I attended the RubberBand Dance Group performance at the Power Center in Ann Arbor on Friday January 9. I enjoyed the choreography, the staging, the mixture of video and music and dance, and the play of the dancers and choreography with the audience. I had a great evening, and I came away energized.
I wanted to write about a particular moment during the piece Hasta La Proxima, Choreographer and Dancer Victor Quijada led the audience through a kind of contemplation via video projection. In it, after asking us all to breathe deeply and look out at the world with softly focused eyes, he asked the audience to look at our own hands and asked what we thought when we looked at them. He said something poetic about the people he’s loved, and those he has hurt.
I had such a clear thought when I looked at my hands, that I knew I had to write it.
I have my mother’s hands. I realize I am a mixture of my mother’s and my father’s DNA, but it appears as if I got some pieces whole and unsullied by the other parent. In the case of hands and feet, I got mine directly from my mother. We both have long fingers and a big knob at the wrist. I recognize the veins on the back of my hands in hers. Years after their divorce, my father once gasped when he saw my bare foot. “You have your mother’s foot” he said.
When I look at my hands, I see my mother’s hands. When I look at my hands, I see love.
When you look at YOUR hands, what do YOU see?
I gasped in delight when I read this. You see love in my/your hands. It flows both ways. I felt this, too, with my father, whose hands were masculine but with long tapering fingers. I remember how gentle and loving his hands could be, and the memory obliterates any bad memories I have of him. I will never forget the joy I took from the last time I touched his hands, a moment after he died. Thank you for telling me this while I’m still very much alive!