Filling Dad’s Gloves

I have big hands. I do not always notice it, but every once in a while, I will shake hands with someone and think, “Wow, this person has a big hand.”

Then I wonder what it feels like to shake hands with me.

Sometimes I test it. I clasp my left hand with my right as if I were shaking someone else’s hand. If I grab from the back instead of the palm, it works. Then I think, “Wow, that is a big hand.”

Growing up, though, I never thought my hands were big. I thought my dad’s hands were.

In many ways, my dad has always been larger than life to me. Even now, I am taller than him, and my hands are probably bigger than his. But that is not how I see it.

I remember his hands working. Teaching. Sometimes stern.

And I remember watching his hands when he talked. In our family, we talk with our hands. That is a Jasperson trait. I still find myself watching Dad’s hands when he tells a story.

In the house I grew up in, we had a glove box by the back door on the porch. Not the kind in a car. This one actually held gloves.

On the ranch, almost everything required them. Hauling hay, driving machinery, working horses, fixing fence. If you were outside, you were probably wearing gloves.

When we came in, we tossed them in the box. When we went out, we grabbed a pair.

In the warmer months, we wore leather work gloves. Every spring, Dad would buy a new pair for the summer. We usually got them at Dana’s. I remember trying them on and choosing between different styles and types of leather.

In the winter, we switched to warm gloves. When I was young, I wore mittens. I remember wanting to be old enough to wear finger gloves like Dad.

When we started wearing cotton gloves in the winter, Dad bought a pack and marked them. Cade and I each had our own. He used a syringe filled with Clorox to write a “C” and a “J” on them so we would not mix them up.

If our gloves got wet, we would take them to the basement and lay them on the furnace or the ducts to dry.

One year, when I was about 11 or 12, Mom and Dad got me leather mittens for Christmas. They had wool liners that we pulled on like long woolen socks. Then we would slip them inside the leather mittens.

The wool kept our hands warm. The leather let us work. We could dig the twine strings out of the bales, move them around on the sleigh, and protect our hands while we drove the team.

In the winter, Dad usually wore the green Wells Lamont Handy Andy gloves. He bought them in bulk packs, five or six pairs at a time, and by the end of winter, he had worn through all of them.

In the summer, he wore leather gloves that lasted a little longer.

I remember looking at his gloves in the box and thinking, “My dad has giant hands.”

Sometimes I would try them on. My hands felt like they were swimming inside them.

Last week, I was working in the yard and took off my gloves, leaving them on the tailgate of the truck.

When I looked back at them, I saw a pair of gloves that looked big.

Big in the same way I remember Dad’s gloves looking.

My work gloves on the tailgate, looking bigger than I expected.

They were sitting there, shaped and ready, like they were just waiting for work as soon as someone slipped them on.

It made me think of him.

I found myself wishing I had a pair of his leather gloves to try on again, just to see if I could fill them. He is in Idaho now, so I cannot just drive over and find out.

I am sure our hands are about the same size now.

But in my eyes, I will never quite fill Dad’s gloves.