The Language of My Mother's Hands

The LANGUAGE OF MY MOTHER'S HANDS

WRITTEN BY: LEGANCY WORDS

My mother and I never got along. We were like two radios tuned to different stations—always static, never harmony. Our conversations were a minefield of misunderstood comments and sharp replies. I thought she was critical; she thought I was careless. We loved each other, I suppose, but we didn’t know how to say it without starting another argument.

Then the stroke happened.

It didn’t just take away her strength; it stole her voice. The doctors called it aphasia. I called it a deep, unsettling silence. The woman who always had an opinion, a correction, or a worry to voice could now only look at me with tired, frustrated eyes.

I moved back home to become her caregiver. The first few weeks were heartbreaking and awkward. I’d try to guess what she needed—water? medicine?—and she’d just shake her head, tears of frustration welling up. We were more lost than ever.

But then, I stopped listening for her voice and started watching her hands.

Her hands had always been busy. When I was a child, they were always stirring a pot, pulling weeds in the garden, or mending a torn sleeve. I just never truly saw them until now.

One rainy afternoon, she pointed shakily toward the kitchen cabinet. I opened it, pulling out cans and boxes. She shook her head until I held up a bag of flour. She nodded, her eyes lighting up. Then she pointed to a bowl, an egg, the rolling pin.

She wanted to make pie crust.

I helped her to a chair at the kitchen table. I did the measuring and cracking, but she guided me with gestures—a little more water, a pinch of salt. Her hands, though weaker, remembered the motions: the way she rubbed the butter into the flour, the firm but gentle press of the rolling pin. She couldn’t tell me the recipe, but her hands showed me. For the first time, we weren't arguing; we were creating something together.

Another day, she pointed to the dusty sewing box. I brought it to her. She rummaged through it until she found a worn-out shirt of mine, missing a button. With immense concentration, she threaded a needle. I watched, mesmerized. Her fingers, once so quick and sure, now moved slowly, deliberately. Each push and pull of the needle was a struggle, but she didn’t stop until the button was secure.

She held it up, a quiet triumph in her eyes. It wasn’t about the button. It was her way of saying, “I can still take care of you.”

The biggest lesson came in the garden. She sat in a chair while I knelt in the dirt, clumsily pulling weeds. She made a soft sound and gestured for me to stop. She mimed digging, then pointed to a fledgling tomato plant being choked by a weed. I had been about to pull the plant itself.

She reached out and gently touched my hand. Then, with painstaking slowness, she guided my fingers to the base of the weed, showing me how to loosen the soil around it before tugging. It was the gentlest she had ever been with me.

In that silence, I finally understood.

Her criticism over my messy room as a child was a desire to give me order. Her insistence on perfect pie crust was a wish to give me something made with excellence. Her mending my clothes was a act of devotion. Her love wasn’t in her words; it had always been in her hands.

They were the hands that had worked for decades, that had held me as a baby, that had planted every flower in this garden. They were the real language she had been speaking all along. I had just been too busy answering back to listen.

Now, I hold her hand when we sit on the porch. We don’t need to talk. The silence between us isn’t empty anymore. It’s full of everything her hands have ever said. I finally understand my mother, and in learning her language, I have found a love deeper than words.