I remember my father's hands...

They were huge.

I can picture my hand going up to hold his as we are walking when I am very young, and all I grab onto is his little finger, and it fills my fist. I feel very safe.

Or as an older child, sitting at the kitchen table eating grapefruit. Mom has cut the sections, and we have eaten all we can scoop out with our spoons, and then we try to squeeze the rest of the juice out into our bowl. We pick up the empty grapefruit shell and squish it with two hands, using all our might, our elbows and shoulders trembling from the effort. Then when we are done, our energy spent, we pass the shell to Dad and with one hand he squeezes out more juice than we could with two. It is our favourite breakfast game.

Or when we eat soup. The crackers are on the table, and we are allowed to put as many crackers in our soup as we want. I take a stack of four crackers and hand them to Dad. He puts the crackers in the palm of one hand, puts the other hand on top and, presto, with one little squeeze, the crackers have been pulverized into perfect cracker powder which he lets fall into my bowl. I try with one cracker, but am left with unsatisfying, irregular chunks. We laugh.

Strong, safe hands.