This mama's hands

Because the nearby tailor in our place decided to diversify, and rather than bring my daughter’s uniform to town for a small adjustment in size, I opted for a more practical “mommy” thing to do: I tried to sew it myself. While at it, I got high school flashbacks. As I struggled not to prick myself with the needle, I told my kids how in high school, I used to always have someone to do the needlework and yes, most of the hands-on projects for me. Well, it sometimes came with a price of an English assignment but some friends were too nice to ask for an exchange gift and would do it because they either enjoyed doing it and maybe because it was for me. Then off I went into a tale of good friends and the kind my kids should be and should have. Hail all friends!

But one name reverberated in my head in-between the tale and the running stitches: Mrs. Osum. (tama ba spelling)? Now I’m not even sure if she was an HE (home economics) teacher. But yesterday it was like… everytime I put the needle in, and pulled it and the thread got all tangled, I can hear “Mrs. Osum, Mrs. Osum.” Maybe I was afraid she will finally find out I didn’t do half of the things she asked the class to do, I didn’t deserve the grade I got etc etc. And that after all these years, it is Kigao, my partner who does the necessary mending.

I am amazed at my friend Joni’s adeptness with her hands as it dances through crochet, beaded bracelets and curtains, and on canvass. I envy Kigao’s hands that can create a 3-d figure from flat clay. I could not graduate from the basic self-taught notes in guitar strumming. I think my fingers are too short. I cannot even fix my daughter’s hair properly to at least show off normal kids and life. I think I was even a failure at holding my babies comfortably for breast feeding. It was Kigao who bathed them during the first few months of their lives because I was too scared I might drop them. One time I tried to draw a map for an easter egg hunt and my sis-out-law laughingly told me to just stick to writing.

My mom was frustrated at me in piano (now this is another story) though I do like using my fingers in punching things like the piano keys, calculator… I thought I’d be a cashier… I think that’s the only thing I was ever good at with my hands-- punching keys: typewriter, computer keyboard. Oh, and yes, holding beer bottles.

But I’m not gonna kill myself over my lack of physical well, more specifically, hand dexterity. Mrs. Osum may think what she wants or haunt the moments when I do try something with my left and right other than punch keys. But hey, I’m alive, my kids are doing fine as evaluated by their parents, nobody is complaining and my mother certainly did not (maybe because she wasn’t so adept at it herself except for the typewriter, adding machine and piano)…So why should Mrs. Osum?