If you were to ask my great grandmother how old she is, her response to the question would be “At least a hundred.” And she’s right because this past August she just celebrated her 103rd birthday surrounded by the love of her siblings, children, grandchildren and great grandchildren who all came together for her special day. And as I asked her how she felt about a hundred and three, she simply said “I’m tired.” Aren’t we all?
You see, my Lita has seen nineteen U.S. presidents, the completion of the Empire State Building, saw both the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, the moon landing, lived through the Great Depression, World War II, 9/11 and survived COVID-19. So clearly, she’s seen a couple of things. Born in 1921 on the 11th of August in Cotulla, Texas, my great great grandparents welcomed their first born, a baby girl who they named Esperanza. As the first of 10 children, she was oftentimes tasked with lending a helping hand to her parents as the workload between the household chores and work in the fields was stacked. They traveled across the country to Nebraska then finally settled in the great city of East Chicago, Indiana in the 1940s.
It was there that she worked to make a home with my great grandfather for their three children and then, for her grandchildren and ultimately, for me. She adorned the titles of cook, of hairdresser, of seamstress and of course mom and grandma. She worked hard from a young age to help provide for her family as she used her hands to cultivate the land and life that she had been given.
It was her hands that my dad recalled rolling out fresh tortillas every morning, her hands that made the most delicious pineapple upside cake, her hands that sewed countless clothing items and the hands that shared the warmth of love in everything she made. From all the life my Lita has lived, I can’t help but admire the world and life that she has created for herself and her family through the work of her giving hands. To me her hands are the ones that I secretly pass pop-rocks to because she likes them, her hands are the ones that I hold as I paint her nails while she plays bingo on her iPad and they are the hands that I wipe down after sharing strawberry shortcakes with her on a hot summer day.
But as these last warm days of September leave and I am away from home, I think about Lita more and more. It is in the hands that I work with that I find myself reminded of her, which makes me start to wonder about the future that my hands behold. Is it my work here at The Observer and in my writing that will signify the strength of my hands or is it the comforting hands that lay atop a friend’s shoulder as we break into “Notre Dame, Our Mother,” to conclude the many football Saturdays or times of pure connection?
It is through our hands that we embrace the world around us as we bring it closer through the grasps and touch of our figures to feel and experience. It is the hands of our mothers and fathers, our sisters and our brothers that unite us together in every perceived creation that we wish to share with the world around us or maybe it is the hands that we hope so dearly to hold again. I guess the real question is what is it here that we hope to make with our hands that we wish to be admired, protected, inspected or destroyed? Whatever it is, make it quick but thoughtfully because you may not have a hundred and three years to figure it out!
