I watched a man with one hand make himself a cup of coffee once. I admired the dexterity that one hand had. I watched him open a box of brown sugar, put some sugar in his coffee, and close the box again. He did it quickly, connectedly, exactly, as if it were all one fluid, daedel movement. He popped the cardboard tab on the top of the box open with his single index finger, then widened the mouth of the plastic bag that held the sugar with his five fingers. He bunched them together, then spread them apart a few times, quickly. (It reminded me of a squid's propulsion, that spreading of his fingers.) He picked up the spoon to lift out a rounded mound of the brown granules, stirred the sugar into his coffee with a few quick flicks of his wrist, then brought the spoon to his mouth and sucked it clean. As if as a finishing flourish, he tossed it, clinking, into the sink's metal basin.
He picked up the sweetened coffee with that one hand, his left hand. His left arm was very strong; I saw how strong it was as he lifted the mug to his mouth. I wondered if he had always been left-handed, or was forced to be by the loss of his right, or whether he was born without his right hand and so never knew whether he would have been right-handed, if he had had both. He toasted me with with his upraised fist, curled around the cup of coffee.
In the moment before he turned away, I found his one hand very beautiful, very nobel and worthy of respect. I held back the flooding impulse to kiss it. I resisted because I did not know how steady his hand was, despite its strength; I did not know how his hand would react to my untoward kiss. My pressing his hand with my lips would probably have knocked the coffee cup, anyway, and would have burned my face, and his fine fist.
