TheBanyanTree: the perfect peel

[Monique Colver]

Awesome story.

M
On Jan 25, 2011 8:32 AM, "Julie Anna Teague" <jateague at indiana.edu> wrote:
> 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.
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