Reaching for hope in a challenging world

Well, here we are,

in the new tomorrow.

Hard stuff going on there always is

These days so much of it

Wishes are easy blow on the dandelion

Resistance is hard alone is impossible

Hands are warm two by two by two

But...

How do you see them? 

Use them? 

Connect through them?

Her hand

Her hand fits nicely with mine,

the perfect size one for the other’s, 

but indoors only, never outdoors.

The most natural act in the world 

hand holding 

is not natural to me, to us.

This inhibition, this constraint dates me — us — as old, 

as older dykes who lived — have always lived —

in the shadows. 

Bolder these days, we live beyond the shadows

but do we hold each other’s hand outside?

Beyond these walls?

We could. (There are laws.)

Do we want to? (There is acceptance.) 

We might. (We know ourselves.) 

Perhaps it takes more than knowing, 

than being able to, 

even after all these years, 

to feel natural, not extraordinary.

Natural, not odd.

Natural. Normal. 

My mother’s hand

Normal. That is what it felt like to hold my mother’s hand as she passed from life to death, as she died. She had held mine — literally and figuratively — for the 64 years of our relationship, so to honour her request that I hold hers literally as she died was the last great service I could provide her. It was my first time holding a dying woman’s hand and yet it felt normal. Was normal. Natural. Not odd. 

My hands

Odd.

That is what the thumbs on my own hands are. 

Oddly shaped, a family trait. 

Not unique. Others in the world have them, but only I have these thumbs in my immediate family. 

These two vital digits on my hands are short, barely reaching the base of the index finger of either hand. Both work just fine, giving me that vital ‘opposable’ human function of grasping and holding. 

In that sense my hands are normal.

But my thumbs have been remarked upon by others as odd — 

Look at your thumbs! They’re so short!! 

And I always reply, But look, they work just fine. Just like yours. 

Odd what strangers say to us, do to us, see us as.

Other

Yet all it takes to hold us together is the reaching out of a hand

In simple elemental grasp

To hold us in the moment, for a lifetime, forever

Hands

Normal 

Natural

Vital for connection… 

In these days, 

here, there

everywhere around the world, 

let us use our hands to reach out and to hold

Each other

The other

Ourselves 

Together

As 

One

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Dandelion photo by Dawid Zawiła on Unsplash

Hands/sky photo by youssef naddam on Unsplash