These are not my hands

Look at this finger.  How old is this finger?  60?  75?  Can you believe it's actually 21 years and exactly 30 days old?  This is nothing compared to what it usually is.  This is after washing my hands with soap and water so there was a little moisture soaked in.  My hands are stained from clay, dry, cracked, scarred, unnaturally colored, flaking, itchy, rough, and wounded.  This is a ceramist finger on an okay day.  You know when you're eating cheesy popcorn or messy chicken wings or anything delicious enough to lick off your fingers?  There are cracks deep enough in my hands to store some of this heavenly goodness for later when I get hungry.

My hands are used and abused everyday.  They are constantly being soaked in water or wet clay and dried again either by a dirty towel or with dry ceramic material.  They throw pots on the wheel, roll slabs of clay, stir up settled glaze in buckets, break bone dry clay into tiny pieces, delicately paint on slip, unload hot kilns, spray on glaze, hose down the studio floors, sweep dust into pans, and are plunged into thick clay buckets of reclaim.  Somehow they also function normally outside of my studio but I am embarrassed to show my hands to people in public.  I even kept my gloves on in the post office today for fear that my hands might cause alarm.  I need to take better care of my hands!  Putting plastic gloves and tubs of moisturizer on the top of my imaginary shopping list.