The skin on my knuckles has been dry and cracked for weeks. My fingertips, too. I’ve got little scabs from all the little places my skin has split open, letting tiny drops of blood slip through. It hurts to type.

I’m literally bleeding to write this sentence.

I blame the parched winter air. Maybe I should wear gloves when I wash the dishes. Maybe I should stick them in my pockets when I scurry outside to start the van. A wise person might say, “What about moisturizer, Mike? How about a nice lotion?”

Too which I’d reply, “Good idea. But it makes my hands all gooey and gross.” It feels weird and I don’t like it.

For a while, I had a painful split on the tip of my thumb, making it really hard to use my iPhone. I had to text and surf Twitter with a whole different finger, but I got through it. I survived. And here I am to tell the tale.

This reminds me – late in life, my grandfather had some kind of trouble with the skin on his hands. He needed a prescription salve and special gloves to wear at night. He had somehow ended up with big, knobby, wooden spoons for hands. Stiff and gnarly. The skin had been worn thin and tight from 80 years of grabbing onto things. Firmly.

Grandpa grabbed onto hammers as he rammed nails deep into two-by-fours, framing up entire houses. He and my dad built ice fishing shacks solid enough to withstand a twister. Together they built all sorts of stuff. And if the wood didn’t look quite level, he’d just give it a hard slap and declare, “Well, we ain’t buildin’ a piano.” 

He grabbed onto hammers as he rammed nails deep into two-by-fours, framing up entire houses. He and my dad built ice fishing shacks solid enough to withstand a twister. Together they built all kinds of stuff. And if the wood didn’t look quite level, he’d just give it a hard slap and declare, “Well, we ain’t buildin’ a piano.”

But I’m pretty sure the wood was always level.

He grabbed onto the steering wheel of a school bus, driving generation after generation of kids to school and back home, safe and sound. Because it was a solid second job.

He grabbed onto the barrels of shotguns and hunting rifles, pushing shells into their chambers. He pulled their stocks tight against his shoulder and closed one eye to pick out his targets through thick clumps of trees, across dead fields crusted over with snow. He grabbed onto boats, yanking them into and out of lake after lake, river after river, fishing for ... just about everything.

And most of the time, it was legal.

He grabbed onto the heavy handles of spatulas and frying pans while he and Grandma ran their bakery, diner, and drive-in. He cooked food for the people of Danbury, Webster, and Siren – just like he did for a ship full of sailors out in the Pacific Ocean as World War II stormed over Europe. One time, my Grandpa had to grab a pipe he kept behind the counter and smash in the nose of some out-of-control drunk customer. Afterwards, he drove the guy to the hospital.

When he was a boy, Grandpa climbed onto the back of a big farm horse, and his brothers climbed on behind him. He held on to the beast’s huge neck, but when the horse strolled out of the barn, Grandpa kicked up both feet and braced them against the door jam. The horse kept going – sliding right under his butt – and one by one my grandfather and his brothers tumbled off the back, down onto the dirt floor.

He used those hands, which had grown chunky and graceless towards the end, to clap me on my back when I did something good like shoot a deer or get married. One bright summer afternoon, his hands cradled my newborn daughter. He died later that year.

Here’s the last thing I remember about my grandpa’s hands. He used to lean over in his favorite recliner and let one arm dangle as he talked. His hand would bounce up and down the side of the chair, like he was out on a frozen lake, jigging for bluegills. His fingertips aimlessly tickled the upholstery.

I think his bent old paws were testing their cage. They needed to get out and get going. They were penned up in here, in this house! They wanted to slap nails into some wood. They wanted to pull triggers and cast lines. They wanted to slam shut the door to the old pickup truck and go somewhere. They wanted to do more.

I am not a fidgety person. I’m able to sit perfectly still for hours on end, my hands resting at my sides. Sure, I can rip into a laptop keyboard, and I can handle a pair of chopsticks, but my hands just don’t do what my grandfather’s did. Or my father’s for that matter. My skin cracks because it’s cold outside, and I’m too lazy to put on my gloves between the house and the car. It happens every year – the cracked skin, the blood, and the pain.

Maybe someday I’ll grab onto something. And earn it.