I am amazed how the hands can remember skills I would have
thought long since lost.
When we were shopping the other day, G saw a bag of frozen
smelts and we bought them. I was
certainly game to give them a try. When
they were defrosted today I set to cleaning and boning them. I thought it would take me a long time, but
after one, my hands and fingers remembered, almost instinctively, how to cut
just through the flesh, run my fingers along the side, catching the backbone
with my thumbnail and pulling out the bones and ribs, flicking out the entrails
unscathed, gently rubbing off any remaining scales under cold water. The staff at my local fish market don’t do so
well, little bits of the innards are usually attached, sometimes damaging the
flavor of the flesh.
How did I learn this? I did not grow up near water. We
did not eat smelts. But I fondly
remember my father teaching us how to scale, bone and gut whole fish, usually
perch or bream. I seam to remember the
rule was that if you can catch them you can clean them. As I reached down and cut the head behind the
gills, slit the fish and pulled out the skeleton from the tail end my hands
seemed to be reliving some old ritual that I had all but forgotten and I was
young again, sitting on the dirt of the back yard on Washington Street, scaling
and gutting fish. I could almost hear
the sound of dad’s knife as he scraped the scales off the skin. I could almost see the small transparent
scales flying through the air, catching the light, sticking to everything.
I do remember after all.