Take prayer into your own hands: the rosary's manual prayer has been passed down by generations of working-class women.

WHEN MY FATHER WAS DYING OF CANCER, my mother said the rosary before bed, and if it was a particularly exhausting day caring for him at borne, she fell asleep with the wooden beads between her fingers.

Some weeks after his death, while cleaning out a drawer, I found my rosary beads and was moved to say it for the first time in years. Later I wondered why I hadn't said it for my father as my mother had done. Why hadn't I prayed to the Blessed Mother in such a hand-intensive way as three generations of women in my family before me?

A legend tells of Mary taking rosebuds from the lips of a young monk as he recited the Ave Marias. She wove them into a garland. In Sanskrit the word rosary means "garden of flowers" or "necklace of beads." The word bead comes from the Anglo-Saxon bede and means prayer. Thus the association between Mary and the rosary.

For me, it's not a question of praying to the Blessed Mother but how. The women in my family regard her as the Queen of Peace, Mother of the universe, and most importantly, Mother of Christ. Our belief is that if we can't pray to her, to whom can we pray? Throughout the scriptures it is suggested that Jesus listened to what his mother had to say. Why shouldn't we?

In many ways, the rosary is the history of working-class people who couldn't afford Bibles or read them but wanted their prayers to count and be counted. According to historians, devoted laity would collect 150 pebbles--one for every psalm--and put them inside a pouch. After they said a Lord's Prayer, they would toss a pebble on the ground, so they knew when their pouch was empty, they had finished. Later a rope with 150 knots was used, then shortened to a rope with 50 knots said three times a day. Wood and clay, then precious metals and gemstones were used for prayer beads. Eventually, the modern, so-called Dominican rosary--with 150 Hall Marys, accompanying Our Fathers, meditations on the mysteries, and Glory Be's--was established in the 16th century.

I thought of my great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother and realized that unlike myself, they used their hands in prayer much the same way they did in their work. Be it at home or in the labor force, their work was a series of methodical hand motions that involved counting or repetition in its execution. Saying the rosary is a way for the working-class women in my family to use their hands not just for material production but for the work of the Blessed Mother.

My great-grandmother was a Sicilian immigrant who took care of her grandchildren so her children could find work during the Depression. She baked bread four times a week. After rhythmically rolling and kneading the dough with her fingers as she counted in Italian, she put it in a bowl with a lid and her old fur coat on top to quicken the rise. Finished baking for the day, my great-grandmother said the rosary, sometimes leaving a dusting of flour on the beads.

My grandmother quit school after the fifth grade to go to work. One of her jobs was at a factory that manufactured glass for cars. By praying with her crystal rosary beads every night, she could handle glass in a spiritual way.

My mother is no stranger to working with her hands either. She was a switchboard operator at a hospital before she got married and helped in the family fruit store that my grandmother managed for more than 50 years. Every morning, she took fruit as tiny as kumquats out of their boxes and arranged them in the display bins.

MY SISTER HAS HAD HER SHARE OF HAND-INTENSIVE ASSEMBLY jobs that have caused repetitive stress syndrome and rheumatoid arthritis. She sometimes struggles to button her shirt, let alone finger a five-decade string of rosary beads. She, like myself, doesn't pray with her hands, though for different reasons. While I started out shaking sheets at a laundry one summer, I turned away from manual labor. As a writer, I have picked up the pen to work and meditate in a more free-form way. I have come to appreciate doing the same when in prayer.

Yet when I think of three generations of women in my family, I realize that, although prayer doesn't have to be routinely counted, saying the rosary allows the hands to be moved by the spirit. And that's the most fulfilling kind of work there is.

By PAOLA CORSO, author of poetry and fiction set in Pennsylvania river towns, drawing from her working-class, Italian American background.