Growing in Small Ways

Kate Cousino

I am folding towels, a mundane enough chore. Gui is beside me, handing me a towel at a time, faster than I can possibly fold so that a pile forms on my lap. Warm dry laundry on a warm day; I can feel the perspiration on my forehead and upper lip, even though the work isn’t strenuous. In this peaceful moment, I detach a little, become lost in my thoughts. I watch my own hands fold, fold again, and smooth a neat square pile of towels. No two match, some are worn hand-me-downs from our families, from our times in college, before marriage, and their edges fray, their colors are faded. Folded as they are, neat and clean, they emanate domestic comfort and homeliness.

I marvel at my hands. Do these fingers really belong to me? Have I anything to do with these palms? They are browner than I remember, after two years here in the sun. Plain and unadorned, except for my wedding and engagement rings. There are minute lines crosshatching between each knuckle, beginning to creep up my fingers and down the backs of my hands, still only faintly discernible. They are not my mother’s hands – not yet. But I see it coming, in the shape of them, the neat efficient motion as I fold, the veins tracing their bluish way across their backs.

I saw it two weeks ago, as I turned rhubarb, sugar, flour, water, and shortening into pies. I cut, mixed, kneaded, and rolled the crusts into shape, frustrated as ever at the difficulty of manipulating the very simple recipe my mother handed on to me. It is always too dry or too sticky, too difficult to roll, too hard to hold together, never perfect like my mother’s crusts were – still the standard I aspire to. But as I molded the empty shells into the waiting pie pans, I saw my hands effortlessly crimping the crust with thumbs and index fingers, turning the pie plate just so to produce an even pattern, trimming off the long ragged strip of extra dough with a sharp knife and smooth motion. When did I learn to trim a crust without thinking? Such a small thing, but evocative of all the years I watched my mother and tried to emulate her, failing constantly.

I thought then that these small domesticities were something innate, and I just didn’t have that quality. Or maybe that they needed to be learned, and I didn’t have it in me – the patience, the aptitude, the discipline – to learn. Sometimes I dreamed of finding a teacher with the patience and the gentleness to teach me in secret, since it embarrassed me so much to be anything but immediately perfect. Only rarely, in odd moments of hope and longing, did it occur to me that maybe some skills are not learnt so much as grown.

Quietly, thoughtfully, I fold the last towel and carry my pile to the bathroom to join the other towels. I watch my three year old do somersaults on my bed, and I check on my sleeping baby in the bassinet. One little task finished, for now. My heart lightens at the thought of the mother I may yet grow to be through all the tasks still before me.