So, it has been a while. And I'd like to think that my absence from the digital space was only for a short while, until I realized that 'short' meant more than a year.

It would be easy to say that I was doing something fun (like travelling to new places). Or trying new things (which is somewhat true). Maybe I can say that I was designing and building new projects (again-somewhat true). Alas, there is only ONE thing that would take precedence over maintaining my website.

Hands.

Large, expressive, and wrinkled. The hands that fed me a bottle when I was a baby. The hands that endlessly brushed my knurled and knotted hair, and that of my sisters. Hands that stirred and stirred the orange juice I remember him making each week (yes, from a can…it was the 80s, mind you).

Fingers on the hands that thumped my brother and cousin upside the head during church services because they were acting up. The hands that spanked our bad bottoms when we misbehaved, and then comforted us as he explained why he had to discipline us. Strong hands that always held us lovingly whenever we were scared.

The hands that made us school lunches. The hands that always cranked the ice cream machine in what seemed like forever as we were impatient for that unmistakable flavor of truly homemade vanilla ice cream. Hands that made heavenly scrambled eggs, decadent coconut cake at Christmas, and irresistible crunchy-on-the-outside, soft-and crumby-on-the-inside hot water cornbread (if you don't know, you should).

Hands that could Gerry-rig, ahem, 'fix' anything (and I do mean anything) with duct tape. And those hands ultimately helped me to pursue goal of becoming an architect.

The hands that held mine, and squeezed my fingers to let me know that he loved me, even if he could not say it because he could not speak during those last few days in the hospital.

My dad's hands.

I miss holding his hands during prayer before a meal and before my travels back to Delaware during those trips home to Ohio that I made over the years. I miss the increasingly scribbly writing- from the big, sometimes puffy fingers on those wonderful hands- on the cards and letters he sent to me, without fail.

There will be no more new memories of Dad using his big puffy fingers to gently make the most delicate and creative jewelry. Nor will there be new instances of him using anything short of a crayon to fill out his favorite crossword puzzles and word searches.

Gone are the days of him using those hands to play board games with us. (We'd accuse him of cheating- which he totally did. And he'd either defiantly refute, or impishly smile at us with a non-response...). Dominoes, UpWords, Yahtzee, Caps, Banana-grams, Spades...

My dad's hands were examples of the epitome of hard work, away from which he never shied. He taught us, his children, what it meant to cherish the importance and goodness of being tactile.

The last thing about his hands that is indelibly seared in my brain (and on my heart) is the very final time that I saw them. They were wrapped around his beloved Bible.

And I can think of no better portrait of hands than that.