> on loving my hands
You're tuning into Cheers, a newsletter made by Tiffany Xie. This week: on loving my hands.
Hello friend,
Last Thursday, I planted succulents for a teachers' workshop at school and in the evening I went to calligraphy class. It was a great day. I love making things with my hands.
In calligraphy, I tried to write a character for the first time and it looked much better than I thought it would. The elderly folk who have been studying for eight years or more came over and told us, your calligraphy looks great and how did you learn this in four weeks?
After the first calligraphy class I thought, I can't do this every week, sit for two hours and draw lines, but actually I can, and I like it. At first I wanted everything to look perfect, and then our teacher came up and told me, it's the motions that are more important. It gets more beautiful with time.
I like to think of my hand holding the memory of moving, of making a thing, that reliving the memory of making is what will make the making of a thing more beuatiful.
In the evenings, instead of walking across town, I'll sit in bed and crochet. I bought yarn one of my first weeks in Lukang and man, I get it. It reminds me of when I was knitting all the time in the states, trying to finish a blanket before moving to Taiwan.
Every time I pick up yarn crafts again I learn something new and this time I think I'm learning the art of taking things apart, that it's no big disaster to rip out rows and redo them. I'm not very fast at knitting or crocheting and I like that I have to wait, and think, and sit in the process.
This week I've been thinking about my hands. I think I had a bit of a stress thingy in my left hand from crocheting, meaning that I couldn't hold my fingers into a fist without some pain, but now it's gone away and I've been left to think about my right hand.
I've had eczema all my life and it spread to my fingers once I started college. In Taiwan it's gotten a bit worse. It used to only be on my pinky but now we're up to my middle finger, meaning my right hand looks more wrinkly than my left, and sometimes has a lot of tiny blisters. I tend to scratch my hand when I'm anxious, or can't sleep, or am thinking, and of course this is bad for my hand.
My roommate noticed this and told me that he can't imagine my hands becoming a surgeon's hands, which is a nice way of saying, could you take better care of your hands? He joked that I should tell them I love them every night before bed.
My partner said he thinks my hands are cute because they're small. I used to resent my small hands because it meant I couldn't play large intervals in piano and had to do all sorts of gymnastics to reach certain keys, but since I don't really play piano anymore this is not a problem. I still keep my nails trimmed short, though. It feels weird not to.
I would like to learn to love my hands as I love making things with my hands.
The eczema websites say to do all sorts of coddling, like wearing cotton gloves while folding laundry and slathering on Vaseline before sleeping and wearing cotton gloves all the time. My mom got me cotton gloves with bees on them once and I wore them for a week or so but then stopped. I'm kind of lazy about that. Gloves would probably help. Not scratching at my hands would probably help more.
My eczema fingers feel a bit scaly and rough, like they've built up an armor. An armor against me, I suppose.
On my ring finger there is a little writing bump from how I hold my pens a bit too tightly and on my index finger is a small scar from when I tried to zest a lemon on a box grater. I have a little freckle in the space between my index finger and my thumb which hides if I hold my fingers shut. I have whorls on all ten of my finger pads. If I pay enough attention, then maybe I can love my hands more, and they will love me back.
Cheers,
Tiffany