THE DARLINGS
As a kid I remember thinking the most elegant hands I’d ever seen were Mary Darling’s in Disney’s Peter Pan. There’s a close up of them in the movie’s opening minutes where Mary tucks Michael into bed and assures him that George, his father, isn’t really angry at the boys and Wendy, and that he loves them very much. Michael quietly returns the “buried treasure”—his father’s cuff links—to his mother. His tiny hands let go of the treasure into hers. She folds her long and slender fingers like an oyster slowly snapping shut, like an envelope sealed snugly, or the way lenses open and close. I envied those hands, not for myself, or in spite of my own, but in the way girls regretfully envy the beauty of other mothers. I imagine Diane Lane has similar hands, that Deborah Kerr did too.
