her hands

Her dad always thought she had beautiful hands. When she was much younger he enjoyed holding her little hand and looking at those slender fingers—never chubby like you’d expect for a child. Her parents spent a small fortune on years of piano lessons. There were lots of tangible benefits—she learned a bit of discipline. She learned the music clefs and scales. She learned how to memorize and the surge of adrenaline when one’s mind goes blank in the middle of a recital. Her mom and dad came to notice a certain sensitivity in her playing. There would be nights after dinner when they would catch themselves listening to the dynamics she had added to the version of some film score she was perfecting on the piano. Looking back, her dad realized that beyond just listening to the maturation of this young musician, it was seeing her beautiful hands move across the keyboard that gave him the greatest joy. There was just something about those hands.

He had grown up playing the piano and then turning his attention to an instrument with four strings. It came time for her to do the same. She chose the ‘cello. There were years of string music from the living room and cold winter drives across town to lessons. The girl improved rapidly as a ‘cellist. Her mom and dad and her teacher noticed the increasing smoothness in her tone—the natural sensitivity to a musical mood—her innate instincts that drew music from the instrument. One night her dad watched her seated at the front of her section in an orchestra and he remembered the years of playing that had changed his own life in so many ways. Perhaps she was born to be a ‘cellist. Even that night, he realized, it was watching her slender fingers and the way her hand naturally curved across the strings that most enchanted him.
She turned 13, then 14, then 15. Her musical life was ever more digital—compact discs, the iPod, downloads from the iTunes music store. The bands had names her mom and dad didn’t recognize, too many with parental guidance lyric warnings on their CD cases. But there was also the discovery of music from their own youth. Who could have guessed that this tall, beautiful 15-year-old would find herself listening with her mom and dad to the Beatles, U2, Jimi Hendrix, Queen, Aerosmith, Van Halen, Led Zeppelin. They could never quite figure her out. Surrounded by MP3 technology, she longed for a record player and a collection of LPs.

Her fingers learned to dance across the keyboard of her computer, composing instant messages like Mozart might have thrown ink onto music paper while his mind brought life to all the instruments of an orchestra. She could conduct digital conversations with six friends at once, her hands a blur in the dim light of the LCD screen. Her dad never tired of watching those hands.

Then came the guitar. It forged a place in her life as the piano and ‘cello quietly faded to silence. Her dad didn’t see it coming. It wasn’t the classical guitar, but a Fender Stratocaster and the required effects unit. It was spending every waking hour for an entire summer learning every riff she could pick up from John Frusciante and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. The musical passion and curiosity of that summer surpassed what she had given to the years of piano and ‘cello combined. There was something about the world of tabs and power chords and funk patterns that drew her in. She drilled a hole in a Fender guitar pick and wore it as necklace. Her fingers were more beautiful than ever. When her dad had rare chances to hold her hand, he noticed that her fingertips were secretly calloused.

It was during those summer nights that her dad would bring his bass guitar into her bedroom and plug it into her amplifier—sharing the power to rattle the walls with rock music. His own path was like hers. It was, in the end, electric bass guitar that ignited his passions and absorbed his time. One night he plugged in the bass and sat on her chair. She sat on the edge of her bed. Having mastered the guitar licks of her favorite Chili Peppers song, she had learned the bass lines and now taught them to her dad. They worked together as musicians, not as father and daughter. They laughed. He tried new fingerings for the patterns she showed him. Soon they were playing along with the CD on the computer—one song over and over. Her mom slipped into the bedroom to watch. It was an early summer evening—the light growing dim outside. He looked over at his daughter. It was halfway through the song they had learned. As he followed the pattern she had taught him, he watched her face. The joy in her eyes was spilling into an unashamed smile. It was the smile of someone who was doing what they were meant to do. His eyes shifted downward just a few inches and he suddenly understood. There, flickering across the dark wood of the fretboard, gliding with magical aesthetic curves as if they had finally found their true home, were her beautiful fingers.


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