A taste of home

Yes, it’s jam time again.

What would summer be without jam? For me?  That would be hard to describe.

There is something obligatory about my need to pick berries and make jam.

The picking is as important as the making.

Each has its own set of requirements, value and benefits. And now, in the midst of so much that is not certain, this small thing grounds me, gives me something substantial to hold on to.

Gathering the fruit, especially when I am alone in the fields, when I hear the sounds of nature and feel the sun on my back, is without equal.

I gladly pay $4 a quart, moving  the crumpled dollar bills from my pockets into the slot in the metal box that is anchored to the table.

Most often I put an extra dollar or change in the box just because the effort is not effort as much as it is a fulfillment. It is a payment for opportunity to spend  my time and endure the awful back ache that is part of the process, for being alive and able to stand there among the briars and collect the berries, knowing that within a short time they will become not only jam but connections to family and friends. Certainty and the honor system.

Making the jam is not difficult, not rocket science.

It is a challenge on very hot days in a house without air conditioning, but then my grandmother never had as much as a fan in her house and she made jam no matter what the temperature or humidity.

I see her hands, so much like mine are now, offering her jars, hers finished with a thin, perfectly poured layer of wax, as something to sweeten our days. And so I, like she did, mix the sugar and fruit one to one, cooking until two drops of jam run together on the back of the spoon, placing the filled and water bathed canned jars on a rack to cool with a sense of completion.

This year, I found some spectacular wide mouthed jars that cry out for special handmade labels. That is what is on the top of my list this morning. I’ve made four with pictures of the black raspberries within, but now I am on to embellishing the other labels with words from my favorite poems and stories.

There are the words of Dylan Thomas, “And down the other air and the blue altered sky… Streamed again the wonder of summer”  and “Summery .. on the hill’s shoulder” and my favorite line: “And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.”

There is a little quote from a book by Joanne Harris, “There’s something very comforting about the ritual of jam-making…a promise of sunshine at the darkest point of the year. …seasons that turn in the same place, in the same way, year after year, with sweet familiarity. It is the taste of home.”

And did you know that raspberries and black raspberries are related to roses, their brambles and leaves so similar that we can confuse the two before they bloom.

The lyrics of a song come to mind. “Just remember in the winter, “far beneath the bitter snows/ Lies the seed, that with the sun’s love in the spring becomes the rose.”

Not about jam making but something more basic, words that remind me that in the midst of difficulty, there is the option, when attended to, for beauty.

Are these words too obscure? For me? No.

The jam will speak for itself as gifts from June and July and August, a journey back to summer from my hands and my time, from a dance made in the brambles and the kitchen with all my love.  The words are extra.