Dishpan hands

She’d never thought about her hands. They were there to be used, to be helpful, to support and to carry.

She’d never thought her hands had a problem, they just were her hands. Never, until, one evening, watching TV with her husband and daughter, a commercial came on. A commercial for an expensive type of detergent, which, among other wonderful things, prevented you from getting dishpan hands.

‘Too late for you now!’, her husband chuckled. ‘Your hands are beyond saving! You have dishgrater hands!’, and he laughed out loud satisfied with his wittiness.

Their daughter looked at both of them disgusted, and muttered to herself loud enough for her mother to hear.

‘I will never let myself have hands like those!’, and turned back to her phone.

At that moment she felt so alone, utterly and completely alone, crumbling inside drowned in helplessness.

She looked down at her hands, resting peacefully in her lap, they were serving her so well, doing a hundred and one things everyday, and she never thought that she owed them anything. They were part of her, they were a team.

The hands that moved their world, the feet that carried her everywhere, her mind that kept track of never-ending lists of demands, of chores, of potential disasters to avoid.

She never thought about them, and that is when she understood that she never thought about herself. She was a carer, a giver, a provider, and you know what?

That was ok.

She was happy to be all these things.

That is what she did, it was her calling and her gift, but something did need to change.

Her husband did not seem to understand how much it annoyed her when he started to mess about all the time about her dishgrater hands, or her elephant ankles, or her witch like hair. He did not see that he was pushing her away with every little stab, with every little paper cut.

Her daughter did not seem to understand how much her disdain hurt her mother. The young woman was fiercely proud and entitled. The world was hers for the taking and she could be whatever she wanted to be. She was young and beautiful, everything her mother was not, at least that is what she told her friends in their endless conversations.

The only solace the woman had were her romance novels. She read everywhere she could, whenever time would allow it. She had an online group of other avid readers like her and they would chat about their authors, their characters, their stories.

In her utility room the woman put up some shelves and surrounded herself with her paper backs, creating a weird looking tiny library in which stain removers sat next to well read books, and in which the woman felt at home.

The mixed smell of detergents, plastic and paper had come to signify to the woman a place of refuge. Sanctuary!

Neither her husband nor her daughter ever went in there, so she was safe to create a world of her own.

When they called, she came. When they needed, she fulfilled. When they complained, she fixed. When they asked, she gave. Everything.

When she was alone, she was herself.

And that was ok.

‘Life is not like the movies, or books!’, she told herself while carefully sorting out her laundry and her books. ‘But we can make a place for ourselves in any world, it all starts and ends with us.’

Now, the woman had come to love her dishpan hands and had bought herself a nice, expensive hand cream to care for them. Her online group suggested potassium for her swollen ankles, and strangely enough it did the trick. Some fancy keratin conditioner made her hair all smooth and shiny. The woman was coming back to herself, and that made her strong and resilient.

And that was ok.

‘Bloody woman! Where are you? I cannot find my keys!’

‘Here I am dear!’, she said cheerfully, closing the door to her lovely smelling heaven.

And she was ok.