TheBanyanTree: the perfect peel

[Indiglow]

What a lovely tribute to your grandmother!  Hands have always had a very special meaning for me (and many conversations centered around hands) so reading this was sheer joy!  Thank you for sharing!
Hugs,
Jana

--- On Tue, 1/25/11, Julie Anna Teague <jateague at indiana.edu> wrote:


From: Julie Anna Teague <jateague at indiana.edu>
Subject: TheBanyanTree: the perfect peel
To: "banyantree" <thebanyantree at remsset.com>
Date: Tuesday, January 25, 2011, 8:32 AM


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.