'Hand'y Gift...

I had an interesting experience about a week ago. Claude and I went to the Louisville Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints last Friday. The session we attended I sat next to a young girl. She was probably in her late twenties.

After our session she quietly came up to me and said, "I just want to tell you, you have very pretty hands." I smiled and thanked her for the gracious compliment. She will probably never know that lift that gave to me.

I love hands. I have pictures of hands that I will always treasure. A couple of my favorite songs from my past have to do with hands. I just think hands are fascinating things.

As I look at my hands I can see the age in them. You know, those brown spots that are the neon lights of hands saying, "I'm getting older, see!!" My hands look exactly like my mother's hands. They move in the same way my mind remembers hers moving. I have used my hands without gloves to protect them to do lots of things that wear away at them. Coloring hair when I was a beautician. Laying in the sun till they were a nice dark brown color. Cleaning my home. Digging in the yard. So many things that just age hands. So when I look at my hands I see years of experience, work and even love. I don't see them as exactly pretty. More as a sign of a well-lived, full life.

When this young lady gave me this compliment, it was totally out of the blue and very welcome. Such a little thing to boost one's feelings.

Next item...

As president of the Countryside Homemakers club, I have tried to have a little gift for our 14 members each month. I prepared as much as I could last summer and just have to put finishing touches on before giving the gifts. For March I purchased bright emery board nail files, a package for each lady. Today I needed to figure out how to give them.

My mind reflected back to that sweet compliment last week. I Googled hand quotes on my laptop and it gave me a link to Goodreads. These are quotes from books and the author is given credit for the quote. I feel pretty confident these are quotes attributed to the actual for that stated them or wrote them. I scrolled through several pages of these quotes and picked four that I really liked.

I then opened my Word software and created a postcard file with four cards to a page. I had a place with some hand pictures already in my computer files. I picked the right one for this gift. It was a picture of the 'Praying Hands'. I posted about that years ago but it is one of my favorite stories. I put that picture in the background of each of the postcards. Over the picture I put my four quotes with each quote being in a different font.

After printing enough post cards, I simply punched a hole in the corner of each post card and a hole in the corner of each package of nail files. Then I tied those corners together with a bright paper ribbon. Simple but full of care.

My four quotes are:

• "I feel the healing hands of God touch my heart and kiss my soul." ~~ Harley King
• "Of life's two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a laborer's hand."  ~~ Khalil Gibran
• "We have hands; we can stand on them if we want to. That's our privilege. That's the joy of a mortal body. And that's why God needs us. Because God loves to feel things through our hands." ~~ Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
• "To receive everything, one must open one's hands and give."  ~~ Talsen Deshimaru

I'm very happy with this little gift. I'll share my little compliment story and then I'll give these little gifts.

Then I'm going to take my camera and get a picture of all our hands. We are making a display of things we have done this year for the annual meeting in May of all the Homemaker Clubs in our county. I think that picture of all our hands will be the best center for that display. We have all used our hands to cook for our lunchs, teach us each crafts, prepare our lessons, and serve each other. The picture of our hands will be a nice tribute to this year of being homemakers together.