On tippy toes I stretch up to retrieve a tiny purple jar from the top shelf of the cupboard over the frig. The lid is labeled "BK". Hm. Blackberry. Not sure how many jars of how many flavors I have left up there. I pop the lid.
My mom still makes homemade jam and seals it into jars with a layer parafin on top. I have to poke at the wax and pick it out. This was the norm for opening jam when we were little. I don't know when it stopped. Maybe some time in the 70's when mom got pressured into going back to work. The jam disappeared. The homemade doughnuts with a funny german name disappeared. The special lunches on the first day of summer vacation, the vegetable garden filling our table with fresh stuff, it all disappeared. Dinner came from boxes that mixed up fast, now. We learned to pop popcorn.
Inside is that wonderful purple paste of seeds and pulp and sugar that mom still makes every year. I put some on my buttered toast.
mmmmmmm - thanks mom.
I have a mom that still makes jam and homemade pies. She still calls on birthdays to sing. She used to mail boxed baskets full of home made chocolate treats every Easter - even putting in Easter grass as packaging. She did this until we were all safely into our 30's and expressing concerns about contracting the family diabetes.
As the knife laden with dark jam comes out of the jar, a thought flashes through my mind. Someday there will be a last jar of jam with no hope for getting more. Will I open that jar and taste, for the last time, the flavor of sunshine, of fingers picking blackberries in a secluded woods with coyotes and deer nearby and of mom boiling fruits in her special kettle? Or will I leave it on the shelf?
What's more important? The sentiment of memories trapped in a jar or the taste of sunshine and love?
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