Beneath the hymns

Published in Age of Empathy

Yesterday in church I saw my whole family. Not in one pew – Most of them are gone now – but scattered everywhere.

A mother tries to nurse her baby while keeping a toddler from sliding to the floor. Her five year-old leans against her shoulder. I remember that fatigue. The way your arms ache, while your mind strains to follow the sermon. I used to be her, trying to be attentive to God and attentive to children at the same time.

Now I am the woman watching her with empathy.

Across the aisle sit one of the "little old ladies” I used to study as a little girl - practical shoes with an old-fashioned hairdo. Her knuckle joints rise beneath thin skin, curved from years of holding, stirring and lifting. They do not rest easily, not on the hymnal, not folded in her lap, they shift and resettle, as if remembering work.

I know something now about hands that do not rest easily. Mine ache when I knit too long, though I rarely stop. I love the soft drag of yarn against my fingers, the click of needles keeping time. Something warm emerges from nothing more than string. Last week I finished a baby blanket for my cousin’s first-born granddaughter. When I mailed it, I thought of the hands that will steady her, lift her, and teach her how to fold her own.

When my granddaughter was three, she would plop her small soft hand on my knee during the sermon – palm open, wordless, which meant I was to stroke it gently until she grew still and sleepy. It was our own private language beneath the hymns.

Now she is 20 and taller than I am. Still, when we sit together in church, she lays her hand on my lap and opens it. I trace her palm. She melts, just as she did when she was three. I begin to understand what it must've meant for my grandmother to hold my young hand, once smooth and unlined, unaware of what time would write there.

A man with white hair dozes through the homily. My grandfather did that too. His head bowed and in what looked like sleep, but felt like devotion. Near the back is a woman with purple hair. I remember my great Aunt Nell, who sprayed hers brassy blonde, well into her 70’s, convinced it made her look young. She never saw a doctor. She never missed a Sunday.

I come from people who showed up.

When the cross moves up the aisle, I dip my head with the other elders, I used to watch them do that. Now I am one of them. During the offering, grandparents come forward with two small girls behind them, five and six years old, maybe. Identical dresses. Blonde hair, one with barrettes, one with a headband. Lace anklets. Black patent leather Mary Jane's shining against the aisle.

And there we were.

My sister and I, nearly the same size, walking behind our grandparents into a church that felt enormous. Jennifer's hands were never still. She worried the skin around her cuticles from the time she was a little girl–picking and biting her fingers raw. My parents tried everything to stop her. When she'd reached for my hand, sometimes I hesitated.

I held it anyway.

How quickly the years fold in on themselves.

In every pew, someone I have loved. And every pair of hands, the memory of being held.