Small Hands

My hands were clumsy as a kid. This sounds normal since children in general don’t have the best dexterity. In the third grade I had trouble cutting out a circle for crafting assignment. My teacher decided to help me since I was behind all the other children. I can still remember the sound of the scissors making a loud ‘swip’ in midst of the loud classroom. Her speed and fluidity amazed me and I went home thinking about it like the simpleton I was.

My mom spent a lot of time with me as a child, much to my genuine enjoyment. One thing we liked to do was pass around notes to each other. I remember making my little cousin deliver scraps of paper with crudely written “I love you’s” on them. My mom humored me and would send back carefully written notes that had all the evidence of a sophisticated woman. The harmony of her cursive was not loud or exaggerated. Her legibility, composed with the balanced of her loops, was what made it so beautiful. To me, this was the handwriting of a respected woman; a woman that I had one day wanted to be.

In my mind, I always thought, ‘oh, I will write like that when I am an adult’. I gathered that one day I would wake up a grown woman and be able to write as beautifully as my mother and that everything will just fall in place. I often compared my hands to that of other girl’s around me. Even when their’s were more slender than mine, I always thought, ‘I’ll get there when I grow up.’

I am sitting outside when my coworker looks at my hands. He comments that I actually have very large hands for my height. We take time to compare my hands to several of the girls in our group and find out that my hands are in fact, the biggest. Working at Zipangu, I was unable to carry as many plates as the others girls and have also dropped the most dishes. Despite working there for two years, I still couldn’t hold two glasses in one hand. While my coworkers, with hands much smaller than mine, were able to carry this task out with ease.

It’s a month into dating my boyfriend when I realize our hands are about the same size. My hands are long, but my fingers aren’t all that slender. I think about this when I am cupping his cheek. Although he is smiling warmly at me, I cannot help but think that these are not the hands of a woman. They are too awkward and big, much like a gorilla’s.

There should be a sense of comfort when I‘m drawing. After all, this is my life’s passion. Most of my work is line-based so it involves a lot of stroke and control. I feel like I am getting better, yet there is a sense of dissatisfaction that my strokes are never as I want it to be and try as I might, the end product will never exceed my expectations. That should be normal for an artist, as drawing is fucking hard, but I can’t help but think about how I might have more control if my hands were just a little bit smaller.

My natural handwriting is to write everything in all capital letters. This year, however, I’ve taken up a daily journal and decided to write everything in cursive. I think that mastering cursive will somehow help improve my art. In reality, it’s just brought back those insecurities that I have yet to grow into my own hands. My messy handwriting stares back at me in a mocking reminder that I am not who I dreamt I would be. Will my kids look at my handwriting with the same fondness as I did with my mother’s? Am I a woman my kids will be proud of? Am I someone who deserves respect?

“This is why I can’t look at you as a woman,” he said once while holding up my ink-stained hands. The next day I came into work with neatly painted nails. He laughed that I took him so seriously. “You’re still a kid.”