Last week I got an email from my friend Cynthia.
“Hey, I’m making jam. Wanna come over?”
Because I am drowning in this dang move, I said, “Absolutely!” but I begged her to tackle it the next day when I could get away. Or so I thought.
I make my way over to Cynthia’s, after two other errands, no nap for Atti and with a Dr’s appointment to get to afterwards, and we completely disrupted her domestic bliss with my frazzled self and a screaming baby. In one of the most charitable acts ever she volunteered to trek all her canning supplies and her two delightful children over to my house so that Atti could have a nap.
Cynthia is a computer programmer and professor, and her razor sharp analytical mind is evident in everything she does. Look at her canning procedure set up as if by a surgical scrub nurse.
She walked me through the process, complete with entertaining enactments of what the jam mixture would look like when it reached the properly volcanic boiling temperature, and then when we were all done she offered to let me have all of the spoils. Not only did Cynthia drag all her stuff to a second location, but she gave away the fact that she didn’t even *really* need to be doing it at all. She orchestrated this whole canning adventure just for my benefit.
Canning has always been THAT THING for me. You know THAT THING, the thing that you don’t do, that you feel you must do if you’re going to call yourself a good wife/homemaker/mother/educated person. THAT THING that really doesn’t matter in the scheme of things, but about which you have always harbored a secret shame that feeds an inferiority complex? I know I’m not alone here. I know canning probably seems a totally random THING to get hung up on for most of you, but coming from my Mormon heritage, it was a really big deal to me. For some reason I internalized this thought that I couldn’t call myself a Good Mormon Woman unless I had a cellar full of put up fruit. I know it’s ridiculous, but aren’t we all?
Cynthia has created a monster. I’m moving to the place where all this stuff is grown. I’m going to spend my whole summer putting up tomatoes and tomato sauce, pickles made of every vegetable, jams and jellies in every color, syrups and fruit butters, you name it. I’ve been interested in local and seasonal eating for ages, but I love food too much to sacrifice. Now I won’t have to.
And I’ll have to find some new THING to obsess about. What is it for you guys?