hands.

when i was in medical school, my favorite class was gross anatomy. i was so excited about it before it began.

there were four of us. four to one. we had a man. he was older. and i think he died from heart disease. i remember this because when we got to his heart, it was probably the size of...well, if you put four of my fists together, that would be his heart. and your heart is supposed to be the size of one fist...i think. (this is how much i remember from medical school...there has been lots and lots of repression :)

gross is something that everyone should take. must take. it should be a class offered in life. seriously. you would walk away from it taking your body more seriously. i think we'd stop drinking. stop overeating. stop smoking. etc.

and i know that people would argue with this...but i'm not sure how you see the workings of a human body without being convinced of God. and of something so much greater than me or you. or the big bang for that matter.

i remember our cadaver's hands.

at first, they were covered. we didn't unwrap them until later. i handled the arms well. the back. the stomach. all of it really. even the face. because i knew that it wasn't really his face. i knew that when he was alive...he looked different.

but something about his hands. i knew they looked exactly the same. i wondered where they had worked. what they had held. what they touched. who they comforted.

and that was hard for me.

my grandmother had alzheimers. it was my dad's mom. i remember very little of her. of any of my grandparents for that matter. they died when i was young. what i remember of them...they are strong, vivid memories. maybe because that's all i've got.

but granny, she was sick for a while. of course, she got worse over the years. but i remember one incident when we were in the back seat of the car together. i don't know where we were going, but she was on my right. she was holding my small hands in hers. and she leaned over so no one in the front could hear. and she gave me her ring. she put it on my finger and told me to keep it, and not tell anyone that she had given it to me.

i don't think i ever looked up at her. i continued staring at her hands. i'm not sure if it was because i was nervous, or scared. or what.

her hands looked so much like my dad's hands. the knuckles. something about them.

and as trite as it sounds, hands really are so revealing. they do so much. they see so much. it's like that kleenex commercial, where at the end, she finally stops touching everything and says, "feel". i dunno...

anyway, last night pratt was asleep. and i was leaning over him watching him sleep. and his little hands were up above his head, all balled up into fists. i took one of them and unwrapped his fingers.

and i remembered gross. and i remembered my granny. and i realized that those little hands will see and do so much. i wonder where they will work. i wonder who they will comfort. i wonder what he will feel, what he will experience. i wonder about it all.

my hope is that they will change the world. yeah, it's a lofty goal. but as paul lowe said at our high school graduation, "shoot for the moon. even if you miss, you will land among the stars."