It is so hard to be diligent on these sunny warm days in early spring. At the end of the winter, being in the sun feels like a religious obligation, like I�m soaking in all of its energy and refracting it out of the ends of my fingers.

I�ve been thinking a lot about fingers and hands lately, about the power they hold, the energy they can transmit. At the end of my yoga class each week, after we�ve been contorting our bodies into all kinds of uncomfortable positions, my friend H., who teaches the class, walks among us, as we lie in savasana and puts her hands on each person�s shoulders, pressing them back into shape. She places her hands on the sides of our heads and lightly rubs our temples with a scented balm. The first time I experienced this, I was a little surprised and perhaps a little uncomfortable. There�s something so intimate about hands. If the teacher had been a total stranger, I don�t think it would have felt at all strange. Or if she had been a closer friend. But for the kind of middle ground, the person you�re just starting to get to know, hands are fraught with�what, exactly? Meaning? Information? Energy?

H. is The Girl Next Door�s mother. Earlier this week, AJ begged to invite TGND over to play. And so, after lunch on Monday after school, the doorbell rang and in she rushed like a small blonde tornado, instantly sweeping up AJ into one of their many games where there are many more characters than actual children and which generally involve the turning upside down and inside out anything that contains any other things. They were having so much fun that when H. stopped by on her way to the doctor�s office to pick up TGND, I suggested she just leave her here to play. That way the kids could have fun, and H. could have her checkup without having to entertain a five-year-old. �I�ll be back soon,� she said. �I�m just having a quick follow-up. 15 minutes tops.� But it wasn�t. She came back an hour later, looking upset.

Last fall, H. had found a lump in her breast. She had surgery, went through the treatment, the prognosis was good. Monday�s checkup was not. Six lumps. I asked H. if she wanted to come in and sit down, have a cup of tea. �No, thanks,� she said, �I really wish I could, but I think I�d better go home and make some phone calls.�

I�ve been thinking about her the last couple of days. She�s my age. Her daughter is my son�s best friend. It could easily be me. But it�s not. Yet I can imagine what might be going through her mind. What does it mean? What happens next? If it�s something bad, what happens to my kids?

Tonight after class, when H. pressed her hands into my shoulders, something seemed different. Something had passed between us, some kind of understanding, a shared experience. I could feel it in her hands.

After class, as we were gathering our things and heading to pick up our kids from childcare, she told me she�d heard back from the hospital today � all benign. I was genuinely relieved. �That�s great news!� I said. I wanted to hug her or buy her a beer, but that�s not the kind of relationship we have at the moment. It takes me a long time to get to know people -- my shyness manifests itself as a fear of intrusion on others� lives. Instead I looked at my own hands, noticed the veins running along the back, the muscles in the fingers. �You must be so relieved,� I said. She nodded, �I feel like I�ve aged ninety years in the past 48 hours.�

Hands are much more sensitive and communicative than we often give them credit for, as they get swept up into the necessities of our daily work. But there is something especially remarkable about them. The hands are almost always the first thing I notice about a person. They matter. You can tell a lot about someone from looking at their hands. When babies are born, parents always seem to fixate on those tiny fingers and toes. The definition of infant perfection is �ten little fingers and ten little toes.�

I have a vague memory from childhood, probably from my grandmother�s evangelical Lutheran church, of watching a laying on of hands. Some afflicted person knelt in the front of the church as the elders encircled him, stretching their arms throught he crowd to place their hands on him, united in touch and prayer. It was a baffling sight for a child raised outside the confines of any one religion, but powerful too. It is as if they thought they could transfer their life, their wishes, their health, their very souls to another through their fingers. What if they could.

H. and I will probably be seeing more of each other in the coming weeks. As the weather gets warmer and warmer, we will both be burying our hands in our adjacent gardens, while AJ and The Girl Next Door tear back and forth between our yards in elaborate games of tag and hide-and-seek and several other games that don�t yet have names. Maybe there�s still time to buy her a beer.

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