A Whirlwind

The look of her hands frightens me. They are peppered with red, pink, and purple wounds, from small cuts to husky burns, stretching from her fingertips to her elbows. Between the wounds flow swollen blue veins and berthed brown aging spots that blight the picture.

“Where? How?” I ask her.

“Gloves tear,” she answers.

As I look at my mother’s fragile, delicate hands, my heart clenches. These very hands swaddled me before diapers became affordable, mashed my food before baby foods were accessible, and washed, and scrubbed, and scraped away the corollaries of my infant state before I learned to take care of myself. These very hands kept me tidy, healthy, and happy, and only now am I really seeing them.

“Try other types of gloves that are stronger and don’t erode.”

“It’s not just that. Liquid gets in anyway. I have to wear medical gloves and then cleaning gloves on top. It’s inconvenient, but I’m adjusting.”

And she knows a lot about adjusting; too much for a fair taste. During Perestroika, with its ceaseless shortages, she had to learn how to exchange milk coupons for a meat coupon, as well as how to get coupons, to keep us fed. After the collapse of the USSR, when the money devalued and savings evaporated, she had to learn how to sew a coat from drapes and a blouse from curtains, so she could dress us. And then, after numerous economic disruptions, she lost her business and had to take an ungrateful job to support us.

And now, she has lost her country. Her simple but meaningful life. She used to work in the office during the day, cook meals for her family in the evenings, and if she had time left, play the piano. On weekends, she couldn’t rest and, like a whirlwind, cleaned, washed, and ironed around the house. She did it all with care and love for her family. Our home was always filled with coziness and comfort. But now, she doesn’t know if she has a home of her own. Two master’s degrees, forty years working as a metallurgical engineer, and her hopes for a peaceful retirement have been flushed down the other people’s toilets she is scrubbing. That’s her present and foreseeable future.

That said, she doesn’t complain. And sometimes, it gets to the point of absurdity.

“Mom, that burn you have is terribly inflamed! Are you doing something about it?”

“I should. But working every day doesn’t give the wounds time to dry. Maybe I should go to the drugstore. But I don’t speak the language and feel like an idiot.”

My anger at myself, at my mother’s circumstances, and at the government of a country with remnants of its former empire eats at me like the chemicals that eat at my mother’s hands. How many more burns, maimed fates, and irreversible hardships will have to occur before justice prevails?

I don’t believe in justice anymore. But I have hope that everything will take a turn for the better. That the wounds, physical and mental, will heal, and that my mom will not judge herself a failure just because in her 60s she had to move to a foreign country and work a degrading job.

I nestle her hands in my palms and kiss them. What thin, delicate skin. It smells of love and kindness even through chlorine and ammonia. It’s astonishing to me how these delicate hands can beat off all the life’s vicissitudes that came in their way, and how, with just a simple touch, they can send so much care and a sense of belonging that an unfair world can be tolerated.

Mom starts crying, and I start the engine of the car.

“Let’s go. We urgently need to buy waterproof Band-Aids and antibacterial cream. And please, if you need anything, just tell me.”

I’ll cry later tonight. And my mom will cry. We’ll feel each other’s pain, but we’ll also know we’re there for each other, in both good and bad times, hand in hand.