The story of Wing Biddlebaum is a story of hands. Their restless activity, like unto the beating of the wings of a restless bird, had given him his name. Some obscure poet of the town had thought of it. The hands alarmed their owner. He wanted to keep them hidden away and looked with amazement at the quiet inexpressive hands of other men who worked beside him in the fields, or passed, driving sleepy teams on country roads.

So writes American author, Sherwood Anderson, in his story “Hands” from Winesburg, Ohio. And aren’t all of our stories ultimately the stories of hands? Hands that enfold infant hands–small, powdery snails, curled into sleeping fists–hands that tuck rogue wisps of hair back into place, hands that clasp in prayer and applause, hands that tease life back into the lifeless, hands that find their rightful places in other hands, and hands, like Wing Biddlebaum’s, that beat the air into meaningful space.

Anderson continues by writing:  

The story of Wing Biddlebaum’s hands is worth a book in itself. Sympathetically set forth it would tap many strange, beautiful qualities in obscure men. It is a job for a poet. 

Wing’s restless hands had picked as high as a hundred and forty quarts of strawberries in a day. But best of all–and tragically misunderstood by most–his hands encouraged, affirmed, cared for, and loved his students.

Having been dismissed from his teaching post, Wing lives in relative seclusion, willing his hands to quiet obscurity. Anderson ultimately leaves us with a final, powerful scene:

Lighting a lamp, Wing Biddlebaum washed the few dishes soiled by his simple meal, and setting up a folding cot by the screen door that led to the porch, prepared to undress for the night. A few stray white bread crumbs lay on the cleanly washed floor by the table; putting the lamp upon a low stool he began to pick up the crumbs, carrying them to his mouth with unbelievable rapidity. In the dense blotch of light below the table, the kneeling figure looked like a priest engaged in some service of his church. The nervous expressive fingers, flashing in and out of the light, might well have been mistaken for the fingers of the devotee going swiftly through decade after decade of his rosary. 

Biddlebaum is much like John Updike’s Flick Webb, an ex-basketball- player-turned-gas-station-attendant, a man whose hands are fine and nervous on the lug wrench. It makes no difference to the lug wrench though. Such exquisite, expressive hands fighting to survive in a world of strawberry-picking and tire-changing! Hands that may have been mistaken for those of a devotee going swiftly through decade after decade of his rosary and yet they were spurned, dismissed, bound by circumstances and misunderstanding.

In the sanctuary of hands, we would urge such fine hands from their greasy overall pockets, sing to them the words of affirmation, long forgotten, long silenced. We would watch them fly into the expression of their yearning.

And those hands that are not fine and nervous on the lug wrench, hands that become natural extensions of the tools they hold? In the sanctuary of hands, we celebrate them, too: hands that patiently bait hooks for children who cast recklessly into the wind, hands that darn socks and knead dough, hands that throw perfect spiral passes, hands that hammer, cut, and plane. The stories of such hands are also worth books in themselves.

When words fail us, hands seldom do. Instinctively, they move, their muscle-memory too strong, too resilient to remain pocketed.

I have watched the hands of the hospice workers who have visited my father in the last days. Daily, these hands have sustained us. All of us. They have taken vitals, bathed, bandaged, cleaned, and held our grieving hands until they could stop shaking. It is clearly the job of poets to write about these hands. For they are the hands of the devotees moving assuredly through decade after decade of our rosaries.