For the better part
of my life – far too long – I really didn't like my hands. I thought my fingers looked like
sausages. It was worse in the summer –
the heat would make them swell up like balloons. Why didn't I get small, dainty hands?
I thought I was addressing
this issue with acrylic nails. I started
wearing them at 12 and for 20 more years – off and on – after that. I must have spent thousands
of dollars, hoping that having long nails would make my fingers look slender.
At every nail salon
I’d ever patronized, there’d be these lovely Vietnamese women working. I'd always found their hands to be dainty. During one visit, while
examining my nails, this wonderful woman rubbed my hands and told me they were
beautiful. She told me that my hands
were smooth and full - not like hers – bony and wrinkled. She put her hand next to mine to show me
exactly what she was talking about.
Holy shit.
She thought my
hands were beautiful? She thought her
small, dainty hands were small and wrinkled?
Ain't that about a
bitch?
Isn't that
life? The grass is always greener,
right?
That conversation
stayed with me for days. I replayed it
over and over in my mind. I looked down
at my hands.
If the lady at the
nail shop could think these meat mitts are beautiful, then why couldn't I???
All of us have something
- a physical thing – that we wish we could change. What if we tried to see that thing from a
different perspective? What if we saw it
as beautiful and unique? Just for a day? Just for a week?
What if...
