The thing that I remember most about my great grandma Betty is her hands.  She was truly an amazing woman and there are so many brilliant things about her that should be the first thing you remember, but the clearest memory I have is the memory of her hands.

She lived in a nursing home for the last few months of her life.  We would come to visit her and I would try not to look at her hands.  Her hands were old.  They were wrinkly and her skin was paper thin.  She had IV's plugged into her cobalt blue veins constantly.  

Her veins were so blue.  When I was younger, I made the comparison that they were like the ocean.  That was fitting.  She loved the ocean. She'd visited it many times in Florida, Mexico, California, Hawaii, and Panama.  I thought that the ocean was somehow a part of her and that was why her veins were so blue.

I remember the way it felt to hold her hand and how her skin would fold over in mine.  I felt so terribly for her.  I remember wishing I could give her my hands.  As I look back on it now, I know that she wouldn't have taken them even if she could've.  She would've kept her own hands that had done so much.  Her hands told stories that mine could not.  They were the proof of the life she led and she was proud of them.

My grandma Betty's hands allowed her become a real life Rosie the Riveter.  During World War II, she lived in California as a welder on navy ships. At the time, welding was not a profession for a woman, but we see now that her hands were just as capable as any man's.

Her hands wrote letters to her husband and my great grandfather, Tom, as he was in the Navy. Her hands and her words allowed her to tell him the things that she could not tell him in person.  

Her hands hid pennies in the most obscure places.  She would save her change and hold on to it for an opportunity to stow it away somewhere no one could ever accidently leave a coin.  She thought it was quite funny and would imagine the confusion and thoughts going through the mind of the person who would find what she left them

Her hands made delicate loops as she wrote receipts and kept the books at my great grandparents' lumber yard.  Little did she know that the lumber yard would still be in business almost 75 years later under the ownership of her grandson.

Her hands held and cradled her two sons, her three grand children, and seven great grandchildren, though they may not remember. Her hands cooked for them and fed them. They gave her the opportunity to create a bond with them through the power of the human touch.

Here hands jumped and clenched when she was anxious, just the way that mine do.  She worried about things to come and things that may go wrong.  She may have known that she didn't need to worry, but that wouldn't stop her.  It doesn't stop me.

Her hands collected shells along the many beaches she traveled to.  They were nature's souvenirs and they were great ones.  They were delicate and beautiful.  They captured a feeling of peacefulness.

Her hands wiped away tears at the news of her twenty-year old first born son's death.  Her hands which were so strong, buried Tommy much sooner than they ever should've.  Her hands, the hands of a mother, did things that no mother's hands should ever have to do.