Remembering Isabel Russell’s Hands

Remembering Isabel Russell’s hands…. Recently, I’ve been thinking about hands and remembering the infinite number of ways I’ve used mine during eight decades of life. A technicolor parade of memories opens with my five babies: Jocelyn, Chip, Keith, Polly, and Susan. I feel the incredible sensations of holding each precious child. Seeing and touching their soft-as-velvet skin; stroking silky hair, holding little hands and tiny fingers.

My hands learned sign language when working with disabled adults in day treatment and residential program settings. Today I hold my left hand up and bend the third and fourth fingers down into my palm, remembering the sweet silent words they represent: I love you.

Meanwhile, I recall a long-ago yellow school bus pulling away from my car as I hold up my hand with this sign. My children’s small faces smile through the window and they hold up their fingers resending the same message.

Certainly included in this parade is a mixed assortment of rescue dogs and cats through the years, recipient of hugs and belly rubs that conveyed love. I see my fingers playing my clarinet and piano as I hear sonatas and hymns. Next is an extensive lineup of quilts, sewing, and  crafting projects. A smorgasbord follows, meals I’ve prepared—from the humble peanut butter and jelly sandwich to Julia Child’s elegant Boeuf a la Bourguignon.

I remember both my young and my aging fingers writing non-fiction stories for decades and then my memoir. Surely, my hands held books, too! Certainly, they’ve held a public library full of books as I’ve read them through the years.

I lower my hands to my knees, palms up, as another lifetime rises into my mind. It’s an evening in 1985; I’m living in the Catskills in Bovina Center. On this particular evening, I’m attending a wake in Delhi for our lifelong town resident, Isabel Russell.

Standing beside Isabel in her simple pine coffin, her years numbering over 80, I looked deeply into her peaceful face. Her honey-colored-mixed-with-gray hair was arranged into ringlets atop her head, the style she’d worn all the years I’d known her and perhaps all of her adult life.

I smiled when I looked at her dress. Isabel was her Creator’s lifelong servant and she would meet Him in one of her best Sunday dresses. The long-sleeved one with a small quietly-colored flower print on the dark blue background. My eyes moved to her slender hands, the left one crossed over the right in repose for all eternity. Her thick gold wedding band, slid onto her left hand more than sixty years ago by her now deceased husband, Cecil, had become too large for her since her fingers had thinned through the years. Yet, her arthritic knuckle held the ring in place, just above the right place on her third-finger. Remembering Isabel Russell’s hands had always been easy.

And then I stared at Isabel’s hands, suddenly struck to my core by the fact that I’d never seen her hands still. I slowly reached and covered her cool hands with mine and tenderly held them for several seconds. Reluctantly I released her and whispered a final good-bye. “Thank you for all that you gave each of us with your precious hands.” I touched her hand a final time and then, “And thank you for all the time we’ve shared in this community, Isabel.”

Today I fondly remember each of the Russell family members—Isabel, Cecil, and their daughter, Marjorie. Each was short and thin with Scot-reddish hair. They were silent, strong pillars of the community; deeply devoted, lifelong members of the pristine white, country United Presbyterian church. It was directly across the road from their home and adjacent business, Russell’s General Store.

Inside that store, Isabel’s hands were in constant motion behind the counter. I’d hand her my shopping list and then watch. She sliced ham and American cheese onto thin waxy paper. At the counter she reached for the roll of brown paper next to the penny-candy counter. Tearing off a piece, she’d place the meat and cheese on their respective papers. She’d neatly fold the paper around each product, making triangles on each end and tucking them beneath.

Next, she’d reach up to an elongated ball of white string suspended above the counter and pull down a length. Picking up the old-fashioned, black-handled scissors, she snip off a length. She’d wrap the string around the long package end, cross it over and wrap it across the narrow end, turn it upright and, tie the ends into a bow you could just pull open when you got home.

Canned and jars and boxes of foods and baking supplies filled the shelves behind Isabel, the soups, fruits and vegetables, the pasta, sugar, and flour, and anything else you could need to prepare a good meal back then. Bread and rolls and muffins were neatly placed on metal shelves behind the customer. In the center of the weathered, wooden floor, toward the back, was an enormous roll-top desk. Because it held high stacks of envelopes, the roll top couldn’t be closed. The probable months and perhaps years of opened mail reached beyond the top of the desk. This, then, was Russells’ financial center.

Close by was the black potbellied-stove, the store’s central heating system. It needed feeding a few times each day, and enough wood at evening to keep it going through the night.

As Isabel gathered my order of food and dry goods, we’d talk about many things. Who was the community care box for that we could donate to? Had someone broken a leg or arm due to a fall? Or had the pregnant mom had her baby? As well as other joys and afflictions that visit each of us at various times of our lives. Russell’s Store was, in essence, our personal Facebook community and local newspaper all in one place. There we met our friends and neighbors and kept up with each other’s lives. At the end of the month when milk checks arrived in the mail, we’d pay our bill.

Two decades later, I moved 500 miles from the Catskill Mountains to the Blue Ridge. I’ve often thought about my family’s time in Bovina: about farm life, the country, good friends and fine neighbors. Business-wise, the small town held Russell’s General Store, Hilson’s Store for farm supplies, the old creamery which held auctions, a post office, a church, a tiny community center, and the Historical Society. Without doubt, Bovina Center was the smallest, closest, and beloved community I’ve ever lived in.

In thinking about the Russell family recently, I was remembering Isabel and my farewell. In fact, I can still see her hands that evening, those hands that so well reflected the inner woman she was. For me, Isabel’s hands were the instruments that displayed her values and deep commitment to her world: to serve, be kind, helpful, and caring of others.

Remembering Isabel Russell’s hands… I can never forget them