The Hand Scan

I was sitting in the tub meditating the other day.   Well, that's not entirely accurate, I was reflecting on things, pondering in my own way and mulling about in my thoughts.  In particular, I was looking at the "Russian Navy" dark blue nail polish I had on my fingernails and wondering what the optimal length was for minimal chipping to maximize the amount of time between visits to the nail parlor.

I can do my nails, but I don't do them well.  If I don't do anything to them I revert back to chewing on them.   My nails are very weak, so putting the shellac/soak-off gel nails works well for me.    That is, unless I let the nails get too long.   Then they chip and I start to pick at things and, well, it's less than "manicured" in appearance to say the least.

While I was doing all of this I looked at my hands overall.  They're my hands.  I would recognize them in a blizzard.  I've been looking at them all my life.  I know what shape my nails are and the size of my knuckles and how wrinkled everything is here and there and many other small things that overall, when I look at them, tell me I'm looking at my hands.

But what did my hands look like when I was a teen?   What was the best my hands probably ever looked as mature appendages?   They're getting older, more veiny and more wrinkly as I get older, but I can't tell the difference as I look at them from day to day.

I wondered if I had any pictures from my childhood in which I could see my hands, close up.   Wouldn't it have been neat to know how my body has changed over time?   Speaking of time, it was time to cease my contemplation, get out of the tub and get on with the rest of my day.

Then, only a few hours later, something singular happened: my daughter came upstairs with a piece of paper in her hand.   It was a piece of paper...of her hand.    She had been pestering my husband while he worked and he, in his infinite patience, had come up with something fun for her to do: they photocopied her hand on our printer.

I looked at that little black and white version of my daughter's small hand and remembered my musings about my younger hands only hours ago.  I told my daughter we were going to put her hand on the refrigerator as I taped it up, just about toddler-height on the door.

The hand picture has been there for several days.  I keep looking at it.   It's simple and gives a strange little message that a small child is trying to get at food inside the refrigerator (which they're always doing.)  I like it.  

Maybe I'll keep the hand scan for her for when she's older and has wrinkled hands like mine are becoming.

The Big Boy Update:  Sometimes children will come out with a phrase and you don't know where they heard it before because you haven't had opportunity to use it around them.   Today, my son dropped his toast.   I said to him, "did you catch it?"  I was hoping the dod didn't just make off with a whole slice of bread with sticky topping to drag under the table.   He said,  "it landed right-side up" as he saved it from his lap.   I don't ever remember saying that.  Then, while my husband and daughter got lunch for us, my son and I counted to forty in the car.   He hadn't made the connection with numbers beyond twenty and how all you had to do was add one, two, three, etc. to increment until the next tens digit.    He was pretty excited when he got to forty.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter likes shapes.   Last night she made a rectangle and a triangle out of her napkin.   Then she said she was going to fold an octagon.    We were keen to see how she did it.   After a bit, I asked if I could give her a lesson.   I showed her how folding in the four corners a little bit made an octagon.    Tonight, part-way through dinner she pushed her plate, salad bowl and cup out of the way, put her napkin on the table and said, "I'm going to fold an octagon" and then she did.