My hands are growing older. I have always had smooth hands, soft hands. Lately, I have noticed that my skin is getting drier. The landscape of my hands, the lines in the skin, are growing more visible. Is it my imagination or are my knuckles growing larger, more pronounced? My new, older hands remind me of my grandmothers.

I feel like they should remind me of my mother, but they do not. Her hand are quite soft for a woman in her late fifties, the skin growing crepe-y, but not drying. I do not see the knuckles and the lines in her hands like I see developing in mine. Instead of mom, when I look at my hands, I see my one grandmother shuffling cards and my other grandmother holding a crochet hook.

I look in the mirror, and I see traces of the face of the girl I was in my teens. I look at my hands and I see signs of the woman I will be in my sixties.