Project 52: Week 4 - Soothing Repetition

When I was young, about 8 years old, I was playing outside with a friend and we found this cut up tree trunk in this area close to where our apartment was.  I decided to stand on it like a logger and try to balance myself for fun!  Bad idea!  I fell, face flat, onto the grass with my right arm under me.  I heard three loud cracks and I went home crying.  For days I couldn't move my right arm and now that I look back, I probably half broken it.  Because even to this day, I can't extend my right arm full straight.  It's hardly noticeable, but if I compare my left vs. my right, the right one is a little bent.

So what does this have to do with soothing repetition?  At the time this accident happened, my family and I had just moved to the United States.  We were poor...I mean poor!  My dad was a student and my mom worked at Chinese restaurants.  We had no insurance.  My mom knew my arm wasn't fully broken, so each night, after I bathed or showered, she'd spend hours just massaging my arm.  She would make me extend it, and she'd massage it with her hands..up and down my arm...repeatedly.  Looking back now, my mom often told me she didn't know what she was thinking.  And knowing what she know now, she probably should have taken me to the hospital.  But all of us didn't know anything at the time!  Besides, I tell her my arm work perfectly now.  No harm done! 

These are my mom's hands.  In addition to massaging my arm, these hands are a comfort to me.  She helped me through everything when I was a kid.  She carried me on crowded buses in China as a baby, she washed my clothes all by hand when we didn't have a washer and dryer, she cooked all of our meals growing up.  In 2nd grade in the US, I didn't realize my classroom had a pencil sharpener, so I brought my pencils home every other day for her to shapen them with a knife.  Even now as a grown up adult, her hands soothes me.  Like the night before I got married, I stayed with my parents, she ran her hands through my hair when we were talking about how I was styling it the next day.  Something small like that is soothing, comforting, and unforgettable.