Hands

You can tell a lot about a person by looking at their hands. Cat-lovers have scratches. Hard workers have calluses. High-maintenance people has manicures....the rest of us just have hands. My hands have started to age. No longer do I have elegant long fingers and neatly long-trimmed nails with strong, square palms. No...now they are sun-damaged and freckly. They have broken or chipped nails and ragged cuticle. They have lost the long elegance of yester year and are rapidly becoming just big and well-used and old. I wonder why this happens. I wonder why one day I woke up and noticed the subtle differences. I think, maybe, all things in life work this way. Everything seemed fine and I enjoyed the beauty of my hands and the detail that I could get my fingers to accomplish, but now, it's different. My eyes can't see the detail like they used to and my fingers seem to clumsily accomplish tasks. I feel I have missed something...some life I should have lived with beautiful hands, some moment I should have reveled in. Now though, I just have big, aging, clumsy, sun-damaged hands a mere relic, eluding to the glory that may have been.