Terri Kirby Erickson

Draped in towels, my grandmother sits in a hard-backed chair, a white bowl of soapy water on the floor. She lifts her frail arm, then rests it, gratefully, in her daughter’s palm. Gliding a wet washcloth, my mother’s hand becomes a cloud, and every bruise, a rain- drenched flower.

My cousin, Milton, worked for a cable company. The boy I knew when we were children had fists that were often clenched, his face set like an old man whose life had been so hard, it hardened him. But the man's hands opened to let more of the world in. He sent the funniest cards to family and friends at Christmas, laid down cable so others could connect. Yet, he lived alone, kept to himself much of the time, so when his sister found his body, he'd been gone a good while. He died young at fifty-seven, without fuss or bother. No sitting by the bedside or feeding him soup. He just laid himself down like a trunk line and let the signal pass through.

She could be a Norman Rockwell painting, the small girl on my front porch with her eager face, her wind-burned cheeks red as cherries. Her father waits by the curb, ready to rescue his child should danger threaten, his shadow reaching halfway across the yard. I take the booklet from the girl's outstretched hand, peruse the color photos of candy bars and caramel-coated popcorn, pretend to read it. I have no use for what she's selling, but I can count the freckles on her nose, the scars like fat worms on knobby knees that ought to be covered on a cold day like this, when the wind is blowing and the trees are losing their grip on the last of their leaves.I'll take two of these and one of those, I say, pointing, thinking I won't eat them, but I probably will. It's worth the coming calories to see her joy, how hard she works to spell my name right, taking down my information. Then she turns and gives a thumbs-up sign to her father, who grins like an outfielder to whom the ball has finally come—his heart like a glove, opening.