Palm to Palm

Do they still put foot and hand prints of newborns on birth certificates? I remember the first time I looked at my baby book as an adult. I was awed by the tiny black smudges on the yellow tinged certificate. My father came upon me as I was tracing my finger along the delicate imprint of my beginning, and he said to me, "You were so small, your mother carried you on a pillow afraid you would slip through her hands. As you grew, I would hold our hands up in comparison." At this he took my hand and held it against his own palm to palm, finger to finger. "The last time we did this you said, ' you're so big and strong.' Now look at you. I'm so proud." With tears in our eyes we hugged, and I put that conversation away in my heart.

Who knew ink and paper could forge such a bond. I closed the book and tucked it into my box and together we loaded my car. He stood there with his arm around my mother and one hand held up as I drove away from the only home I had ever known. Long after his outstretched palm receded from my rear-view I could hear his words echoing in my head and they gave me the strength to move on. For the next few years when I missed home or felt like a failure I would pull out that scrap book and look at the first marks I had made in life. This review would always remind me that like those first few foot steps as a toddler I would falter and possibly fall, but my father’s words would be there to pull me up and help me along.

Years later, he was there helping me move out of the last in a string of college towns and into my own home. As we were unloading my things, my pa came into the room holding up my baby book, "Ma, look at this." The three of us sat cross-legged on the shiny hardwood floor of my new house looking at the clippings, scribbles and pictures that made up our past. In the book I had pasted things from high school and college. It was thick with memories and only a few pages remained blank. I grabbed a pen and traced each of my parent's hands into the back of my book, and told them, "just in case I forget how much I've grown." I asked my father if he remembered the day I left for college, the last time we looked at that book together. He smiled knowing it was a moment we both cherished.

Through the years I've called upon him to fix this or move that. This spring for the first time, I noticed the flag in my father's step. I saw the arthritic curl in his fingers, and reacted by trying to unburden him of his load. He put his gnarled hand on mine and said: "Let me get that; it's too heavy."

I'm 32 now and my father is 66. I've already made his Father's day card and across the palm of my grown-woman hand print the sentiment reads: Papa you're still so strong.


This is a tribute to family bonds, while it's written from the heart and some of the elements are true, it's not a memoir. It is a true portrayal of the love I have for my pa. It was written as an article for helium.com.