TheBanyanTree: the perfect peel

[Julie Anna Teague]

I used to be amazed at the things my grandmother could do with her
hands.  Stick them in the hottest water.  Peel an apple with a regular
knife, keeping the entire peel intact in a long green spiral thin as a 
leaf.  I'd ask her, every time we made pie together, to please try and 
make it come off in one piece.  How do you do that, grandma!  How do 
you peel toward your thumb and not cut your thumb?  How do you snap 
beans that fast without even looking or leave that tiny neat hole where 
the stem of the strawberry used to be?  I was the dish dryer and she 
the dishwasher and I'd squeal at the hotness of the water that was 
nothing to her as I reached in to grab the next plate.

Last night I thought about all these things as I deftly peeled an 
apple, knife slipping just barely beneath its skin, until the entire 
thing curled in the sink in a single piece.  I now realize that grandma 
could do this, and I can do this, because like her, I've peeled 
thousands of apples.  I've made thousands of pies, snapped more beans 
than I can remember, washed thousands of plates and pans from thousands 
of home cooked meals in water hot enough to make my sons cringe and cry 
out.  My hands are starting to look like hers.  My fingers are getting 
twisted, the veins on the backs of my hands pop out, and there are a 
few scars because, like grandma, I've worked decades of gardens, fixed 
hundreds of ripped seams and missing buttons, hung out endless lines of 
laundry on an endless number of sunny days, cut towards my thumb and 
missed a few times, and wrung my hands in caring over those I love.  I 
realized, now, that the miracle of her hands was not the trick of 
making that single perfect peel, but in all the purposeful and joyful 
living that went into being able to tickle my amazement by doing it 
perfectly for me.

Julie
In honor of the everyday presence of the spirit of my loving grandmother,
Myrtle Arla Lindsey Taylor, October 5th 1905 - February, 1993.