Hands

It was May 5th, 2006.  I was making a trip into Target faster than was humanly possible since I was running late as usual and on the hunt for something that could substitute the cooler I had promised to bring but then forgot to borrow from my parents since I didn't actually own one myself.  Luckily it was in the days when they still sold picnic baskets that you didn't have to order online for a million dollars that came with more stuff in them than you need.  I grabbed the picnic basket and rushed down the interstate.  We had a date.  An all-day, two-part date.  After I pulled the tags off of the picnic basket and hid them in my car so he wouldn't know I'd just gotten it on the way here, we filled it and headed to a park in the Twin Cities, one that shall remain nameless because I can't remember.  I don't know if I even listed when he told me what lake it was.  I was too busy focusing on my hands.  We'd been friends/"dating" for seven months now; seven months exactly this day in fact.  We'd already said "I love you."  But as we walked around the really nice (nameless) park on a really beautiful day, talking, laughing and enjoying everything, I decided I was ready!  It was time.  Time to hold hands!  But I didn't know if he felt the same (and you can't just ask that sort of thing, not when you've only been dating seven months).  I didn't want to seem needy or girlie or anything.  So instead, I devised a plan: maybe if I just walked with my hands at my sides instead of in my pockets where I usually keep them when I'm walking, swinging them ever-so-slightly, but not so far or fast that they'd be unpredictable, so he could find one if he wanted, and ours might "accidentally" bump into each other... Yeah, that would get him to take my hand.  What?  What did he just say?  No idea (but my hands are still nicely at my side in between he and the rest of my body with the perfect proportion of angle and velocity).  Just smile and nod, act like you heard him.  Laugh at the people playing volleyball and the kids on the slides.  Enjoy the picnic.  Don't fold your arms in front of you while sitting under the tree to eat and watch, even if you are really chilly with the breeze off the lake and the shade of the tree.  Burrr...don't give in, keep your hands accessible.  Ooo, he bumped it!  Nope, never mind.  Part one of the date is done, still no hand-holding.  Sigh.  Oh well; on to part two of the date.

We went back to his apartment, changed into dress clothes - he in a nice dark purple dress shirt that somehow made his dark eyes seem lighter and darker all at the same time, and me in the skirt I bought for $2 at the Mission Shop (before it would close three months later) with a sweater that I hoped wouldn't make me too hot on this unusually warm day so I wouldn't sweat too much and stink for our evening out.  And we headed off to the Guthrie for a Shakespeare play that he told me on Valentines Day he had tickets to, but assured me it wasn't a Valentine's present because we don't believe in that commercialism romance bologna.  Then we were there, in the theatre, and the lights were dimming.  Time to activate my new plan: maybe if we shared an armrest while watching this "romantic" play (being betrayed by your friends after your uncle murders your father and marries your mother and frames you for the death of the woman you love but forced into nun-hood while you were acting insane to trap your uncle before you all die is romantic, right?), the close proximity and mood would help.  Nope.  Act 1 over, intermission, Act 2, try again, nothing, I give up! 

I couldn't do it anymore.  I was paying little attention to the play, a play he'd spent good money on and had been waiting to take me to for three months, because I was obsessing too much about my hand-holding-seduction strategies.  And it wasn't even working.  Time to give up, Kateri.  I shifted my focus back up to the stage and began moving my arm off the arm-rest and back to its usual resting place on my lap, and suddenly someone was grabbing my hand and pulling it back to the armrest.  Oh, thank GOD (because I didn't actually want to give up but was running out of plans)!  And thank GOD it's dark in here, because my face is beet red!!! :)  I stared at the stage with new-found concentration after that, not so because of my interest in Hamlet, but because I was too embarrassed to look at the man next to me, holding my hand.  But that doesn't mean my mind wasn't still on, and smiling about, the success of my hand-holding plots! 

- - -

That was the first time Mike and I held hands.  We've done it a LOT since then:  On our walk to the car that night (when our fingers actually interlocked, though I'm not sure that was intentional).  As we walked through the Falls Park in Sioux Falls a month later when I went home with him for the first time to meet his whole family.  Through the baggage claim area and parking ramp when he picked me up from the airport after my Kenya trip later that summer.  While sitting in the dark balcony of St. John's Abbey the next summer when I gave him my ring and asked him to propose to me someday (before we got locked in the church, and while walking quickly away after we finally got out).  While hiking around Itasca State Park a month after that where I thought he was going to propose (but didn't...which was worse than the anticipation of the hands).  While sitting on the couch a week later while calling family and trying to "nonchalantly" invite them over the next day so they'd be there when we made the announcement to everyone that we were engaged!  While our family read Scripture readings we'd picked and a photographer snapped a zillion pictures of us on our wedding day.  In the doctor's office where we found out we'd lost our first baby, and again when we thought we'd lost our second but got to see that he was in fact still perfectly healthy and made the most beautiful black waves on the screen.  On the car rides home each night while our kids jabber away like crazy in the backseat and we whisper to each other 'did you teach him that?' because they're amazing us again with things we didn't know they knew.  And for the ever-so-brief moments in church when we're not both busy wrangling squirmy, loud, hitting or escaping toddlers who have no desire to commune with either GOD or their family while there despite our desperate desire to do so for just a few minutes of calm prayer and hand-holding.  Sometimes we even fall asleep holding hands.  

I love holding my husband's hand, and have since that first day!  It was worth waiting for :)  

- - - 

Below is a poem and note I wrote in my journal shortly after that May 5th date seven years ago.  This weekend marks Mike and I's 5-year wedding anniversary, and I still mean every word of it.  

"Hands"
There's something special about our hands
They're a part of our body
the part that can most easily be shared,
for good or bad, it's what touches our body to others
They are a symbol of offering our physical-self.  

There's something special about our hands
They're a part of our life
the part that does our work,
that represents our careers, callings, livelihoods
They are a symbol of offering our vocational-self.

There's something special about our hands
They're a part of our faith
the part that serves our neighbors,
in labor, healing, prayer they reach out
They are a symbol of offering our servant-self.

There's something special about our hands
They're a part of our community
the part that shows what being relational is
that drops the sword, embraces the other and holds on tight
They are a symbol of our GOD-like self.

There's something special about our hands
They're a part of our love
the part that speaks louder than words
that says I offer you my body, my livelihood, my servitude, my community,
And when I hold your hand I hope you know that it is a symbol of my offering my self to you.

(Thank you for taking my hand Mike.  I love you and pray that each and every time I hold your hand that you will know how much!)  

Happy Anniversary Mike!  I love you, and thank you for being the one to hold my hand through life's joys and challenges these past five years!