Jars and Memories
I grew up canning, and now I do it alongside my own kids.
One of my favorite movies is Steel Magnolias. It’s chock full of lines that bubble up whenever the right circumstances strike. And every summer, as my kitchen descends into Canning Mode and I ask myself why I’ve managed to take all this on just as school kicks off, this gem echoes in mind:
"Because I'm an old Southern woman and we're supposed to wear funny looking hats and ugly clothes and grow vegetables in the dirt. Don't ask me those questions. I don't know why, I don't make the rules!"
Right now, my counters are full of jars in various states. Some are filled and cooling. some are staged for tomorrow’s load of preserves, and others are off to the side waiting to be called up to the majors via a fresh run through the dishwasher. What space isn’t taken up with jars is cluttered with boxes of pectin and jar lifters and funnels and that most beloved tool of all, the lid wand. There are bushels of peaches and tomatoes on standby.
Simply put, it’s a mess.
But there’s something about this mess that brings me some of the deepest moments of peace that I may ever experience this side of heaven. Food is my love language, I don’t deny that for a second. But even in the midst of a sweltering kitchen crowded with extra bodies and so much to do, I find myself breathing deep and drinking in every detail.
John Mark carefully wiping the rims of pint jars before fitting a lid to the top.
Birdie skimming the foam off a pot of jelly.
Phin patiently counting rings as he drops them into boiling water.
Once upon a time—way back in 1979— I was just big enough to stand on the odd combination stepstool/bar chair combo my Mamaw kept tucked into the corner by her fridge. Up until this point, I had only seen it as home to her chow chow crock. (If you don’t know what a chow chow crock is, just be advised that the current trend of fermenting all the things certainly isn’t anything new under the sun.) But when canning season came around the summer just before I turned 5, the funny chair moved to an L-shaped corner in the kitchen counter and became my assigned station. It would fill that role for the next three summers, until I was tall enough not to need a boost to do whatever job I had been assigned.
And oh, there were a delightful assortment of duties available for a little girl keen on being where the action was. My Mamaw’s kitchen was canning central for the extended lot of us. She canned alongside my mother, and my two aunts. This was half of the draw for me; those 200 square feet represented the center of the feminine universe as I knew it, and I would withstand heat, the smell of cooking tomatoes (which I hated), anything to be caught up into the gravitational pull of the circle of women I loved the most.
This is where I learned about… everything. The act of canning was an education, of course. There was the processing of food and the act of preservation. There was math and measuring and all that goes in to getting things just right. But even more than that, there were conversations about babies and marriage. There were blunt truths served up straight with a side of, “I’m sorry to be the one bringin’ this to ya.” There were a lot of whispers and tears one summer, and by the next, one of my aunts was gone, replaced by a girlfriend who definitely didn’t know what a chow chow crock was, and had an odd aversion to eating anything that didn’t come in a wrapper with a fast food logo on it.
Life was lived out in that kitchen, one canning season at a time. And it’s lived out in mine now, too.
Last summer, Jude wasn’t quite proficient at measuring out lemon juice by the half cup. This year, he has mastered it. A few years back, Simon couldn’t break a bean without bruising it. Now, he’s my best snapper.
Canning season is a disruption, just as homeschooling and my husband’s travel schedule kick into fall mode. It’s messy and inconvenient and makes my feet hurt by the end of the day.
But oh, the memories— the ones conjured by the sound of the weighted gauge bobbing on my pressure canner, but also the ones in progress, the ones that will outlive me. Every jar brings a promise of so much more than a meal to be had. Every jar, it seems, offers glimpses of life and love.