"arthritic hands, artistic hands"

She looked very much in pain as she was complaining about her hands. She was in her 40s and suffering from severe arthritis which made her hands deformed. She told me with a half-smile about her limitations of holding objects like rock, paper, and scissors.  To my surprise, she was not complaining of pain in her fingers or hands that was so obvious to me by the look of her red, hot, swollen fingers, and hands.

To my curiosity, I asked her whether the pain in her hands bother her as they looked painful. She replied as she looked at her deformed fingers; yes, it pains me as unable to hold the hands of my children. 

I saw at that moment the pain in her eyes while she was looking at her hands. She had no other regret as not able to hold a brush or canvas, food or drink, even to button up or unzip.

To some, arthritis is the trapped negativity affecting joints as a pent up emotion among people. So, they suggest to resolve and relieve with forgiveness.

Others find those deformed hands as the result of physiology altering autoimmune and, degenerative wear and tear under the grind of the aging calendar of once life.

But, some may see the hand of God working through a mother's hand; the artistic hands that once carve the life of a child with her loving embrace, now a yearning to hold on as long as she can even she can't with her arthritic hands. That day I saw the pain in her hands radiating to her eyes.

That day I saw a mother who was mourning for the loss of her hold; to hold the hands of her children and that was her true pain.

Blessings on the hand of women!

Angels guard its strength and grace,

In the palace, cottage, hovel,

Oh, no matter where the place;

Would that never storms assailed it,

Rainbows ever gently curled;

For the hand that rocks the cradle

Is the hand that rules the world.

(What Rules The World: Willam Ross Wallace 1865)