Born so small my first touch my first first feeling of warmth, wet sensation heat cold, pain. Feeling my silk blue baby covers, the wood on my cot. my face features, to grip my first toy made of wood.

Touching feeling remembering what not to touch, the old carpet the cat dog. It’s cold nose the tail as it bit my hand feeling it’s teeth. Touching the wet warm red liquid oozing from my skin.

The feeling of my food as it squashed between my fingers, my tongue licks feeling warm. Plastic for the first time the kitchen table with scratches some deep some long, like Brail my small brain recording it’s sensation.

The door handle as I raise for the first time in my legs to open the door, grain I feel in the solid wood door. The old worn carpet as my hands take me up the stairs to my bare bedroom. Touch of the pot water bottle.

My bike handles, the gravel as I fall off my hands hitting first in printed with grey gravel, the first sting if pain as my mum rubs TCP into the cuts neat.

My first ice cream the feeling as it mealts and runs down my palm. The first tree bark grain so old I feel the age and don’t know it will play a big part in my life as I get older.

The old Suitcase as I walk to the railway station the first bench cold to the touch. The army sheets made of thick wool metal spring’s the Rifle Handle, my polish as it circles time after time for 22 years getting a shine to be proud of.

Grass, bullets, helicopter, plane, tank, boat, land rover handles are adding to my touch memory. First palm tree bark, first falcon I touch feathers so soft, baby bird I hold

My Daughter as she sits in the palm of my hand, the hand I walk away with to our wedding music. The Rope as I absail 200 feet up from the Helicopter.

The feelings through my hands have given me so much pleasures, they were soft and small white no marks.

There now bigger with lines all telling a story of my touch history, the are a different colour, a ring sits on my finger.

There touch the buttons I know so well as they know when to get the image, they cut feel for the light switch in the dark, they can assemble a Gun in the Dark. Feelings passed through them over 64 years still operating from the moment I rub my eyes when I wake up to pulling the covers over me as I go to sleep

There learning to Weave coloured 4 mm cord into Beautiful items, they touch the metal if the Harmonica as they hold it just right to play a song.    

There marked now from Knife cuts some deep, they hold wood the Bark I touched all those years ago sits in my palm, different textures, different grain, colours rough and smooth.

They hold the wood for me as I make another Owl, Robin,Wren, Nuthatch, Woodpecker, a Hedgehog or Christmas gift.

The handle of the chisel as it cuts another feather detail my sandpaper smoothing out the wood carver’s cuts. Holding it as it’s finished feeling the love inside a thing of beauty all made by my Hands.

Thank you Hands for giving me so much pleasure not just to me but to other people, your typing this to tell the world of your adventures.

My Hands