Hands
- external validation
- self-perception
- power of words
Lena was sitting in a cafe when a woman at the next table said:
- You have beautiful hands.
Lena looked at her hands. Ordinary hands. She was holding a cup with them.
- Thank you, she said.
The woman smiled and went back to her phone.
Lena finished her coffee, paid, and left. It was cold outside. She shoved her hands into her pockets and walked toward the metro.
And noticed she was thinking about her hands.
Beautiful how? The shape of her fingers? The skin? She pulled one hand out and looked at it. An ordinary hand. Nothing special. The woman probably just said it. Or wanted to start a conversation. Or had a habit of saying nice things to strangers.
On the metro, Lena sat by the window. A man sat across from her, reading a book. Lena caught herself hiding her hands under her bag.
That evening, at home, she told her husband.
- Can you imagine, a woman in the cafe said I have beautiful hands.
- Well, her husband said without looking up from his laptop. You do have beautiful hands.
Somehow that didn’t count. A husband is supposed to say that. It’s not real.
She looked at her hands again. The same hands. This morning - just hands. Now - hands that someone had said something about.
What had changed?
Before sleep, she lay in the dark and thought: what if that woman had said “you have ugly hands”? Or said nothing at all? Would her hands be different?
In the morning, she woke up and the first thing she did - she caught herself - was look at her hands.