The Paring Knife

Mom used it for everything. I can see her standing in the tiny, galley kitchen in our apartment, with her hair tied back in two pony tails, one on top of the other. and her little black slippers, with “a bit of a heel”, peeling potatoes, and carrots, practically every day. Cutting up a lesser cut of beef, to turn it into a steaming pot of stroganoff. Cutting up cheddar cheese, to have with crackers with her afternoon tea. Sectioning her daily albacore, tuna sandwich, into six smaller pieces. Trimming off the harder crusts of bread for me, when I asked her to, as a small child. Slicing up cream cheese, pinwheel sandwiches, to serve when her friend Joan, would come to visit on Tuesdays. Sweet, yellow onions, sliced with precision, to accompany that gaud-awful beef liver, that was force fed to us every week.

After each task the little knife would perform, Mom would meticulously wash it by hand, dry it carefully, and tuck it back into the usual spot in the drawer. The story was, that this little knife travelled to Canada, from Belfast, Ireland with my grandmother, in 1924. I’ll bet my mother also snapped up that little knife, when purging her own mothers belongings. Perhaps it sparked fond memories for her; of peeling carrots, potatoes, or slicing onions. Reminders of her mother, memories of her father – or maybe it just gave her a sense of familiarity, and comfort, in some way.

I cherish that little knife. I also use it daily – to cut up potatoes, peel carrots, or slice an onion, to portion out a sandwich, or cut off hard crusts, because I want to. When I pull it from the drawer, I think of my mothers’ hand holding the handle, and notice that we hold it the same way. I feel my grandmothers presence too; watching over me, as her treasured little knife performs it’s duties for me now.

My hope is that the old knife will land with my daughter, Valerie, when the time comes, and that she can appreciate its comfort, and simple, but important impact over the generations.

For now, it will get used daily, living the next chapter of its life, in my home; in my top drawer, to the left of the sink, on the right hand side, until it gets wrapped in an old dish towel, packed into a storage box, and my children stumble upon it down the road, and recall the story of the old, worn out, wooden handled, paring knife.