When I was a baby, my mother would put me in my crib for the night and put a blanket on top of me, one of those easily laundered blankets that back then were kind of rough and itchy. And because my mother was always cold, she would lovingly put another blanket on top of that one, a satin blanket that had been a gift from my Aunt Mary.
Even as an infant I sought the feeling of the satin against my skin. That is how I first discovered the usefulness of my hands to switch my blankets and create an environment of my choice: warm and satiny smooth. My own atmosphere in which I could begin to smolder inside as I slept.
I did all the usual toddler crayons and construction paper crafts, but these were just child’s play to me. My mind was set on music. I would watch my older sister play the organ and I wanted to make music too. I was four, small even for my age, perched on an organ bench. My feet dangled hopelessly above the pedals, and I remember my teacher, kind but skeptical, telling my mother I was too little to really learn. But my hands told a different story. They stretched and stumbled and learned to sing. Even then, they wanted to create something that shimmered. Something that warmed.
The organ was my introduction to beauty through structure—to the idea that emotion could be summoned from discipline, that reverence could rise from repetition. But I longed for something less electronic and more acoustic, something more intimate, more tactile. I found it in the strings of a viola pressed against my collarbone, its voice drawn out by the callused tips of my left hand and the soft insistence of the right. And as I searched further, I found that musical salve in the keys of a piano where I had more control over the sound with my fingertips. It no longer mattered that I couldn’t reach the pedals that controlled the dynamics of volume. That artistic control was now at my fingertips. Music became a duet between skin and sound, and my hands learned to coax resonance from horsehair and friction, ivory keys and felt hammers.
Later, they learned the patient rhythm of the needle: embroidery, cross-stitch, and crocheting. My mother’s hands taught mine to stitch, and in that quiet exchange I felt connected to a lineage older than I could name. Then came the kitchen, where my fingers plunged into dough and came up dusted with flour, where I stirred and chopped and plated in pursuit of comfort, of joy, of the alchemy that turns hunger into celebration.
All the while, I was writing—though never steadily. Words came in fits and starts, like shy visitors. I filled notebooks with half-formed thoughts, with scraps of dreams. Writing was the one art my hands returned to, even when I forgot to call it art.
Now, my hands know the terrain of the keyboard the way a musician knows their instrument. They fly, they hesitate, they hover over a phrase like a cook tasting a sauce, adjusting seasoning before serving. They have become, again, instruments—not just of creation, but of offering.
What my hands remember is not just how to make—but why. The hands are where tactile and muscle memory linger and mingle together with passion and tenderness. They remember the desire to touch something beautiful and to create meaningful connections
