Clark Girls

I’ve always loved Ga-Ga’s hand’s. Her nails. Her petite, thin fingers. Her rings.

When I was a little girl, I used to curl up on Ga-Ga’s lap, hold her hands and say, “Ga-Ga? When you die, will you leave me all your rings?”

I wasn’t concerned with the material value. At least…at least I hope I wasn’t. Yeah. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t. I just always connected Ga-Ga’s rings to her fingers…which were connected to her hands…which always held and patted and hugged me and gave me baths in her kitchen sink (not after I graduated from high school, though. I had to grow up sometime.) Her hands fixed me sliced peaches in parfait glasses and squirted Reddi-Whip all over the top, and they turned the TV channel to Mary Tyler Moore and Bob Newhart. And they rubbed Vicks Vapor Rub on my neck and chest if I ever so much as cleared my throat.

And that’s why I always wanted to make sure she planned to leave me her rings. Because then I’d always have a part of her with me. Because even as a little girl I knew I could never, ever imagine life without her.

So when Ga-Ga came over to my house Saturday afternoon and rested her beautiful hands on a chair in the kitchen, I made a point of capturing them with my camera.

“I love your hands, Ga-Ga,” I said.

She looked at her hands and laughed quietly. “Do you know why my hands look like this?” she asked me.

“Arthur Itis?” I asked. It’s the kind of joke only the daughter of an orthopedic surgeon appreciates.

“No,” Ga-Ga answered. “It’s because I’ve been down many a road in my life. And not all of them were paved.”

Then I laughed. Then I hugged her.

I couldn’t possibly love a person more.