(no subject)
Jan. 20th, 2007 12:18 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
dedra.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
tamingthemuseTitle: Young Hands, Old Hands
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
spikespetslayer
Rating: G
Pairing: None
Warnings: None
Summary: Age is a product of the body, not the mind.
Young Hands, Old Hands
Old. Strange, how a word is supposed to define us, make us something that we don’t feel. In her mind, she is still the young girl of twenty, the same one that sweated in factories and sewed day in and day out for pennies with the rest of the great unwashed to pay for the fancy dresses that took her sometimes weeks to buy. She had soft, plump hands then, with dimpled knuckles and tapered nails that she had kept soft with repeated applications of butter beneath white gloves, wearing them all night to keep them pale and smooth.
Fond memories—dances with nameless boys and faces blurred by time and distance. She met George at one of those dances, a Beau Brummel that was slumming and looking for a good time in the lower district. It surprised her when he asked for her hand; she was never one to hide her status, although she imagined at one time that it was the dress that did it.
It had been one of the most expensive dresses that she’d ever bought. It cost her three weeks wages, but in the end, she supposed it was worth it. Drop waist, tight bodice, and fingernail pleats along the skirt, it made her look like one of the uptown girls—everyone said so. It should have, for the price that she paid. George had seen her from across the room and sped to her side like a bullet, scattering her usual suitors with a glee that she later discovered he usually reserved for a particularly lucrative deal. She supposed that she was a deal as well, one that he would do anything to close.
He pulled out all the stops when he was courting her. Flowers, candy, jewelry, nothing was out of his range. When he pretended to find out her secret, she was embarrassed, at least until he confessed he knew it all along. He knew the difference in their stations and it hadn’t mattered to him. He only wanted her, had to have her, whether it was wife, mistress, or backstreet affair.
She had held out, though, for wife. It was her only chance to rise above and she kenned it from the beginning. They had a good life before he died and left her the matriarch of a dynasty that they had built with their life blood and hands, stepping on those who would have knocked them down—her because of class, him because he married beneath him.
She looked down at her hands, now wrinkled with age and spotted from God knew what. Diamonds adorned the pruned fingers with their overlarge knuckles, gnarled with arthritis and bent like the limbs on a tree laden with fruit. Hands that had sewed dresses for the rich, soothed babies born of her womb, clasped other hands in the wild dancing of her youth. Hands that were never going to be aristocratic and perfect, but they spoke to her of a time when life was harder and times were less hectic.
She could hear the doorbell and the excited voices of her granddaughters as the butler let them in the front door. Perhaps today was the day to tell them of her less than savory roots. Perhaps she should take them to the attic and show them the dress that won the heart of the grandfather they never got to know and the man that stole her away from a lifetime of labor.
With aching joints, she climbed to her feet and stood tall next to her “throne”, as she liked to call it. Yes, today was the day that they learned that no matter the class, the distinctions, the cover on the book, it was important to look beyond to the soul beneath and the heart that beat in the breast. George had learned the same lesson over fifty years ago; it was definitely time to teach it to the next generation.
Author:
spikespetslayerRating: G
Pairing: None
Warnings: None
Summary: Age is a product of the body, not the mind.
Young Hands, Old Hands
Old. Strange, how a word is supposed to define us, make us something that we don’t feel. In her mind, she is still the young girl of twenty, the same one that sweated in factories and sewed day in and day out for pennies with the rest of the great unwashed to pay for the fancy dresses that took her sometimes weeks to buy. She had soft, plump hands then, with dimpled knuckles and tapered nails that she had kept soft with repeated applications of butter beneath white gloves, wearing them all night to keep them pale and smooth.
Fond memories—dances with nameless boys and faces blurred by time and distance. She met George at one of those dances, a Beau Brummel that was slumming and looking for a good time in the lower district. It surprised her when he asked for her hand; she was never one to hide her status, although she imagined at one time that it was the dress that did it.
It had been one of the most expensive dresses that she’d ever bought. It cost her three weeks wages, but in the end, she supposed it was worth it. Drop waist, tight bodice, and fingernail pleats along the skirt, it made her look like one of the uptown girls—everyone said so. It should have, for the price that she paid. George had seen her from across the room and sped to her side like a bullet, scattering her usual suitors with a glee that she later discovered he usually reserved for a particularly lucrative deal. She supposed that she was a deal as well, one that he would do anything to close.
He pulled out all the stops when he was courting her. Flowers, candy, jewelry, nothing was out of his range. When he pretended to find out her secret, she was embarrassed, at least until he confessed he knew it all along. He knew the difference in their stations and it hadn’t mattered to him. He only wanted her, had to have her, whether it was wife, mistress, or backstreet affair.
She had held out, though, for wife. It was her only chance to rise above and she kenned it from the beginning. They had a good life before he died and left her the matriarch of a dynasty that they had built with their life blood and hands, stepping on those who would have knocked them down—her because of class, him because he married beneath him.
She looked down at her hands, now wrinkled with age and spotted from God knew what. Diamonds adorned the pruned fingers with their overlarge knuckles, gnarled with arthritis and bent like the limbs on a tree laden with fruit. Hands that had sewed dresses for the rich, soothed babies born of her womb, clasped other hands in the wild dancing of her youth. Hands that were never going to be aristocratic and perfect, but they spoke to her of a time when life was harder and times were less hectic.
She could hear the doorbell and the excited voices of her granddaughters as the butler let them in the front door. Perhaps today was the day to tell them of her less than savory roots. Perhaps she should take them to the attic and show them the dress that won the heart of the grandfather they never got to know and the man that stole her away from a lifetime of labor.
With aching joints, she climbed to her feet and stood tall next to her “throne”, as she liked to call it. Yes, today was the day that they learned that no matter the class, the distinctions, the cover on the book, it was important to look beyond to the soul beneath and the heart that beat in the breast. George had learned the same lesson over fifty years ago; it was definitely time to teach it to the next generation.
no subject
Date: 2007-01-21 02:13 pm (UTC)~Nebula
no subject
Date: 2007-01-29 06:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-21 10:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-29 06:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-28 03:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-29 06:28 am (UTC)