Prompted by Mother's Hands

My mother’s hands, perhaps, can be viewed as one of the actors responsible for my very existence.
Many years ago, on a dark and stormy night, my mother reached for the touch of my father, so it goes. They, together lost in loves bounty, an image that I naturally block from my even most candid thoughts, held each other in comfort knowing that a new life had begun.
On October the 29th, 1978, I slipped into this world feet first – a terrible screaming mass of confusion and instant anger directed to those persons responsible for removing me from my nice warm womb.
I suppose it was my mother’s finger I held for the first time. Her hands always warm and sturdy – product of fine southern Italian protoplasm with a dash of Pittsburgh row house.
They were always in motion – grasping produce and wielding a swift knife. I was in awe at the speed of which they moved. My mother – the ultimate and only woman in my adolescent life, seemed to tame the knife with the same loving hands that held my fingers to the bow on my violin – a grim contrast that for some reason I find thick with irony.
Ultimately, in my hands, are my mother’s.
They are behind every physical decision – they are life in action – forever they will materialize the opportunity to create and express my emotions in all that I do – they have given me the ability to create my own existence and, potentially, dare to create another.

-Will Rau