Holding it together
He had giant hands at birth, bigger than his father’s even. The doctor joked about calling the circus or signing him up for boxing at the Y. The mother and father did not laugh. These hands had a higher calling.
***
His awkward teenage years were made more awkward due to his hands, lovingly referred to as “mitts” by his father. In actuality, the hands were bigger than “mitts”. Oven mitts, catchers’ mitts, driving mitts, washing mitts, rubber mitts, cotton mitts, mitt-ens, all had to be made especially to fit his hands. For this, he was ashamed. Not to mention, his hands were the largest he or anybody else had ever seen.
***
Once, when in a hurry to get home to the bathroom, he carried his briefcase, car keys, an empty coffee cup, the mail, the groceries, his daughter, a stray dog that his daughter hoped to keep as a pet (The first step in making an animal your pet is choosing a name. She had settled on Daisy.), a bouquet of flowers for his wife, his Igneous rock collection, a five gallon bucket of blue paint, a pallet of bricks, a cord of wood, and his mother-in-law, all at once from the car to the house in one hand. He used the other to open the door. The knob felt small in his fingers.
***
He found himself in a state of despondency. His daughter was in college. His wife worked everyday in a bakery. The office had let him go. He was stuck at home alone with the dog, Daisy. Before they let him go, the office manager had said that while his typing was accurate and rarely could a mistake be found, his average of 84 wpm was not enough. Time is valuable, the manager told him. TIme is money. Perhaps you’d be better suited for a different line of work.
***
Even his hobbies began to bore him. Building model ships in pickle jars lasted a month, maybe. Playing himself in chess, barely a day. He thought back to a day in his youth while fishing with his grandfather, how they hadn’t caught a thing or gotten a bite even, so his grandfather hurled his pole into the river and told his grandson to do the same. Then the grandfather picked up a smooth stone from the bank below his feet and skipped it across the glass top of the river. The stone sunk in the exact spot where the tip of his rod was settling to the bottom. Now you do it, son, the grandfather said. He picked up a handful of stones and threw them all towards the tip of the rod, the stones hitting the water like so many raindrops. Just before the tip disappeared, he remembered it looking like some tiny hand waving goodbye.
***
He walked around the house collecting all the things into his hands. Once he had everything from the house, he began to collect from his yard: the shed, the lawnmower, the bird feeder, the shrubs, the saplings, the blades of grass, etc. He didn’t stop there. He went to the neighbors’ homes and did the same, piling them neatly into one hand. There was still plenty of room. His friends and family and strangers and love and time, all of time, and laughter, chuckles and guffaws and titters, all, too went into his hand. Then, with the other hand he gathered the office and the manager and the doctor and double-parked cars and the bills and the sadness and the circus and the evil and the devil and the democrats and the republicans and the independents and the doorknobs that felt small in his fingers and he balled them up. One handful he tossed to the ocean, the other he hurled at the sky.
