Daddy's Hands

"You have your daddy's hands." My mother would tell me.

I never saw it.  My hands were the result of moving pieces of iron to and fro several days a week.  Paint in my cuticles and under my fingernails.  They were nothing like my father's hands.

But then I got old, and I lost the weight that ballooned around me in my forties and lost the muscle I'd spent my youth building, and I never moisturized like I should, and yeah, I have my father's hands.

When I was little, daddy would let me curl beside him while he sat on the couch and fell asleep watching football.  It's only now that I realize how many of my memories of him were sleeping.  His life was so mobile and so fast and so constant; quiet moments, wherever they were, usually meant he was sleeping, an attempt from his body to catch up on the life he was missing.

His hands were veiny and knotted like mine are now.  His skin was covered with thousands of faint hair follicles on top and none on the bottom.  Nuckles lined and creased like an accordion.  My little fingers traced the line of his veins, barely using any pressure lest my curiosity disturbs his slumber.

I look at my hands a lot.  When I'm typing.  When I'm drawing.  When I'm painting.  I do these things a lot more now than I used to.  Seeing my father's hands in my hands reminds me of how much I miss him and how long I've been missing him.  In a few months, it will be thirty years.  A few months after that, I will have missed him for half my life.  When you think of someone as indomitable and indelible and inevitable, it leaves a very noticeable and unexplainable hole in your life.  

"Turn the TV down, Buddy.  I can't hear your momma."

"I wasn't paying attention.  Who's winning, Daddy?"

"We are, Buddy.  We are."