Be grateful for your hands.

Our two hands, working together, let us applaud something we enjoy. They also help us steer our cars and ride our bikes and lift stuff. They let us shake hands while patting someone on the back. They are mirror images of each other, twins. It's hard to imagine not having two hands.

Our hands are, for the most part, dominant on one side or the other, which to me is a mystery. We're either right-handed or left-handed. Why don't we have equal strength in each hand? What is nature trying to tell us? I don't know, but it's true. (I've known a few ambi-dextrous people, but they were few and far between.)

Our two hands are like our two eyes, helping us focus and take care of the task at hand. But when one hand is rendered useless, or is missing, what does that do to our lives? And to our brain, which has to make the adjustment? Does the remaining hand get stronger? At what point do we stop reaching for things -- hands, bottles, whatever -- with the missing hand?

Lots of people in Africa have had their hands lopped off by mis-guided rebels with machetes. And lots of our own soldiers are coming home from wars without a hand, usually the results of explosions. How do they cope? How do we teach them to cope?

How do we show them how to teach their kids to catch a ball when the old dictum is to "use two hands"? How can they demonstrate for their kids a two-hand shot at the basket? How can they,
just for themselves, play golf?

We humans seem to be given things in ones or twos. (Never threes, at least not that I can think of.) One brain but two hands. One heart but two lungs. One liver but two kidneys. One prostate but two ovaries. One pancreas but two what? Hmmm . . .

If we have to give up a lung or a kidney, anything we have two of, we can survive. We will have to endure the trauma of surgery -- being cut open -- and, in our recovery, have to limit our activities. But we'll pull through. And maybe not even notice our loss. A lung, yeah, but not necessarily a kidney.

The reason we're willing to undergo that surgery, that invasion of our bodies, for a loved one -- or even, I've heard, for a stranger -- is because we know we have a spare part. We really can live a more or less normal life with one kidney or lung or ovary or testicle or whatever.

But it's also because those organs are buried inside us, so we don't notice when one is missing -- after the scars have healed -- and neither does anyone esle. No one ever stops you in the grocery story and says, "Oh my, I didn't realize you were missing a kidney. What happened?"
You can donate some parts of you without calling attention to yourself, and if you do, I say God bless you. What a brave person you are -- really!

But would you donate a hand?

If you knew that your hand would help a loved one with one hand or maybe none, would you?

To reiterate, when you're missing a kidney or a kneecap or an ovary, nobody knows. But if you're missing a hand, everyone notices. I once knew a boy whose hand had been blown off in a fireworks explosion and who had a fake one that was crafted out of some kind of rubber and looked sort of like a real one and that he could fit onto his wrist to poke out of his long sleeve sort of like the real thing. It was useless, though, purely cosmetic -- not like the amazing devices now available -- and after a few months, he threw it away and just let his scarred stump poke out. Like lots of men with stick-on hairpieces, he decided it wasn't worth the hassle and the discomfort.

But because our hands do like each other, are twins, working together to accomplish so many of the trivial and important jobs we do every day, not having one has to be a bummer. Getting used to doing things one-handed can't be fun. How do you hold your lover's face in your hands if you only have one? How do you pick up your little kid with just one hand? How do you clasp them in prayer when there's nothing for the other one to clasp?

And if you're miserable, what is the sound of one hand wringing?

But people do cope every day with having lost a hand. There was once a pro baseball player with one hand. A pitcher. He just shifted his glove to the other hand after every pitch, in case he had to field a ground ball. Bob Dole lost the use of one hand in WW2 and spent his career in politics holding a pencil in his dead hand to keep anyone from trying to shake it. We humans are remarkably adaptive. We know how to compensate.

Treasure your hands. Take care of them. Pay them attention. Exercise them. Make them work. Oil them down. Give them time together just for the pleasure of it. They really do like each other. I think all twins do.

Be thankful you have them and gracious toward those who don't.