Around the time I got pregnant, my blood pressure became a little unstable. Not violently high, but after I gave birth they put me on medication. The medication does two things - one, it acts like a water pill (keeping me from retaining water that would add to internal vascular pressure) and two, some other thing, which I'm not so clear on.

Problem is, these pills are not consistent on my system.

Maybe it's the other way around.

All I know is that every few days or weeks I turn into the blueberry girl from Willy Wonka. I swell up, my face becomes even more round (at which point, the Charlie Brown references become unavoidable) and let's be brutally honest here, my fingers turn into snausages.

Not that I have lovely, thin, elegant fingers to begin with. That honor remains with my childhood friend Susan - whose hands I can visualize and envy even at this moment.

No, mine start short and wide and then swell into those hot dogs that "plump when you cook 'em". This probably has something to do with salt or being perimenapausal (TMI?) or even the weather. For a day or so, they'll resemble portly chihauhaus - every one of them.

Twenty years ago, young and glowing and pink and completely thick as a plank about the ways of the world - I would look at my hands and somehow imagine that over time I would find a way to turn them into something prettier, more feminine-looking with the right polish or rings or excersize. Oh, who knew? It could of happened. That, and flying cars.

So this morning I have blueberry girl fingers and I was just being fed up with them. Then my sweet, sweet son comes and puts his little hands over mine; comparing, inspecting.

"Let's do a craft, Mommy. I want to trace your hand," he says.
"OH, let's trace your hand, instead, sweetie. Your hands are beautiful," I tell him.
"No, Mommy, let's do both. See? I hold your hand and then you trace them. And we can color them together."
"Both our hands together?" I ask.
"Yes," my amazing son says, "together. That's my favorite."

Tell me that we won't lose this. Tell me that my blueberry girl hands will always feel so good holding his perfect little hands. Tell me we'll always know we're beautiful.