Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes character certainly would notice such things. I, too, noticed them when I was growing up. I noticed especially my maternal grandmother’s hands. (Nannie, we grandkids called her.) Perhaps the most prominent feature of Nannie’s hands was that they showed unmistakable evidence of arthritis. The knuckles were swollen and enlarged, hard and painful-looking things. I especially recall the knuckle of her index finger, where the finger joined the

Mother—Hazel Margaret Summers Peterson—came from good stock. The Summers family of Heiskell, Tennessee, were special to me, and, although I don’t get to see them often any more, they remain so. Nannie and Paw taught their children well. Mother was a woman of firm convictions and deep devotion to both her faith and her family. One of my most vivid memories of Mother is of an incident from my childhood. Just before the school bus came one morning, I suddenly remembered that I h