Crabapple Jelly
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Near the opening of Toni Morrison's BELOVED, Sethe is trying to come to terms with her child, dead now these several years, a baby who is still haunting her house. Her other daughter, Denver, catches her mother praying--and sees the ghostly image of the little baby with its arms around Sethe. Rather than thinking anything's odd about a ghost in the house, Denver finds it curious that her mother is praying. She asks what it was all about, and Sethe says, "I was talking about time. It's so hard for me to believe in it."
I know what she means. Time is the craziest thing. People contact me on facebook, people I haven't even thought about in 35 years--glacial epochs, or so it feels, as if I once lived on another, forgotten land mass. Then guests come to our home in the country for a week and it seems as if they stay a couple days--although the calendar says otherwise. And there are the seasons, coming and going with shocking abandon.
I've finally finished the book, the seven-step plan to get off all processed food. In, done, over. About two hours ago, in fact. But time hasn't started moving again. Instead, I've been caught in a moment that doesn't flow. It's just here, static. I keep waiting for things to lurch into gear. But they haven't. Instead, I'm looking outside at the brown leaves, the last of the bare ruined choirs that were the trees. And waiting. For? No idea.
Real food preserved is like that. Waiting. Patiently, in fact. And outside of time. I know I blog a lot about preserving things. And maybe it's because I too don't believe in time anymore. Jams and jellies cast it into the void. December can be spring. A house with busy schedules and calendars, deadlines and bills to pay, can become that timeless thing: a home.