Grandma
always had a way with her hands. She touched everything. Her hands were always
sensitive to textures, patterns, variations.
When
Matt was younger and kept his hair close-cut, she would run her fingers against
the grain of his hair to feel the tension of hair strands going counterculture.
This caused her to giggle.
“Going
on a treasure hunt, x marks the spot. Three lines down and a question mark. A
pinch, a squeeze, a tropical breeze. An egg that spills and gives you the
chills.” This childhood ditty was followed by fingers drawn on the back to mark
the treasure hunt, an “x” drawn to mark the spot where some treasure was
inevitably hiding. I never figured out what that prize was all about, but I
typically imagined some pirate’s bounty. The three lines drew straight down
one’s back and the pinch was a slight irritation, the squeeze, a firm grip on a
chunk of flesh. The tropical breeze was a puff of breath into one’s ear. The
egg started with a cracking of a shell on top of one’s head and then fingers
cascading down one’s head and shoulders and back to create a spilling of the
yoke effect. It was sure to bring chills and shivers down even the most
determined straight-faced bloke. We loved it.
Grandma
taught us the bad habit of molding our fingers in the wax from melting candles.
While they were lit, she plunged her hand into melted and softened wax pools,
cradling the flame, and squeezed them into shapes and patterns.
She also
dared to discover to us the “soft blanket” feeling of running your finger
through a candle flame. She would gently swing her finger back and forth
through a burning flame as we gathered around the table on a holiday meal. She
claimed it felt soft, like a blanket. We cautiously and incompletely believed
her and began our own test of this to prove or disprove her credibility. She
was right. There was some sort of softness to the burning orange flame. Mom
wasn’t crazy about this discovery and our infatuation with it.
