Hands

The hands of Henry Brooks, an old Georgia slave

"Our small, soft hands blistered quickly at the start of each summer, but Daddy never let us wear gloves, which he considered a sign of weakness. After a few weeks of constant work, the bloody blisters gave way to hard-earned calluses that protected us from pain. Long after the fact, it occurred to me that was a metaphor for life -- blisters come before calluses, vulnerability before maturity - but not even the thickest of skins could have spared us the lash of Daddy's tongue. "I could do more with a teaspoon than you can do with a shovel," he snapped whenever we were shoveling dirt. "You worth less than a carload of dead men." He never praised us, just as he never hugged us. Whenever my grandmother urged him to tell us that we had done a good job, he replied, "That's their responsibility. Any job worth doing is worth doing right."

Clarence Thomas
My Grandfather's Son