Your Eyes Through Mine

I love how my mother's soft hands with the one gold ring feel on my face. I can recall the pencil dent on G's forefinger during exam time. My sister's hands always feel like fresh Play-Doh because she washes them 20 times/day. From the time I practised hand examination, branded in my memory are the calluses on my friend's hand, a gift for being a lover of bouldering. I can smell the spices on my grandmother's hand, and I can conjure in a second, Helena's perfect nails on her graceful hand.

His large hands felt soft and sturdy as they wrapped around mine. I'd kneel down and take his hands at least a few times a week. I realised I didn't have very long with him and I wanted to memorise the way his hand felt in mine. Nobody knows about this, not until now.

Now, more than a decade since his passing, I've acquired the ability to recall with excruciating detail the way people's hands feel in mine. I memorise the feeling when I hold or touch anyone's hands. I do it automatically, without thinking.

My grandfather had Progressive Supranuclear Palsy, which is similar to the well-known Parkinson's. The first symptom everyone noticed was when I was a baby, and he was holding me in his arms. He dropped me in a tub of water as he fell. At first, he lost his balance occasionally. Eventually, he couldn't walk without support, and couldn't write legibly. Disease colluded with time to take his ability to speak.

Towards the end, he sat in the living room, all through the day until my grandmother helped him into bed. We all lost him so slowly that the loss wasn't apparent until we pause to remember who he used to be. I'd sit holding his hands, wondering how he is imprisoned in his own mind, how he is the only audience member witnessing my family, trying to fill in the blanks in all our stories as we exit the stage that is the living room.

Enter stage.

Act 2 Scene 12

My mother who was always the wild one in the family, became the best decision of my father's life. My father never shadows her light. Whilst her pride encircles her head like a tiara, maybe she wonders about life where she never had it. Maybe that is why she relinquishes the tiara through every meaningless compliment and every thoughtful gesture she bestows upon people who don't deserve it. The darling girl of the house, who only resigned the title following the birth of her darling girl.

That would be me. I wore a long skirt and a mismatched top and smuggled books from the shelf in the living room to the toilet, to read in peace. My mother always finds out, and reminds me of the book ban, which was nothing but a pair of defunct shackles.

My sister was a tiny thing with a firecracker for a personality. She sits there with the book that got her into reading- my diary, illegally acquired. She probably watched me and learnt to smuggle. Only this time the skill was used against me.

My grandmother calls for us to eat from the kitchen. She gave my grandfather the greatest gifts of his life. His three children. All three of them, all grown up with their own children now- the oldest, who is sincere, disciplined and has grown up to be everyone's pillar of support. The second is my mother. Then the youngest, who is jolly and makes everyone laugh effortlessly.

I remember as my mother held her father's hand, pleading to bear the NG tube that sat in his nose, as my grandmother injected his only source of nutrition through it. I noticed him nodding slowly, terribly missing the days he came home to eat his wife's delicious food.

In the small town where my grandparents raised them, their identity was their surname. A surname that withheld the respect that my grandfather garnished over the years. They were known, not by their names, but by grandfather's, by his position as a teacher of literature.

So, what is my grandfather's identity now?

"Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter." - Oscar Wilde.

As I watch my family grow up, I realise that my grandfather was the artist, and my family is the art that he spent his life making. If you are ever fortunate enough to know my family, you will know my grandfather better than any words that can be used to describe him.

Exit stage.