When my grandfather didn’t drink, he had, as my Grandma said, “golden hands”. He made things out of whatever he could get his hands on. For example, once he made me a set of doll’s furniture— a table and chairs with spiral legs— out of tin cans. And he covered the roof of our dacha with silvery rhombuses cut out of iron. Almost nothing of what he did has survived.

But when I was sorting things out and found these spoons, my mom said he made them. They always seemed very comfortable to me: as a little girl, I liked to fish pasta out of the bubbling water with them. And also, it was convenient to take canned peas out of the jar.

These spoons are still in our kitchen, we still use them, and when I see them, I feel sorry that the rest of the things my grandfather made have not survived.