Canning

            There’s something about the early October air that invites a quicker step and a deeper breath.  The sunny days warm the breeze, but it’s cool now underneath.  It makes me want to pick apples, cook them down, and put up jars of applesauce for the winter.  I don’t think I’ll heed the call this year; too many other things are luring me out of the kitchen.  But every year I want to do this.  Of course, if I were really serious about canning, I would’ve started weeks ago, when the tomatoes and all manner of insistent vegetables were demanding my attention. 

            I’ve never been big into vegetables, but I do remember years of jam-making, with hours spent pushing my long-handled wooden spoon through a sticky-sweet, liquid fruit.  The tall stock pot issued forth baths of steam, always on a hot day.  We had a range hood, but in all the eight years I knew it, it never once made a connection with the outside world. 

            For reasons still unclear to me – or anyone else, I’m sure – I long ago developed a need to make my strawberry and blueberry jams without pectin, thus giving me claim to spectacularly perfect jam about 33% of the time and either sauce or candy otherwise.  This method of jam-making called for endurance – a marathon of stirring, and it would transport me into a zone of humidity and torpor for much of the day.  Despite my general dislike for summer, I found this a soothing place to inhabit, one where no one could enter or disturb and from where I had no thought or ability to leave until the job was done. 

            Many people now make “freezer jam.”  If this is your method, you spare/cheat yourself out of experiencing the final sauna that greets you whenever you immerse a batch of jars into a canner.  I do see the sense in this evasion, and certainly many vegetables benefit from the artificial arctic clime we’re able to create with a little electricity.  I admit that sometimes the produce actually comes out better if you eschew the canner for the freezer.

            But I don’t care!  I like the satisfying solidity of a pantry full of sealed, metal-lidded JARS, heavy with a promise I know I’m going to keep to the hungry, February version of myself.  I like knowing that no power outage or carelessly unplugged appliance is going to stand between me and the products of my labor.  I also like the idea that I could, if I just had the right wood stove, do the whole thing without any electricity at all.  It’s not that I would actually ever do this; I just like the idea.

            Two old portraits hang on the wall of our dining room.  They picture a pair of women who came from a time when “putting up” for the winter was a basic necessity of rural life.  I can lay claim to one of them; she’s a great, great-aunt of mine or something like that.  Her small, pretty hands lie uncomfortably idle in her lap.  We can’t see the calluses, but I know they’re there.  You can see it in her eyes and in the obedient, tired set of her jaw.  She looks like a good wife.  I have no doubt she canned every year or did whatever was the equivalent back then.  She had to.

            The other woman came with the house.  She grew up here and later returned to live out her end on this beautiful hilltop.  In between, she went to school, became head nurse at a Boston hospital, and traveled the world as private nurse to one of the Vanderbilts.  She never married, and I think it shows.  There is a twinkle in her confident, commanding eyes, and I can imagine her wealthy employer doing exactly what he was told.  I can also imagine her delegating the task of canning to someone considerably lower down on the food chain.

            My grandmother – my father’s mother – was a nurse, too, but Grammie came of age with the dawning of the Great Depression.  She gave birth to my father in 1933 and eventually raised four children.  She buried one of them, along with her first husband, and later fell in love and married the only grandfather I ever knew. 

            She lived until the early 1990s.  After she died, the family all gathered in her house and wandered about for a bit before settling down to make some decisions about her affairs.  We each paid our respects to the cellar, a place previously unknown to me.  There, we found rows and rows of jars lining the ample shelves, ready for Grammie’s next test of preparation and mettle. 

            I had never seen the jars before, but should have guessed at their existence.  All the years I was a kid, I remember hearing that Grammie and Grandpa couldn’t come out to visit during the growing season.  Their gardens wouldn’t allow it.  When Grandpa passed away, Grammie continued on without him.

            With both of them gone, the rest of the family could inspect the jars freely, whistling in wonder and admiration.  Someone found a lone bottle of dandelion wine, with a date I can only remember as “REALLY old.”  Grammie wasn’t a drinker, but the rest of us had no such compunctions.  So, I suggested we open up the wine and all have a toast to her before we got down to the business of dividing up her property.  With some trepidation, we filled the glasses and braced ourselves for something dreadful.  But as soon as we finished “to Grammie, to Mother, to Beulah,” our mouths encountered a nectar of amazing smoothness, like a delicate, but strong, fine brandy.

            Later, I found her dandelion wine recipe, in her delicate, but strong, fine script.  Many years later, Dave made a couple of batches from Grammie’s instructions, and we’ve already dipped pretty deeply into the drink.  I’m quite certain we’ll have neither the patience to let it age properly nor the generosity to leave it for future generations to enjoy.

            Growing up, I knew that Grammie didn’t like to cook, even though she did it every night. And I knew that she loved the color red, just like I do, and red birds especially.  But I never knew much about who she was, really; I don’t think she knew me too well, either. 

            After I got married, I didn’t change my name right away.  I did do it, eventually, but during the months of indecision, I happened to visit Grammie.  She was proud of me for getting married, but couldn’t understand my waffling about taking on my husband’s name.  For once, she stepped out of the bland, “grandmotherly” character I had created for her, and she asked me – nearly hissed at me, really, between bared teeth – “Who ARE you?!”  She had an unshakeable grasp of who she was and what that meant and what she must do accordingly. 

            After all these years of dithering over my priorities and wondering whether to put up some applesauce, I still don’t think I can answer her question.