My grandfather's hands

Today we weaned and moved pigs, my grandson and I, and I powerwashed the feeders we would use later.  As I pulled my hand out from the feeder holes I knocked it against the side.  I felt it without really noticing it.  A minute or two later I looked down to see blood streaming down the backs of my fingers from a quarter inch chunk of loose skin on the back of my hand.

Then I remembered my grandfather's hands when he came out to help my Dad years ago.  His hands too were hard in the palm from years and years of callous upon callous.  His fingernails were thick, some were bent and twisted and needed to be trimmed with a sharp pocketknife.  But the skin on the backs of his hands was paper thin and could be knocked open by the slightest blow.  I have gotten to where my grandfather was in the 1950's seventy years ago.

I was rueful, but not terrified at the thought.  There is after all a certain rightness to it.  I come from a line of peasants, people of the land, back through my Dad and then both my grandfathers and as far back as I know;  poor and destitute sometimes, some were orphans, some manic depressive.  There must have been a few liars, though I know nothing of that.  For generations on the male side we have understood the pressing need to somehow make it go, to provide for children, to farm the land and to keep and protect wives.  If that meant damage to hands or other body parts, so be it.  If it meant risk and loss and too much work and no sleep, we would put up with it.

But I am terrified.  Because for generations now, we have been taught to scorn and make fun of men like me, like my father and grandfather.  Feminists have done it, and I suppose they have their good reasons, but so has everyone else.  I mean no disrespect for the female side of my ancestry for they may well have suffered more and worked harder for the family, the community and the land than we males did.  But I understand it as a man.  And I pop awake sometimes at two in the morning, terrified at the prospects for my children and grandchildren and as yet unborn great grandchildren.  And I fear especially for my grandsons and their sons.  For we have chosen instead of respect, love, and a place for young working class men, scorn and rejection and the result all too often is a young white male full of blinding rage emptying a military weapon into a crowd of people.