Tita's Hands

I begin in the words of Marilou Awiakta: 

“I offer you something so small

my thumb and forefinger almost cover it…

It’s ...more personal than poetry,

more ancient than words.

When you hold out your hand, I lay a deep red corn seed in your palm.

Seven thousand years of concentrated energy emanate from the seed…

Communications transpire

in the split second when

the red kernel and the tip of my finger touch your skin.

Energy to energy, life to life

create a spark.

And we make a quantum leap out of linear time..." (Selu, 18-19)

"Finally I know you            writes Margaret Atwood

through your daughters,

my mother, her sisters,

and through myself"

“I wish I had more to tell of my grandmothers. It is terrible how much has been forgotten, which is why, I suppose, remembering seems a holy thing”     (The Red Tent, Anita Diamant 1-3).

                                                                               

You are sinking down into

your own veins, fingers

folding back into the hand….”

(“Five Poems for Grandmothers,” Margaret Atwood “iii” lines 1-2, 33-36; “v” lines 1-6)

My own hand unfolds stories and folds them back into the hand of my grandmother, my Tita. My hands are the hands of my mother, of her mother’s and hers. I search for our stories we share in the texture of my hand, the terrain of my veins, crossroads of creases, lifelines. I want to know first-hand the texture of the soil in Lebanon, my mother’s mother’s Lebanon, Tita’s Lebanon, where she lived in the mountains, in a village named Aito, where she tended the handwork daily, until the day she was obligated to join her hand to another, in marriage arranged at age sixteen. That day, she left the only soil she’d ever known and came to America, where when she spoke, her hands faltered in the dance of new soils/new language as syllables crumbled like clay on her tongue.

I share these stories through my third-hand knowledge. I do not know Tita’s story of the day she first touched American soil, but I have held and studied my Tita’s hands and my mother’s hands like Tita’s have held and studied mine; and my hands, like my mother’s and hers, have held and studied the hands of my daughter. And like a seed held between thumb and forefinger, passed palm to palm and planted in soil, stories flourish and nourish.  From the energy of potential held in the single kernel, stories live in the lines of the hand, grow in the soil of palms, are tasted by the tongues in the telling.

Slowly, I’m coming to know my hands as my native tongue.

Every palm is a poem

palm poem

the lines of a palm~ the lines of a poem

lines of a lifetime, lyrical in length,

enjambed, endstopped, caesuraed,

randomly rhymed,

patterned by time and

tongue-tips, fingertips

massaging inscriptions

articulating wrinkled pathways.

we poem palms and we palm poems

unfolding, holding

hearts of breathing hands

enfleshing parchment, parchment

enfleshed, palmed, poemed

According to family legend, hundreds of years ago, three brothers came upon Aito, Lebanon, and settled. Their names were Sleiman, Bshara, and Younes. They dug terraces in the limestone mountain and carried up soil from below to plant their food. This tradition was extended generation by generation for centuries. Terraces eventually wrapped and contoured the mountain, and trees generated a fiber silk that the women would spin and sell.

The mountainside of Aito is a rugged maze of limestone terraces and grey-green foliage of olive and apple trees, stone architecture with rooftops the color of pink sunsets looking out over the Mediterranean Sea.  Several hundred people live in Aitoo today, and thousands of descendants of Aito—including me-- were born in Peoria, Illinois—and many more in Venezuela and Australia--where many Lebanese from Aito settled.

The bare sole of the foot touches the soul of the soil, and spirit of connection infuses through the sole, is the soul, and in this soul recognition between the earth body and human body, connection soul-idifies.

When Tita left Aito at age 16 to be married, she didn’t know she’d never see her mother again. But Tita’s mother died before Tita was ever able to return to Lebanon. ‘Goodbye’ was a whisper that rolled off her tongue like a tear, falling into the ocean between two soils.

I cannot know my grandmothers’ grandmothers’ family lines except through their fathers’ names. But, I’ve come to know my grandmothers store and story their lines in the palms of their hands like a seed. 

Perhaps it is why we say sole of foot, but we don’t say sole of hand; we say palm.

