These Hands is a storytelling project to share Northern Virginian’s stories through a focus on how they used their hands in memorable moments of life.
Liz Keith, 21, Reston
These hands:
Gripped a hockey stick. “My dad was state department, so I was born in Seoul, South Korea. Then we lived in Reston for three years, Malaysia for three years, Reston for three years and so on. My parents have owned houses in Reston for 35 years. We lived by Glade Pool in a court the shape of a horseshoe when I was a kid, and there were three or four kids in every house. There was a playground nearby, but mostly all us neighborhood kids would make up games and play sports outside. We’d play street hockey. The oldest kid would watch out for cars, and two kids moved the net and two others made sure the little kids stayed on the sidewalk. I loved growing up there.”
Penned a response to Hamlet to graduate early. “When I came back from Malaysia, I lived off Lawyers Road, and there weren’t many kids in that neighborhood. Starting South Lakes (High School), it was way different. The people who still lived in Reston had all been on the same swim team, the same soccer team, the same basketball teams, girl guides, boy scouts. It was weird to integrate myself into that when I had been gone. Everything kept going without me, and it was so hard to fit in because Reston is so close-knit. I hated high school. By that point I was so done with everything. I wasn’t really into the high school drama. I was frustrated with overlapping of academics. I had to repeat a lot of stuff or take all these SOLs with no background in them. I decided in the spring of my junior year to graduate a year early. I needed one more English class to graduate. I took the English class that summer, and I got my diploma.”
Rescued four drowning people. “I’m one of six kids, and my siblings had all lifeguarded. So as soon as I was 15 and able to get my work permit, I went right to Reston Community Center and filled out an application. At RCC, I’ve made four rescues. First one was a kid coming down the water slide and he didn’t resurface. The second one was a teenage boy who wasn’t a strong swimmer but wanted to be with his friends. He got nervous and started panicking. And then there was one time when there was a boy—maybe an 8-year-old but big for his age—in the middle of the pool, and he was trying to fix his goggles and tread water at the same time and started to go under. His mom went to go grab him, but she couldn’t grab him and tread water, so I had to jump in and put both of them on my tube. And then the last one was in the spa, which was scary because you don’t have very good visibility of our spa at Reston. So I didn’t see him go under. Someone yelled for me. The man in the spa was in his later 80s, and he fainted, went under. I back-boarded him out. I was worried he was having a stroke because I wasn’t sure if he couldn’t speak English or if he was just groggy. We called EMS.”
Clutched an autistic boy: “The year after high school, I took a year off and was hired as a full-time nanny by a family I’d babysat for occasionally. One of the children is severely autistic. He is in therapy all day. He’s nonverbal. I’ve known him since he was born. He was hitting every milestone until he was 2 and then started regressing. He won’t just walk next to you. I have to hold him so we can walk together [and] he doesn’t run off. After working with him full-time, I wanted to go into OT or speech therapy.”
Endured her brother John’s crushing grip. “John and his brother lived in an orphanage [in South Korea]. This family was supposed to adopt them but then they just adopted his brother. He was 16 and was just about to be moved to another house with the older kids. My parents wanted to adopt him. They’d take him for weekend visitation, but they couldn’t fully adopt him until I was born. They adopted him the day after I was born. As his celebral palsy got worse, he walked with canes, but as time went on, he got weaker and weaker and ended up needing to use his walker. He wanted to just use his cane sometimes, but it would put him off balance, so I would hold his left hand, which was his spastic side. He’d crush my hand without knowing it. Usually we’d link elbows. The medicine he was taking in the orphanage for his seizures deteriorated his bone marrow, so he’d get serious infections until he died …. I wear his ashes in this locket around my neck.”
Jerked a parachute cord to experience zero gravity. After her birthday two weeks ago, Liz skydived with her boyfriend over Warrenton. “Beforehand I wasn’t nervous, but I wasn’t crazy excited either. We got in this really small plane. We went up to 10,000 feet. I could see the mountains—they were just so beautiful. My instructor all of sudden slid me forward—I’m sitting on the edge of the plane, my legs are hooked underneath the plane, and I looked down and I’m at 10,000 feet, and I think that’s when it hit me. Then you drop, and you’re free-falling. It really scared me. I had so many butterflies. We pulled the chute and then floated and did circles. It was so pretty. Then we went on our backs, and we both pulled the cord to experience zero gravity. I definitely think it’s something to do once in your life.”
Other Northern Virginians profiled in These Hands