When I was in elementary school, we walked home for lunch
every day. Usually my dad was there to make sure we got fed and back out the
door in time for the afternoon session. We had a lot of time for lunch: even
walking about six blocks each way, I don’t remember being rushed. In fact, some
days, if we were out of bread, there was time for my dad to send us to the
bakery around the corner for a fresh loaf. Lunch was always sandwiches, so we
had to have bread.
The rules on sandwiches in our household were like a chapter
of Leviticus (the King James Version): a long list of rules regarding what was
and wasn’t acceptable. Thou shalt always butter both slices of bread; thou
shalt always cover the bread with a second slice of bread (open faced
sandwiches are an abomination); never shall meat and cheese lie together in the
same sandwich, neither mayo and mustard: it shall not be eaten.
These rules may have come from my parents’ impoverished
childhoods and from not wanting to squander too much on one sandwich, or they
may have just preferred boring sandwiches and saw no need for more than one flavor.
(I never really did understand the butter thing.) Regardless, we kids were all
very excited when we were invited to eat lunch at our friends’ houses where we
were permitted to eat peanut butter AND JAM together on the same sandwich. We
were living large.
After Bill and I got married, he would make amazing
sandwiches by piling on everything we had: meat (sometimes more than one kind!),
cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, mayo, mustard, onion, alfalfa sprouts. I felt so
guilty enjoying it; it really did feel like I was sinning.
As a kid, one thing that was always on our lunch table was
my mother’s homemade jam, which was remarkable all on its own. My mom’s jam was
the best, jam so amazing that it has made all other jam unpalatable. There
might be high-end jams out there that compare, but mostly other jams just make
me sad, and I’ve pretty much given up on them.
My mother made strawberry freezer jam: batches and batches
of beautiful red jam, soft-set and stored in small jars with a diamond pattern
in the glass. When we’d take a new jar out of the freezer and lift the tin lid,
crystals of ice shimmered on the surface. We’d dig in and spread it on the
bread, and really, peanut butter would not have enhanced it in any way. Some
mornings my dad would get up early and put some frozen bread dough in the oven
to bake; then breakfast would be steaming fresh bread dripping with chilled
strawberry jam. The combination of sweet and savory, hot and cold, my mother’s
efforts and my father’s…it was heaven on earth.
My mom made peach jam in a hot water bath, a much more
elaborate process that sealed the jars so the beautiful rosy jam could be
stored in the basement. It, too, was delicious beyond compare: a taste like
sweet sunshine with a bit of tart. The shelf would be full at summer’s end, and
by spring we were carefully parsing out what was left in order to make it last
until there was new jam.
This summer, my desire for my mother’s jam finally
overwhelmed me to the point that I decided to make my own. I started with
strawberry. We bought some beautiful fruit at the farmers’ market and,
following the directions, I cut it up, added the SureGel, and poured it into
plastic containers, since I don’t have a collection of pretty glass jars.
And…it was just okay. Better than store-bought, but not nearly as good as
mom’s. It’s hard to know if my work was really inferior (I know I over-mashed the
fruit) or if nostalgia had raised mom’s jam to an unattainable level.
When peaches started to come in, I decided to use my
experience to try to improve my average. I went with the freezer jam recipe
again, since I don’t have the necessary equipment for the water bath
processing. I chopped and measured and followed the directions. Instead of
being better than the strawberry, the peach jam was a disaster, never setting
up but remaining stubbornly liquid. I was disappointed, but we bought some
vanilla ice cream and used the “jam” to make fabulous milk shakes (which were kind
of healthy, since they had fruit in them).
Some days I miss my mom deeply. But sometimes I wonder if I
miss the idea of my mom. She’d had a
hard life and struggled with many things, and the woman I knew as a teenager
was still trying to work things out—something that I appreciate now far more
than I did back then. There’s no telling who my mom might have become if she
had lived beyond the age of 51. Would she have been critical and negative,
shaking her head over my failed jam, or wise and supportive, laughing at our ingenuity
in using it for milkshakes? Would she have been a doting grandma, showing up
with hugs and toys and taking the kids to the movies, or would she have keep
her distance? Would she have ever found a way to release her brilliance and her
creativity, so evident but so deeply suppressed, or would she have insisted on
eating Leviticus sandwiches forever? Could she ever have accepted how loved and
admired she was and found peace? Could have gone either way, and most likely
some combination.
Memory is a tricky thing. Sometimes it frustrates me that I
forget things, but really being able to forget, or at least for memory to fade,
is God’s gift, especially for those not-so-pleasant (even horrific) memories we
all carry. Nostalgia encourages me to remember my mother’s strength and beauty,
and I’m content with that. But I’m not content with my inability to replicate
her jam. And so next year I will try again. I’m pretty certain that’s what mom
would have done.
