your hands will tell you...

I look at my hands. Snarled up, scarred, callouses. Fingernails short by necessity, cuticles often stained purple with Cristol from treating one alpaca, or red from iodine after sterilizing the cord of a newborn cria. I like what I see. They are hardworking hands. Hands that while are not trained for a vet, do see their share of healing animals, delivering babies, reaching far into the dam if need be to untwist a baby's long neck or guide it down the birth canal. Hands that learned to run new equipment, shaking a little sometimes because the machine's power occasionally scares me. Hands that hold a rake, a pitchfork, that carry newborns into the green pasture to learn to stand and reach for mama's milk. I have rancher's hands.
Hands that reach for my husband's face as he makes me laugh day after day.
Hands that once, sometimes, were soft, nails long and painted, work of a different kind allowing for such cosmetic graces.
I think this way today, because I am blessed to have had so many opportunities in my life.
From waitress and chambermaid when I was young, waitress when I was older too, to landscaper, then journalist, writer, youth worker, photographer, ski tuner, running the deli at the Banff School of Fine Arts (what a way to be 17 that was!) grocery store clerk, and once, for a short two weeks, a door to door encyclopedia salesman. I never sold a single set. I was very bad at that job!
So many things, such variety. And still so many things to try! For now, ranching suits me though. I like this calling.
I do not think I am at all unique this way. You, reading this now, have surely had such variety in your life. Your hands tell stories, create them, mold them. As surely mine have.
Tell me your stories.... what one, what job or experience, or moment in general, do you hold in your hands?
I await with bated breath...