Beauty of Age

This week I found myself on a flight from Dallas to Knoxville with nothing to do. I didn’t want to read my book and my son had my phone for entertainment, so I pulled out my journal, pens, and paint and illustrated the only natural thing in sight, my hand.

Sometimes I look at my hands and am surprised to see how wrinkly they’ve become. My hands seem to be about a decade ahead in aging than the rest of me. My palms are exceptionally wrinkly, but they’ve always been like that. I one time had a palm reading in Sedona, as one does, and when I flipped my hands over, the palm reader exclaimed, “Boy! You have been here before, huh!?”.

I do love my hands. They aren’t traditionally beautiful but they have a beauty I admire. They are strong but nimble, freckly and scarred. My pinkies curve perfectly towards my ring fingers, hugging the big knuckle like a little kid hugs his bigger sister.
Hands are such an intimate part of a person. In plane view but rarely looked at. They tell the story of a person’s life.

I look forward to what other cracks and crevices etch themselves into my hands over the coming years. As the prominent wrinkles I have now, turn into canyons with smaller tributaries forming around them, the topographic map of my hands will rival the labyrinth of the Grand Canyon. Surely, a sign of a well-lived life.