Letter by letter, word by word, a story expands from the smallest of kernels into something more, reminding me when the work is hard and grinding of that annoyingly perky gardening song: inch by inch, row by row, gonna make my garden grow. And it is springtime, the time of year when every element of life seems attuned to new purpose: through the window the house finches are building a nest on a small platform under the eaves—a square of plywood that I attached there years ago when we were first fixing up the outside. It seemed a hospitable thing do to extend the benefits of our new home to others. We spent a lot of time that summer redoing and patching and painting the fascia and the rafter tails, learning new handyman skills since we’d just bought a house for the first time.
The house finches have no such advantage, you might say, weaving their tidy nest without the benefit of opposable thumbs, or hands at all. I see them in the yard, collecting fine fuzz that they find somewhere, then flying back to their home until at last they are satisfied, and ready.
Last week I was unlocking my bike just outside my office when I saw a movement, heard a soft caw, and, looking up, spotted a crow in the scraggly juniper just overhead. The crow hopped to where a long ragged shred of bark was hanging from the tree’s trunk, a mother lode of cushioning for a nest. The bird began yanking hard. To no avail—the bark was still attached much higher than the crow’s head.
It must be the Boy Scout in me, but I immediately had the thought, Here, let me help you with that—can I give you a hand? because I saw how a quick pull with two hands would make quick work of the task. Then realized that a wild animal probably wouldn’t want my help in that way: in this case my agile hands would be a threat rather than a help. So I watched as the crow left the long shred alone and instead hopped to a branch where it pulled up numerous smaller pieces.
Yes, people have clever hands, I thought, but the birds—they have clever beaks. How did it pick up all those new pieces without dropping the old? When its bill was crammed full it made another tiny caw, then flew off toward its nest.
Probably I’ve been primed to think about the tools we have, or lack, because of the guy I recently saw eating menudo at a hole-in-the-wall Mexican place down in Globe. The place was full with a weekend lunch crowd, and it was not until after we’d had to wait by the door for a while and then slid into a booth that I saw him: a skinny older man sitting in another booth, talking with his tablemates just like the weekend bikers and other families were doing—and being spooned menudo from a bowl by a younger woman who might have been his daughter.
It took me a spell of discreet looking before I realized that in fact the man had no hands, only rounded stubs of arms just below his shoulders. No wonder he was being spoon fed. This was a man who must be spoon fed a lot.
Our eggs and chorizo arrived. I wondered what had happened: a tragic mining accident? Or had he always lacked arms? Was he born that way? I picked at my food, full of unanswered questions. How would you lead life without hands—without the ability to pick up a pen, caress a lover, give a hug to a child? Or, for that matter, unzip your fly? What a radical dependence on others you would experience.
The food wasn’t great. But I have to say I ate it with a new appreciation for my easy ability to handle it, and for the harried waitress able to hold multiple plates at once, and for the cook who’d whipped it up in back. Because it is so easy to take so much for granted—the way that so many of us inevitably took Flagstaff musician and fellow Letter from Home wrangler Tony Norris for granted up until just over a week ago, trusting that his agile fingers on the guitar strings would always be there to accompany his silky voice on another humorous or heartfelt or ridiculous song about love or longing or just living. I can’t think of anyone who has done more over these many years to confer a sense of home on so many here in Flagstaff. And then we all heard that he had a close call and that we almost lost those hands and, more important, the heart whose conduit is those hands, and that sweet voice, and his booming spirit. He’s in the hospital now, beginning a long road of healing for which we all wish him speed and a straight course.
Sure, every season is a time for work, for handily translating the ongoing ferment of the mind into gardens or art or tightly fretted stories. But every now and then we realize down deep inside that whatever heart and soul we contain do inhabit very physical bodies. Let’s celebrate them, and celebrate how giving each other a hand is central to being human.
