If there is a portrait of my mother’shands that is most etched inmy mind, it is the way she holds apiece of fruit as she deftly slipsthe skin from its flesh.In this, her hands are a sort of mirror of her determination.
Don’t let appearances deceive you: She can pick up the larg-
est cast-iron pan without a wince, carry a preposterously
large suitcase that she’ll pretend is too heavy for her if I, her
trusty porter, am anywhere in sight.
And yet I still register some horror at how brazenly she
will thrust her hands into something. She also, more often
than not, would at some point during a meal jettison her
silverware and delve in with her fingers. I think it wasn’t so
much out of a lack of concern for etiquette as it was a pri-ONE OF THE MOST distinctive things about my mother is
her hands, though I would imagine that the hands of anyone’s
mother would seem distinctive to them. Those are the hands,
after all, that soothe us throughout so much of our childhood,
that change our diapers and swaddle us and hold us, and
comb our hair, and apply unwanted sunscreen and antisep-
tic and Band-Aids. But there is something about the way
my mom, the chef Alice Waters, uses hers—which is to say,
with total conviction and without fear—that makes them
so distinctive.
What other people often notice about her hands is her
battery of rings: the stacks of unshowy stone-studded Victorian
bands that grace nearly every finger. Having a modest treasury
on her fingers doesn’t, however, prevent her from plunging
her hands into whatever she pleases: a salad that requires
tossing, shrimp that needs peeling, a near-scalding broth
whose bones have to be removed immediately. Needless to
say, none of her rings are perfectly intact. But there is also
something in the strength of her fingers—whether innate or
from years of kitchen work—that I find especially unusual.74 REAL SIMPLE APRIL 2020RELATING0420GOO.V2.indd 74 FINAL 2/24/20 9:47 AM