My mother-in-law had beautiful hands which she often used to make a point when talking. Somehow her beautiful fingers gave support to whatever she was saying. They were so elegant and mesmerizing that they seemed to be a physical extension of her enchanting intellect and kind soul. They were not the hands of labor but rather those of nobility and royalty, someone whose time was spent in higher pursuits of the mind.
She was born with a heart defect and told as an adolescent that she might not live past her twenties, if she even got that far. She was treasured and protected by the people who loved her and she reciprocated in kind all of the days of her life which turned out to be much longer than anyone had ever believed was possible. Her hands spoke of the support that her family and friends gave her and they were indeed a beautiful tribute to the power of the concentrated efforts to keep her heart beating.
I look at my own hands and see the DNA of laboring people. My grandmother’s hands and my mother’s hands were like mine. Each of us did our own cleaning, cooking, gardening, laboring. We came from stock that toiled the soil, cleaned for the wealthy. It is as though nature prepared us for hard work and our hands always reflected the abuse to which we subjected them.
I have been prone to hide my hands rather than flash them in front of people. They looked like an old woman’s hands even when I was still young. I was not particularly self conscious of them, but neither did I consider them to be one of my best features. When a friend suddenly grabbed them one day and declared that thought they were beautiful, I was stunned. She went on to explain that my hands had character. They told her a story of determination, independence and authenticity.
I have to admit that I laughed at first, even though I knew that she would never say such a think unless she genuinely believed that it was true. I realized that she looked at the years of abuse on my hands as something wonderful, a sign of all the efforts I had put into living each day. She gently held my hands, lingering for a moment to study the lines and crooked fingers, the nails in need of a manicure. Then she squeezed them and said that they were far more interesting than the bland perfections of a model who never dipped her fingers in dirt.
I have always remembered that moment because it gave me a new perspective on the world in general. We each have our ideals about what is beautiful and what is ugly, but if we really speak honestly with one another we find that our preferences can vary tremendously. Our biases in deciding attractiveness has much to do with the totality of our life experiences and little to do with the superficialities of popular opinion. We see through our own eyes in such a way that what is beautiful to me may seem unremarkable to someone else. Defining beauty in a way that is universal is almost impossible because our feelings about others are layered with our emotional experiences with them. We tend to apply beauty to the inner spirits of people rather than only their physical traits.
My maternal grandmother was as round as she was tall. Her skin was wrinkled and her hair was grey. She walked on bare feet grown hard hard and cracked from decades of tending to her family. She was an old lady when I became old enough to really remember her appearance. To some she may have seemed to be less than extraordinary, but I viewed her as a beauty. I wondered at her ability to care for four boys and four girls in a tiny house. I marveled that she had somehow kept order and made them understand how much she loved them. I saw her blue eyes that were tired and had lost their twinkle as the badge of all that she had given in her devoted lifetime. She was exactly what a grandmother was supposed to look like in my mind.
They say that beauty is only skin deep. Our best physical years are often fleeing. The beauty queen of today only seems to stay that way as long as she is also gorgeous inside. All the creams and potions on the earth are only as good as the heart of the person wearing them. That glow that lights up a room comes from character, not manufactured efforts.
I have a friend who is doing remarkable things for people who live in medical deserts. She has little time to primp and preen. She wears no makeup and pulls her hair back away from her face to keep it out of the way. She has important work to do and little time for trivialities. Nonetheless when she smiles with the satisfaction of the good she is doing in the world she instantly becomes one of the most stunningly beautiful people on earth. Nobody can fake what is not in the heart and hers is the essence of beauty.
All It Takes Is A Little Love 