My mom's hands

Sometimes I look down at my hands and see my moms. Its strange and comforting. Her hands are so deeply familiar. I have watched them knead dough, cut out paper dolls, turn pages, hold a pen, shuffle scrabble letters, feed the hungry, clothe the poor, stear a car, take a whack with a wooden spoon, and effortlessly pack a family of six and a weeks worth of stuff into a station wagon. We dont look at all alike. In fact we are nothing alike. She has dark straight hair and mine is untamable. She's entirely pragmatic and I'm entirely romantic. We can not recognize anything of ourselves in the other and have sufficiently wounded eachother in trying. But I have her hands and I am thankful. Our hands move quickly and efficiently and I look down and I know that I am a daughter. I love my mom's hands.