Jam

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.