On Garden Lane, there is a house numbered 212 with stain glass windows, wooden siding, and a little white porch. It isn’t much really. The windows are cracked and the porch swing is broken, barely hanging on by the rusty chain on the right side, still trying to hold on to a life long gone. It barely has two stories, since the second one is half the height it should`. When you come in the front door the only staircase is on the left, winding up along the wall to that little, insignificant room. None of it is much of anything, really.
But along the right side of that little staircase is a
handrail.
That might sound insignificant, but handrails are a vastly
underestimated species. This particular
rail was crafted of the finest cedar, well-polished and practically glimmering
in its day. Of course, its day has long
passed. While it still stands strongly,
unlike much of the abandoned house, the polish is long worn down and the once
red cedar has faded to a dull brown, scratched and chipped in uncountable
places. That alone would make it
worthless to the passing eye, not to mention the stain of innumerable dirty
hands. But if anyone would stop to look
at something so insignificant as a worn down handrail, they might begin to
sense the underestimated value. In such
craftsmanship, wears and tears are an occupational hazard every rail must
accept. If the wood is stout and strong
enough to bear them, such marks can become scars of war and age—badges of honor
for all that might see them. No one
viewer could understand the full story written in those marks, but the handrail
itself can remember them as long as it stands, keeping each wound safely tucked
in its memory as a blow taken and endured.
Some are memories easy to keep and desirable to remember, like the chip
on the corner at the bottom where little Charlie bumped his head the first time
he tried to climb the staircase on his own.
Others are a little harder and infinitely more painful, like the crack
at the top where Mr. Thompson slammed his fist to vent the anger that almost
struck his wife in their last argument, before they left little 212 Garden Lane
in different directions, or the scratches right in the middle where old Miss
Susan tried so hard to hang on before she fell and broke her hip in the injury
that ended up taking her away to a bigger house with more caretakers but less
of the love that comes from one’s own home.
Some are light splinters, and some are deep gouges that sting and ache
after years for healing. But both are
equally remembered and documented without bias in that little, seemingly
insignificant frame.
Hands that raced down excitedly and hands that trudged up
disappointedly left the same handprints, but the rail knows the differences now
just as it felt the difference all those years ago when they occurred. Fingers that grasped shakily and fingers that
traced nostalgically were equally supported.
Nails that tapped impatiently and nails that scratched angrily were
accepted on the same terms, all needing the same surface on which to express
feelings that were acknowledge nowhere else.
All hands relied on the rail, and to all hands the rail offered all it
had to give. Sometimes that support was
not enough, but it never ceased to offer, just the same. Even the rail knows that it is not the wood
that matters, even in its day of glory and polish. Rather, it is the scars and stains that
matter, and the human hearts that went into them. That is why the handrail is so important, and
so often overlooked: because it is the flaws that make the character and the
value, not the structure. That is why so
many pass by and never sense the importance, and why even that solid cedar
frame will eventually be torn down with the rest of that ancient home and
forgotten: because no one stops to think of the hands on the rail.
