Hand Prints

Every year, at the Apple Harvest Festival, the Chili girls slap their hand prints on ceramic tiles at the kiosk run by our local paint-your-own pottery place.

I finally made it to the store to pick up this year’s artifacts.

Now I need to get to an art supply shop to get another set of hangers…

We’ve got room on the wall for next year’s prints, but I think that’s about it.   That’s probably best anyway; the way she’s growing, I’m not sure that Punkin’ will be able to squish her hand onto those little tiles for much longer.

While I was waiting at the studio for the man to find our tiles, I had a flashback that was actually kind of pleasant (if you know me, you know how rare this is!). When I was in kindergarten, we did this little project where we put our hand prints on a piece of paper, then copied a poem on to the paper and presented the finished project as Mother’s Day gifts. For reasons only the Universe knows, I still remember the poem;

Sometimes you get discouraged
because I am so small
and always leave my fingerprints
on furniture and wall
but every day I’m growing up
and soon I’ll be so tall
that all those little hand prints
will be hard to recall
So here’s a final hand print
just so you can remember
exactly how my fingers looked
in ‘74 December.

I will remember how my babies’ hands looked; at least, six years’ worth…