Letter from Dublin. Washing hands (Ordinary Things)

By Pantelis Goularas

     Common things, daily things. Things I use to do every day. The daily morning hygiene. What made me decide, when washing my hands, start to examine them? Staring at them like I never see them before. Like I see them for first time, today. Like they were not my useful tools, all this time till now. Strange things.

     When did all these veins appear on the back of the hands? Swelling distinctively on each hand, with a little green, a little blue color. On my left hand they are like a real whole tree. With the tree trunk, that covers till the middle of the hand and the branches, branching out, right and left and each of them, separately, form each particular finger. On my right hand the veins are different and they are not so simple like the left ones. They are like a bush with complex branches. I don't know from where they start and where they end. But, one thing is absolutely sure. For a total of sixty two years they continue to transfer my blood from the fingers to the heart, participating this way, in the miracle of life.

(From the pathfinder.gr)

     My skin, dug now, has lost its youth. I pinch it a little. It becomes red for a while, but it returns to the regular situation very fast. Good sign. It doesn't lose its ability of coming back fast.

     My fingers. Tireless workers of my everyday life. Eighteen years in the different level school desks, holding a pen... Thirty years in the office, sometimes holding a pen, sometimes typing on a typewriter and the last twenty years in front of a computer... My fingers brought always their job to an end without complaining. OK. Sometimes they get tired, but a few minutes relaxing and maybe a caress, were enough to make them continue their work.

     The scar on the right hand thumb is still obvious. Memories! When we were kids, we used to play with my brother, the gladiators or the knights, using our “dreadful” and “frightful” wooden swords. And then, a clumsy move of my competitor and an equal clumsy repulse from me, gave me a deep cut on my finger. I had to show bravery, otherwise what kind of knight do I wanted to be? Neither hospital, nor stitches. And the scar, eternal memory of the childhood.

     The white clouds don't appear on my nails anymore. My late mother used to call them lambs. We used to count them, one by one. Proud of the boy who had the most. Getting older we've discovered the common truth. It was a matter of the lack of calcium.

     I'm looking at my palms. I follow one by one the lines on them. People say that there are lines of life, of learning, of family, of health, of wealth. Sometimes, when we were kids, Traveler Women (Gypsies), passing through our neighborhoods, they said they had the ability to “read” the palm and to know our fate (the fortune tellers). There was a characteristic phrase: “Give me silver to tell you your fate”. Because without silver, money in other words, there is no destiny. And like this finally, we've created our destiny, ourselves, without the need of a Traveler Woman to read our palms.

Note: This is an exercise story, in the frame of the Creative Writing Class - Dun Laoghaire Further Education Institute. At first it was written in Greek and then in English, not as the translation but as a new story from the beginning.

Note 2: Traveler = Gypsy (in Ireland)