We say palms of hands:

hands’ palms are a psalm, a song, a story shared.

I follow lines of palms of hands on the family tree in order to find my roots.

In Aito soil, Tita grew apricot and apple trees. In Illinois soil, Tita grew apricot and apple trees. I remember very specifically the apple tree. Tita gathered apples, dull baby yellow with black bug holes, from the tree outside her back steps, rolled them onto the kitchen table and sat with her knife in her right hand, peeled spiraling skins, offered me unblemished flesh. My own hands gathered bundles of mint and parsley from her backyard garden, and grapeleaves from her own vine and vines in the woods with my cousin while Tita pounded meat for kibbee and the burghol soaked.

I watched her hands drape sheets of handrolled phyllo dough, stretched thin as tissue membrane. I watched her stirring and stirring homemade yogurt, laban, at the stove, knowing when she dipped her pinky in the milky foam and could count to ten, she would mix the old laban with the new to begin a next generation. 

I watched her hands mashing garlic in mortar with pestle, tossing in cinnamon, measuring pepper in palms, squeezing lemons’ last drops, her hands shiny with oil disappearing into the bowl, reemerging with a bouquet of endive greens dripping in lemon and oil blooming between thumb and forefingers feeding me, her fingers to my mouth, an offering of communion. My tongue recognizes home.  

Perfect, I think, savoring with my eyes closed. Then she feeds herself and says with her mouth full, “Needs more lemon.” 

Here in Tita’s kitchen, my mother’s kitchen, my own kitchen, I taste the smells of spices simmering, and the soil of Lebanon reaches my tongue as Tita holds the language of her Lebanon in the articulation of her hands. I watched her hands dance her stories as I watched her hands mix spiced rice and raw meat and roll the mixture into grape leaves, deftly, hands busy talking, and in this way Tita’s hands and my hands shared a native tongue. Around the table, all of us, Tita, Didi, Mimi, Terry, Rosie, Angie, Monica, Katie, Tina, all of us, cousins, sisters, aunts, talking with our hands, hands as tongues, as tools, terracing a history, rolling our stories into the future, into the grapeleaves, a culinary creation sustaining a heritage through a dance of soil, hand, and tongue, a cauldron of hands holding energy, expressing shape, stirring and feeding the stories, coring koosa, sealing shish barak, talking always talking, “Georgette’s pregnant,” folding spinach pies, chopping parsley, “Najeebe’s getting married” mashing garlic, squeezing lemon, “Bahkos is coming over from the Old Country,” mixing hummus, layering baklava, “Houllia’s been diagnosed with diabetes,” arranging kibbee, garnishing eggplant, stitching tripe, pinching tabbouli between flat bread, “Rizk has died.” 

Food in hands and mouth, hands as tools for sharing, food as tools for celebration, food as tools for gossip, planning; hands as tools honoring birth and death.  “This is the procession of old leathery mothers," writes Margaret Atwood, "mothers like worn gloves wrinkled to the shapes of their lives,

passing the work from hand to hand, mother to daughter, a long thread of red blood, not yet broken”

(“A Red Shirt”).

In my yard, a grapevine is growing.

The grapevine stems from a start from the grapevine of my mother’s yard.

Her grapevine stems as a start from the grapevine of her mother’s.

Tita’s grapevine stems from Lebanon.

Generations entwine, connect, reconnect time.

I plant apple trees in my yard and think of Tita.

Tita’s limestone mountains of Northern Lebanon

are my sandstone cliffs of Southern Illinois

Tita’s chalky soil is my wet clay.

our hands share the knowledge of soil alchemy,

our roots palm moist, rich soil.

Tita dug a hole and buried a language and a mother with her tongue.

I dig a hole and cover the transplanted roots with my palms of hands.

These roots, too, will make a home here.

These hands, too, root me to earth.

I thrust my hands, my roots, my tongue into the soil,

and lines of my palms,

terrain of my veins,

backs of my hands

disappear

boundaries explode into trees,

a terrain of veins and valleys

a maze of terraced limestone

Hands are my eyes

I feel my way through worlds

storying palm poems

--Diana Tigerlily