I’ve heard it said that you can tell a lot about a man from his handshake; the firmness of the grasp, the energy in the shake, the confidence exuded, the honesty and integrity of looking someone eye to eye while hand and hand – they all create an experience that communicates character and relational standing. Of course, we all know the effects of a bad handshake, with the awkwardness and the uncomfortable confusion of a limp hand partially gripping another. You can tell a lot about a man by his handshake. But, I think a study of his hands alone yields a great deal of insight into the quality of a man.
My father had rough hands. He was a working man, a small business owner, a blue-collar guy. Over the years he worked for plant farms, ran a service station, and more. But for thirty-five years, starting two years before I came into existence, he ran a tire shop. This shop weathered the ups and down of oil booms and busts, the coming and going of business partners, and the slow decline of the small town economy surrounding it. A tire shop is no easy business, especially when it specialized in massive industrial tires for semis and tractors and work trucks.
Working with tires does something to the hands. The little folds of our skin, from our unique fingerprints to those fortune-telling lines across the palms, take on a different nature when they are exposed to rubber, gravel, iron, dirt, grease, oil, and sweat every day. They fill with dust and particles that the best soap and solvents just won’t remove. Those lines become thick and black, like a fine pen had drawn lines of ink between every little nook. Further, the hands become calloused and rough. Countless abrasions, bruises, cuts, and nicks combined with the slight burns of aluminum wheels left in the July sun and the dry cracking of skin that accompanies working with frozen power tools on windy February days creates a unique account of days spent in laborious exertion. The hands wear down with a nobility, the way marble ruins still reflect the glory of the original architecture. Worn hands tell a story of hardship, of ethic, of resiliency, of manhood.
My father had rough hands. He worked hard for a lot of reasons, but chief among them was to provide a good life for my mother, brother, and myself. He never wanted my brother and I to have to work quite as hard as he did, but he wanted us to know how to work. He didn’t want us to avoid blue-collar work, but to have a choice to do other things if we desired. He wanted us to work hard and live honorable lives. He wore himself down to make that possible.
There was a time, when in my academic pursuits he was invited to one of those events he hated (where people wore jackets and ties and tried to impress everyone). I noticed he was fidgety, uncomfortable. I thanked him later and told him I appreciated him attending even if he didn’t enjoy those things. He told me he thought it was a nice event, but he was embarrassed about his hands. He had no desire to shake hands and people feel those calloused palms or see the dark lines between every joint. I didn’t know what to say at first; my father didn’t often display signs of weakness and he almost never verbalized them to his sons. He was the silent type with a bit of wall. He wasn’t a guy who let himself be vulnerable, even with his closest friends. Maybe because he watched so many westerns, I think he picked it up from John Wayne or something. Maybe it was the culture of men he grew up with. Maybe it was his personality. Whatever the cause for its rarity, it was certainly a rare moment.
I thought about it for a minute, and I said “Dad, I’m embarrassed of MY hands. I’ve been stuck in libraries and staring at computer screens for four years. I haven’t hardly touched a tool since leaving high school. I sometimes look at my hands and see them as soft; I feel like I have weak hands compared to the days when I worked in the gravel in front of the shop and played on the dirt of a football field. I’m embarrassed of my hands. I would never be embarrassed of yours.” My father gave me an odd look upon hearing those words.
I told him “I know you can still be a good man with soft hands, but I know you can’t be a weak man if you have rough hands. I’m sorry you feel that way about things, but I wish my hands were like yours.”
I then realized the nature of the odd look on my father’s face: it was the look of man realizing how much his son saw honor in him. It was one of the few times my father teared up. We of course both ignored that fact and moved on to discussion about cars, hunting, or the place at the lake. It would have been wrong to linger in that moment. What was needed to be said was said.
I still wish to have hands like my father, but I have a greater wish to have the character reflected in those hands. I was proud of my father for many reasons, and his work ethic was among the top. I lost him 16 days ago. I wish I had told him a hundred times more how proud I was to be his son, and how nothing about his life as a hard-working man would ever be an embarrassment to me or his grandchildren.
My father had rough hands, and I’m glad he did.
Psalm 128:2 ESV
You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you.
Wrangling Thoughts 