Rough Hands

August 31, 2026

It's Sunday night and I just finished feeding Bruce. He's cooing in his sleep in my arms. Maya is asleep on me too. We spent the day in a sandpit.

Before she went under, she laid there against my chest. Running her hands against mine. Feeling every bump, cracked piece of skin. The callouses of a forty-year-old dad.

"Daddy... your hands are so rough," she said.

They weren't always that way, my love.

Really?

Yes, really.

When she fell asleep, her words sat with me. Longer than any of us ever intended. But they tore into my heart. I knew those words. I'd said them, when I was 15, to my grandfather, when he was in the hospital following a stroke.

I remember being in the hospital room, brightly lit, by the hot February sun in Tampa, Florida. The monitors and devices beeping around him.

I picked up his hand, carefully. His right hand — the one without a million cords attached. I placed my hand inside his. Dragging the soft skin of my teenage hand against the roughness of a 72-year-old man who'd spent his life living.

I remember the cracks. The callouses. The bumps. I remember thinking how rough they felt. Somewhere in there, I wanted to remember this moment. These hands. His life. Because I knew — they hadn't told us yet, but I just knew — that after today, these hands would sit silent forever.

That night, I dreamed of my grandfather Loren. We weren't in a hospital room. We were sitting on his deck, in his rocking chairs, in upstate New York. It wasn't winter — it was summer, but the end of summer. Right when the nights drift toward cold and chilly.

When the dream settled, I was rocking in the chair. Staring into the trees. Watching the sun fall below the forest that bordered my grandfather's property.

I think our brains choose the most meaningful moments from life during times of high stress. Choosing those chairs during the end of summer put me more at ease than the hospital room ever could.

I remember my grandfather telling me he was proud of who I was becoming. Proud of the man I would be — and that he was sorry he wouldn't live to see it. In closing, he said that life goes on. The sun also rises.

When I awoke, it was the middle of the night. My mom had just arrived back from the hospital. Her eyes were red, and wet. She hugged us and let us know Grandpa had passed away.

Tonight, back in 2026, I'm crying just like my mom was, because I'm the child considering the rough hands.

But, life goes on. The sun also rises.