These Hands

At the Crossroads of a Soul’s Choice

These Hands

And at the crossroads, she asked me, — ‘What do offer, what you bring? What do you place here for us to begin?’

‘I have nothing to give which is not already yours’, answered I

‘But I can place here, the things that I know, that I am: I am the artist’s heart I am the Father’s Love I am the Mother’s hands’

— ‘These are but aspects of the same, so; speak to us of your hands’

‘When I was a child, they were beloved to my mother, so they have learned to grow strong. When I was a teen, some thought (generously) that they might be the hands of a musician, so they have learned to play. When I was a young woman, people took photos of them and called them elegant, so they learned to be poised. And now they are returned to me, to be just mine. So I can give them freely.’

— ‘Accepted’, said the Child.

I think it is lovely and a little freeing to think, that maybe, it’s not just us (alone), who make the choices that form our lives.

In response to Trisha Traughber’s, soulful prompt in Vagabond Voices, about our alternative lives; lives that we might have chosen:

I’m late with this response, as I had been working on a totally different piece about a difficult choice I made last year — to stop a course of study I’d been doing for a few years. The story I was working on, was about the alternative me. In that alternative universe, where I had continued, I would be shopping for office clothes and getting manicures around now, to start a round of placements (what we call internships).

Writing about it, was all kinds of beneficial, but it was not, I realized, for sharing. But in the margins of my journal (Thank you, Trisha), there were random notes about my hands…

But anyway, here, in this universe — this is how I get my nails done: