When I finally let myself down into the steamy tub last night to soak in mineral salts, I took a moment to look at my hands and fingernails. They were ragged, banged up and stained. But I couldn’t help but smile, having never been able to keep ladylike hands. My hands have always been big, strong, and very busy. Now because of age, add knobby and wrinkled to the list. And I can’t get off the tight jar lids like I used to. But when I see dirty fingernails, I pause to think of the working pleasure that put that soil under them. It has always been that way. Remembering sitting in church as a child, with a pretty homemade dress on, and my not so pretty fingernails makes it clear that I have not changed much. Saturdays were spent in the building of hideouts with pine branches and tall weeds, messing with horses, or digging for treasure in clay ditch banks. There is much pleasure in the sweet smelling earth that can only be gotten to with hands.
This Sunday morning my hands are the same as fifty years ago, with their torn cuticles and dirty fingernails. Ahh…another Saturday spent enjoying myself! Mama sewed those lovely Sunday dresses for my sisters and me to wear, and yet never criticized my tomboy ways. She loved to work in the dirt herself, and chose a life dedicated to her enormous yard, spending countless hours in happy creation. She loved the peace and the beauty only found under the sky. I am her daughter that way. Yesterday while I was digging the big hole for a fire pit, fully engaged in determining placement, depth, shape, and size, I remembered Mama building a bench with local rock and mortar, and always adding to her paradise with planning and hard work in a hundred different ways. I felt her there, right over my left shoulder. She was pleased.
Garden gloves get in the way. They prevent the intimacy of the process, such a necessary component. The shovel is a great tool, and digging with one is a satisfying full body effort. But taking off the sod and removing the rocks is a job for hands. When you are on your knees you smell the cool ground, and see its many details. The chickens were scratching around here and there, delighted to see the grubs, beetles, and worms I threw to them every so often. I thought about my mother’s mother, Grandmama Langston. She kept chickens, had a beautiful flower garden and screened in porches filled with swings and rocking chairs. The drinking ladle hung by a spigot at the large front steps made of crushed shells and mortar. This place by the swamp, the heavy scent of her mock orange and the multitude and beauty of her Sweet William beds still live on the edge of a waking dream. It is funny how I am just in the last few years connecting the generational dots.
Although the daffodils have been putting on a show, and all the tree and plant buds are getting plump, we had a few inches of snow last night. The newly dug hole looks cold and raw surrounded by white, in the empty grey light. The search in the rock batter along the property line for good flat rocks to line it, and others to surround it, will have to wait a few days. I can imagine the future however, and completing it will allow for new expression of life out here in the country. This will be a place to reflect, alone, and also a setting for friends and family to gather, tell stories, and sing. One more way to be out in the air, beneath the stars or sun, all seasons of the year…where past and present meet, and dirty fingernails and ancestors are welcome.