Aileen Hunt

            I come home late to find my son, all six foot four of him, hunched over the kitchen table, peeling hazelnuts.

            “What's going on?” I ask, and he tells me he's making vegan Nutella for his girlfriend's birthday. A pile of unpeeled hazelnuts fills a bowl in front of him; a handful of peeled nuts lie scattered in another. Papery peels curl in the colander, like the parings of a yellow school pencil.

            I busy myself making tea. Should I tell him you can buy hazelnuts already peeled? I try to remember how it feels to be twenty-one and in love, the holiness of it all.

            I sip my tea and watch his face furrow in concentration. His big basketball-playing hands are clumsy; the dry nuts impossible to get to grips with. “Maybe there's an easier way,” I say, and pull out my phone. I scroll through a page of baking tips, then wet a paper towel and wrap it around a hazelnut. I twist the paper back and forth. The skin comes off in three or four pieces. Better. But still slow.

            My son sighs. He looks at the pile of unpeeled hazelnuts in front of him, then glances at the clock. It's already after ten. He has miscalculated the time and effort involved.

            “Do you want to keep going?” I ask, and he looks at me with pity, as if I could never understand the importance of vegan Nutella.

            “OK then,” I say. “Maybe we should try another method.”

            In the end, simple agitation works. We shake the hazelnuts in a closed container, and the skins loosen and fall away. My son works in batches, adds these new easily-peeled hazelnuts to the fiddly ones that broke his heart earlier.

            “There's still loads to do,” he says, voice uncertain. “I have to blend everything and let it cool before it can go in the fridge. Do we have any jars?”

            I find an empty glass jar, put it in the sink to soak. I need to get to bed. “The label will come off easy if you leave it for a bit,” I say. It's the only bit of wisdom I can offer.

            My son barely looks up. He's blending the hard hazelnuts into a thick, creamy spread, his body a study in focus. I leave him there at the table, head bowed, amazed at the alchemy of it all.