Kukka by Sally Kilgore: Time Stamps

ROCKWALL, TX (July 18, 2025) I am still the age of ten within.

I feel my youth, in a body that is well into the last third of life.

My thoughts are better cultivated now; perspectives developed from years of soaring and sometimes plodding through. My spirit remains a tanned, towheaded sprite leaping from the dock into sparkling waters, or jumping from a garage roof while grasping an umbrella (Mary Poppins.) Later as the cast was being plastered onto my ankle, deciding it was a bad idea.

I’ve lived a life of sun and water, a love of summer at the lake or floating in the pool, watching the clouds and treetops turn above me, tossing grandkids in the air to splash land into cool water, reaching into the soil to plant and nourish the garden. Hours of stripping foliage from flower stems, arranging cut flowers, and using lots of water. Cleaning the garage, toilets, kitchen sinks.

I’m not a pamperer of my hands. Though my mother polished her nails each morning before work, in a lightest pink, manicures are not within my lifestyle. I’d rather buy a pair of vintage prints or a new perennial than spend the bucks to have my nails done. When my hands dry from neglect, or my fingertips crack in the winter, I remember to rub in cream for a night or two.

Cherished gold bands circle ring fingers on both my hands, bestowed on me over the years; some sprinkled with tiny diamonds, each holding their own memories. Wedding rings, circles of diamonds added sometime following twenty years of sharing a life, a wide Etruscan band punctuated with sparkly diamond x’s worn on the right hand, along with my mother’s narrow gold wedding ring and my grandmother’s small engagement diamond in a sweet antique setting. All well suited to my working hands. All part of my story. I often find myself studying the hands that carry these circlets. Someday the rings will leave my hands and pass to a sister, daughter in law and granddaughter to be carried forth, as the gold and diamonds will long outlive me.

Contrary to repetitive ads instructing that we must diminish the years on our hands so as not to show our age, my hands evidence every year. The sun spots and freckles, a small, smooth oval scar atop my right hand, the pad of a middle finger also sporting an oval scar sliced by an accident at age nine, barely visible now as it fades to smooth along with my fingerprints, one little finger that bends out and carries a thicker knuckle, from the break rendered by a plummeting basketball (I have never been an exemplary athlete, my tendencies run a head on race between efficiency and creativity, somehow the twain do meet.)

The hands at the end of my arms are well suited to the condition of the rest of this body.  Well accented with sunspots, lumpy with arthritic bumps, rough around the cuticles, with nails usually dingy from being plunged into the soil of the garden. A crepey webbing creeps across the backs of my hands, sure indication of my dotage.

Mine are working hands, not manicured, soaked, or polished. They are the tools of my life. Their vintage mien – my badge, my medal. Always proceeding me, I offer them without embarrassment.

These hands spent hours transporting fries and iced Cokes to my mouth over tables at the Dairy Queen, crammed into a booth with six or seven other teens on summer nights in the seventies. Many a time these hands organized my mother’s pantry and cabinets when the contents would begin to spill over the edges, and baked Christmas cookies with Mom.

These hands have burped babies, changed diapers, clapped at baseball games and scrubbed grass stains from the baseball knickers, performed fast and furious admin work on typewriters, and when technology moved forward, pounded keyboards, reached into copy machines to clear jams.  They gently washed my mother and tucked her into fresh sheets as her life neared its end. Hands that have borne wounds from flower shears, arranged and delivered those flowers. Packed moving boxes, dusted furniture, diced onions, they still pound on keyboards and tap iPad screens; no longer to produce work product for an employer, instead to pour out words on a screen to be shared with you, and they garden like gangbusters with delightful result. Reacting with steady competence in emergencies, their sureness belies the panic in my mind. They hold on tightly when safely encased within the hand of my beloved husband, in joy and sorrows. These hands have traveled time.

I don’t pay much attention to the care of my hands, other than ensuring they are clean. Just as the rest of me, they ache at the end of the day and tremble more easily from exertion. Every juncture of my sixty-six years is reflected by my hands. Why would I deny any moment evidenced by such time markers? Without apology, I resist snake oils propounding assurances that my paws won’t reveal my age.

Conversely, I am not so enamored of the bristly hairs sprouting from my chin that shriek my age. Such annoying indicators are mown down daily.

Hello from sixty-six!

Sally Kilgore is a resident of Fate. She is married to her long-time flame, Judge Chris Kilgore. Sally’s work has been published in the Dallas Morning News, Blue Ribbon News, Persimmon Tree, and Orchards Poetry. She writes a blog on her website, SallyAKilgore.com. You can contact her by email via her website. 

  age, hand, kukka, sally kilgore, time stamps