Now I am able to survive !

My grandmother was always proud of her hands—strong, gnarled, and work-roughened. They always helped her to survive, whatever it was doing – a renovation, gardening on her beloved patch, or wiping up dinner out of nothing. And she always taught me to survive too.

I remember one evening when my grandma was hunching over a big white bowl of potatoes to be peeled. Wearing a white kerchief and a white apron, she looked neat, well-organised, and serious. Yes, my grandma was always serious when it came to something responsible, which that dinner, in her opinion, actually was. Of course, I wanted to be a part of that responsible and big event too. But what I actually wanted to be a part of was that warmth that the woman exuded while peeling the potatoes. I was under the spell of my grandma’s skills to turn that simple activity into magic.

Picking up a knife, I decided to throw myself into learning a new skill and help my grandma. She, being as far as I understood, was absolutely flattered with my urge to learn peeling the potatoes, pursed her lips, turned up her nose, and looking down on me as if she was a queen of the kitchen, said: “Look attentively!” Her knife started doing a smooth sailing separating the skin from a potato tuber. “You need to make a strip of potato skin as long as a snake and as thin as a sheet of paper,” she claimed. Back then, it looked like rocket science to me—an 8-year-old girl—so that it was my turn to purse my lips. “Okaaay!” I thought to myself. 

The first potato was whirling in my hand for a minute or two and ended up being absolutely naked in another bowl. I picked the second one, and in a minute it joined its adjacent. Then, it was the third, the fourth, the fifth… My grandma, watching my enthusiastic movements, nodded proudly and drew a conclusion: “Well, if something goes wrong, you are now able to survive!”