sister hands

The first four kids in my family are girls who were born within a five year period. This summer, three of them gathered for a brief time at the home of the third sister. I am the eldest of the four, but it has been almost a decade now since I had the health and mobility to cross the ocean that keeps us apart.

I was nursing my isolation with a mental pout, when the second sister sent me a poem she'd written that drew me into a metaphorical sister hug and wiped the pout from my mind. The poem begins with the line "Three pairs of sister hands." But I, too, was there at that kitchen table-- in spirit anyway. And my hands were a fourth pair reaching out to theirs. The poem begged to be illustrated, so that's what I did.

SISTER HANDS

Three pairs of sister hands
Reach across
The kitchen table
For open display.
Curious
But tentative
Embarrassed
Yet satisfied
At our lines
Spots
Blemishes
Bumps, knobs and twists
The hilly blue veins
We compare the wrinkles
Of our well-worn lives
Five decades each.

My young niece
Thirteen
Watching us
Instinctively offers
To paint our nails.

(poem by Vicki Patschke)