Storytelling

I made strawberry jam today. Yes, it was one of the hotter days of summer. No, I do not have air conditioning. Yes, it filled my kitchen with hot steam and my brow with sweat. But the berries weren't going to last any longer. I had to seize my moment.

I once read something about how it is through food that we keep the art of family storytelling, how we keep those who have gone before us, alive. I think it's true.

I am not a great preserver of food, although I come from a line of women who have made this a part of life. I suppose most of us come from that same stock. After all, until fifty years ago, preserving food was probably the only way to be sure there would be food on the table during the long, barren months. I made blueberry jam once, eight years ago. I have stuck a few beans in the freezer. This pretty much sums up my efforts at food preservation.

Alex helped today. We hulled the berries. He crushed them. We both delighted in the vibrant, juicy pulp, the unique delight of a fresh strawberry's sweet perfume. He mixed in the sugar - more sugar then should be mixed in anything a kid is going to eat - and set it on the stove to boil. I brought out the lobster pot and filled it with water to boil for sterilizing the jars and processing the jam once the red syrup filled the glass. It isn't a complicated process, but it should be unfamiliar to me. Yet I found myself moving through the steps like I had done them one hundred times before - following the path of my mother's mother to quote my own poem, written years ago. An instinct more then process. As the berries began to bubble, an image came to my mind - my mother skimming the foam that rises to the top off of the boiling jam. She put it in a bowl and later, put it on ice cream for my brother and me. The by-product of the jam turned into a ritualistic treat - something to be had and savored only once each year when the delicate June strawberries ripened and my mother pulled out her canning jars and set about saving their sweetness for the winter.

I told Alex about it - the foam on ice cream. I expected him to give me a look of disgust, but instead he asked if he could try it too. He waited with great anticipation and when the jam was done, I skimmed off the hot layer and served it over ice cream. He won't forget. He'll remind me next year when we do this again.

"Has this always been your dream, Mom? To make this jam?" he asked earnestly as he crushed the berries. My first instinct was no. No. If someone had told me twenty years ago that I would ever plan to make jam, then no. No. It went against the notion of the woman I planned to be.

But the real answer is yes. Somehow, the strength and wisdom and love of my mother, my grandmother are sealed within those satisfying, now cool, ruby-filled jars. Those jars are a line from them to me - and from me to the women who came before them, who taught them to skim the foam from the top and offer it as an annual treat.

When Alex eats strawberry jam, he will remember this day. Not with every peanut butter and jelly sandwich, of course. Not with every piece of toast. But when the smell of a June berry drifts through the air, he will remember. And the story will go on.