A potato peeler's story

A potato peeler’s tale.


(This is the short, concrete version. If someone cares to know more details, they could refer to the long and boring explanations that will follow this one, some day, when I write them down).

The plastic blue potato peeler followed me most of my life. It was a loyal, intransigent and irreplaceable friend. Considering that every few years I need to change countries, careers, and husbands, the story of the potato peeler has been a beacon in my life (and yes, a common place like no other).

It started its life as my potato peeler in 1964, in Montevideo, when I found it in a small bazaar in San José and Convención. It came with me to Buenos Aires, to spend my 1st marriage together. I can’t explain the reasons for that marriage. I was 19 years old.

In 1969 I suddenly realized I had to leave Buenos Aires, my marriage, my career and my few material possessions, and go back to Montevideo, potato peeler in hand, to a new relationship that was developing with an old friend from my childhood and teenage years.

The three of us lived together, the potato peeler in a kitchen drawer and the two of us in a series of small apartments, for 7 years. I was studying Architecture and wasn’t too far from graduating. Then, came the dictatorship. Around 1976, I started to feel that what looked like it was going to last forever, might not; that we may be afraid; that we may want to change. Hard to describe, for it was very intimate and even a little bit sad. A piece of the chaos had entered each and every one of us. The feelings were getting erased, and then … I had to leave the country. One day, my father came into my apartment, clapping his hands and saying “boino, afoira” (well, out!). I was so distracted, I thought this was because my parents had found out my future husband number three had already appeared somewhere in the sky. And then it hit me. I couldn’t believe my father was serious, that I really had to leave the country, otherwise … I reacted, grabbed two pair of panties, a toothbrush, and my potato peeler, and announced “I’m ready”. My father, scared, but with a cool head, managed to get all his paternal feelings together and said, “Don’t be an idiot”. He continued: “Get a normal suitcase, put normal clothes inside and go to the airport, like a normal person”. My father, as usual, with his years of Bolshevik experience, knew what to do better than I did.

I managed to do everything he had told me to, with a short 24-hour delay just to make sure things were really as bad as they looked. They were. It was March, but already very cold. I wore a gamulán with deep pockets. It was interesting going to the airport wearing a tourist face, approaching the counter, and asking for a round-trip ticket. The girl behind the counter took my ID, went into a small office, came out, and said “‘Round trip? Are you sure?” I put my faith in all the saints that I didn’t believe existed, squished the plastic blue potato peeler in my pocket, and answered ‘yes’ with total calmness… Have you ever felt you were going to shit your pants? This would have been the perfect moment for it. I thought I wouldn’t be able to get too far, but I walked onto the airplane, and then crawled out again without anyone noticing me, down to the runway, to push it from behind and make it go up as soon as possible.

My heart felt like an old 78RPM record, the kind that got scratches all over it. Finally, when the airplane started to taxi up the runway, I slithered back in thru a little hole, and reappeared in the bathroom, wet and smelly, and breathing heavily.

I landed in Buenos Aires, which might have been at that time the only place in the world even more dangerous than Montevideo, but I couldn’t go any further for simple lack of money. While I was in this process of leaving my country I, kind of absent-mindedly, separated from my husband No. 2 as well. He became my favorite ex-husband, which is no small feat.

During my first week in Buenos Aires I was the poor imitation of a zombie. How it feels to lose everything, absolutely everything, from one moment to the next, is not easy to explain. I felt like I was walking on cotton clouds, with nowhere to go, and nowhere to sleep. I couldn’t go downtown, because the Uruguayan police was there, along with the Argentinian police -the guys helped each other out.
I couldn’t call home because the phones were tapped. I wasn’t allowed to know anything about my family, my friends, my job, my studies, my city or my country. You survive, but then you shouldn’t complain later in life when it hits you back. You have to keep your sense of humor. It’s as simple as that. Walk down the unknown streets smiling, so no one will guess that …
My current husband came to Buenos Aires not too long after that – just by sheer coincidence, the night before one of the bloodiest Argentinian coups in history – and together we stepped into the craziest adventure I could ever have imagined. In the middle of all that fear, I started a new life with an unknown goy who had no job, no career, two recently adopted daughters who remained with his ex-wife, and a life in a country at a time that wasn’t too promising. We moved into a delirious long term cheap little boarding house, “Don Julio’s Pensión”.

The potato peeler did its job well. Potatoes were the only food we could afford. That is a lie. We ate almost only noodles and liver, which provided the most proteins and calories for the lowest possible price. Later, never again did I eat that combination. The atmosphere was one of real terror and the only thing we could do was to keep our sense of dark, really dark, totally dark, humor. “Don Julio’s” boarding house, recommended to us just because it was far away from downtown, was full of Uruguayans, too well known to everybody. But there was no other option.

Through nothing short of a miracle, I found a job as an architect. Manuel applied for a fellowship that required a degree in Medicine, and decided to do whatever he needed to get that degree. He managed to study in the freezing ‘pensión’ while I was working. He earned the degree by practicing in different hospitals around Buenos Aires – the mess was such that he was not only allowed to enter the hospitals, but could also follow professors around and even perform rectal exams on the poor patients in order to practice. He would travel back to Montevideo to take the three exams he still needed to finish – he was able to go, not too calmly, but he could.

One day, he called me at work to tell me he was an MD. That same day was the deadline for the fellowship, so I shook my ankles, opened up my little wings, took flight, and glided above the gorgeous city up to the Central Post Office, to mail an envelope to the Guggenheim Foundation. They normally receive thousand of requests every year, and some common sense people would know that the fellowships are practically impossible to get. We immediately forgot all about it, and decided to take care of some details we had been neglecting, so we decided to get pregnant. We, of course, weren’t about to put our lives on hold for the simple reason that we had nowhere to live, or anything to live off of.

Contrary to my expectations, Manuel’s innate optimism worked its magic. A few months later we found out he had gotten the fellowship. I was very pregnant by then, and we asked for a deferment so by the time we travelled, the little baby could at least hold his head up on his own. We were leaving for the United States, to Yale University in New Haven, which we really didn’t know anything about. We were planning on staying there for a year, perhaps two, if there was no other possibility. I was in charge of the suitcases. All of our worldly belongings fit into two suitcases, plus a little collapsible baby bed/bath.

Holding my plastic blue potato peeler, I managed to shove in those suitcases what I could. All the rest, consisting of weird stuff like tools – an old hammer, some screwdrivers … because one could never know if it would be possible to find such valuable items in the US – plus a small vase, and my big woolen poncho – a present from my mother-in-law – went into a trunk belonging to a friend’s grandmother, which she had brought with her 50 years earlier, when she moved from Poland to Argentina. That trunk had a longer history than ours. We still have it. The potato peeler didn’t go in the trunk, but rather with me, in my purse. Strangely enough, that was 35 years ago… and I still feel I have to ask for forgiveness, when I explain that we just started to stay in the States, simply staying.

About 10 years ago, my plastic blue potato peeler started, reflexively, to peel itself. It turned almost white, with a new scaly texture. I immediately dedicated my life to find a substitute.
Clearly, it’s way easier to find a husband than a good potato peeler. I managed to get about ten (potato peelers, I mean, not husbands) but none could match that endearing original. Finally I found an acceptable one, red, Made in Germany, good, but not perfect. At that moment, I stopped peeling fruits, vegetables, and elephants, and started cooking everything with the peel still on. Even bananas. The plastic blue potato peeler is now in a kitchen drawer, and every once in a while I stare at it, realizing I can be faithful to at least one thing for many, many years.