The One Thing Your Kids Will Remember About You

I’ve been thinking a lot about hands. Mothers’ hands.

I didn’t feel great yesterday; I laid in bed, trying to fall asleep and feeling just incredibly “blah.”

And I started thinking about my mom’s hands.

How she always kept her nails long, manicured, painted varying shades of pinks, reds, the occasional blue to match her favorite car.

Her long nails accentuated the thinness of her fingers, which were only slightly knotty in her old age due to arthritis and various -poroses.

Hers were lovely hands, seemingly always soft, despite her disdain for the dishwasher and her reluctance to wear gloves when cleaning.

When I felt sick as a child, her hands served their most important function — fever detector.

She would raise her palm to my forehead and hold it flat against it while her other hand usually cradled the back of my neck.

We didn’t need a thermometer; we had Mom’s experienced hands. I remember so well the cool feeling of her lovely, long hands against my warm forehead. She did this even when I was an adult.

Her hands were amazing — they could tell if it was a fever or something less nefarious. And she was almost always right. “Yeah, I think you have a little…