and work-worn, and strong, despite the tendonitis. I feel a sort of pride in my hands that overcomes any notion that women should have soft, graceful hands. Instead, I have tough, graceful hands. This is the result of my reorientation towards self-sufficiency and recovered ability to act on my own behalf.

I’ve always been a “doer,” and had a fierce pride in doing things for myself, my way. However, there were simply some realms into which I could not or would not venture. Being handy with tools was one of those—I relied on my friends, significant others, or hired skilled professionals. I didn’t see regular household maintenance or improvement as a HAPPY opportunity. Let’s just say that I’ve thrown a few screwdrivers in temper tantrums along the way toward my current limited but much improved capability.

I’ve been learning to do those once reviled tasks by starting small and keeping in mind that each effort helps combat entropy—my “purpose” in life these days. The biggest difference between the end result of throwing tools, and brushing off my hands to survey a job adequately completed by my own two hands is this: TIME. It takes a long time for this novice to install a new doorbell, snake a clogged drain, install a drip irrigation timer and lines, or clean up a pack rat midden. Part of that time is used in assembling the right tools, accounting for trial and error, repeated head scratching over “interesting” printed instructions, resting my hands, recharging the handheld drill, taking a series of trips to the hardware store, and the sheer grinding audacity to keep going when everything is in a heap or tangle.

My recent efforts have taught me some discretion, too. Now I have a pretty good idea about what I might attempt by myself versus something I’ll leave to an expert. A few weeks ago I met a wonderful octogenarian handyman who comes to work with his retired RN wife, and I pay him to do with grace, efficiency and durability what I can’t or won’t do myself. There is much less desperation and much more pride in this approach.

My next self-taught course in simple living and self-sufficiency will be sewing. I’ve had numerous opportunities to learn from others. My mother, my grandmother, my ex-husband's grandmother and others have offered to teach me, but I couldn’t maintain the motivation or summon the patience. (Remind me to tell you the story of my one week enrolled in a high school home economics class before I switched to computers--as if learning to make a boolian loop so some clever phrase could pass across a nine-inch monitor was more applicable for my life than cooking, sewing and playing mother to an egg for a week).

Maybe adulthood brings an increased respect for basic householding needs. It turns out that such domestic tasks are not necessarily the drudgery and labor that women of my generation have been socialized to reject in favor of “important” work. They are ways to make a living, to keep a home, to achieve. It will be interesting to see how the appearance of my hands changes as I take on this new kind of work.