Love is in our hands

 Two Projects

It started with butter.

I told the girls how, when I was young, fresh cream arrived from the barn in a bucket and was transferred to a clean quart jar. Someone, often me, was handed he job of turning it into butter. Sometimes with the hand‑crank churn, sometimes with nothing but my own arms and a jar that seemed to grow heavier as I shook the jar and the cream thickened . They listened with that mix of disbelief and curiosity only kids leaving childhood for the teen years can manage.

“Wait,” the younger one said. “Are you telling me you can make butter at home?”

Yes, that’s exactly what I was saying. Would you like to try? I got an enthusiastic yes from both girls.

So the next Saturday, we did.

We purchased two quarts of heavy cream. So that each girl had a chance to see the process, we had two sessions. While one girl had a music lesson, I led the other through using a food‑processor instead of the old hand cranked churn. The process was simple mechanical agitation. The girls leaned in like apprentices. I stopped the machine now and then to show them the stages: the increased volume of the newly whipped cream, the first yellow flecks, the moment the butterfat broke free from the buttermilk. They watched the transformation with the same attention I once gave it as a child.

Later, after the butter had rested in ice, I gathered them again to work the liquid out — folding, pressing, shaping. Together we formed three small butter balls: one for immediate use including on fresh baked biscuits the next morning, two for the freezer. When I unwrapped one of those frozen balls a few weeks later, I found they had each drawn a happy face on their own, the way I once pressed roses into fresh butter with a chilled glass lid from the butter dish. I love that spontaneously, they created and left their mark, their delight, their echo of my childhood gesture.

That was one kind of making — shared, noisy, full of commentary and discovery. And it of course soft hands from shaping the butter.

Crayons

The other kind happened quietly, without an audience.

The butter making session was last fall. Late this winter, I gathered the broken crayons that had accumulated in the house,  the tiny nubs, the snapped halves, the colors that had lost their wrappers. I sorted them into families of blues, reds, greens, golds. Then I set up a double boiler pot on the stove, nested an ice cube tray inside, and melted the pieces down into new, chunky blocks of color.

This wasn’t a project with the grandchildren. It was a project for the youngest one — our two‑year‑old whose hands are still learning how to hold the world. The new crayon blocks would be easier to grip, harder to break, more satisfying to press onto paper. A small act of preparation that would make his next drawing session smoother, more joyful.

Two different Saturdays. Two different ages. Two different kinds of making.

But the heart of it is the same: taking something ordinary — cream, crayons — and reshaping it into something that carries a kind of joy in creating forward. One activity I hoped would teach the older girls where I come from. The other cleared a path for the little one to expand his skills in color and expression . While he draws, I keep up a patter about what marks he’s making, what color he’s using. He doesn’t say much yet in answer to the request to “tell me about your drawing.” But he’s building vocabulary and gaining confidence which will matter no matter where he’s going.

Both activities are love expressed through my hands.