I think I'd recognize these hands — never idle — anywhere. The beautiful and telling wrinkles, the raised veins so close to the surface of the skin, the moles, the tan that has come with a lifetime of farming and gardening, the trim nails protecting fingertips that always bear a stain during strawberry season. They belong to my 87-year-old mother, who on this July day was dicing home-grown green beans for canning. One of my sisters took this picture. It's a companion piece to a photo that I took several years ago of my mom's hands as she was quilting. You can't see her calluses in this picture, but they are the result of the thousands — no, millions — of stitches she has put into hundreds of quilts. ... Not all stories need words to be told.

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