SPOON

— This is granddad's aluminum spoon. He cut the hole in it himself to blow soap bubbles when my brother Dima was still small. He did it with some kind of saw for metal… I'm not sure what it's called – I didn't even understand why he had done it (...) This was his favorite spoon. It's the only one like it we had, not tin but aluminum. The rest of them are completely ordinary. Mom had wanted for a long time to chuck it out, but he loved it. I don't know, maybe if he'd ruined a different spoon mom would have chewed him out, but this one — maybe it was easier to cut, I don't know (...) And it was interesting for him. There were always tools lying in a special box in the hallway. He always kept it tidy and was very careful with it. He would yell at us if we took something and then put it back in the wrong place. But mom was the one who fed us. Our mom is... She's a theater director. Well, not actually in a theater. She, um, worked with kids in a studio. It was her own thing. Well, she's a talented person, let's just say that. She would tell him fairy tales, growl, bark, meow, make strange faces. And he laughed and, of course, ate with pleasure. He was usually pretty easy to feed (...) But sometimes he would be very naughty and yell so loudly… It could drag on for hours… everyone got fed up. Then Grandpa would come in — we lived with him — he would come in with some mug and bang on it with a spoon, or start stirring stuff in there with it. This immediately attracted the kid's attention. He stirred and stirred, and then pulled out the spoon and started blowing soap bubbles. And this of course took little Dima aback. He'd never seen any cutlery like that before.