ANCESTRAL STREAM

The big old canning kettle bubbles merrily on the stove with (only) four quarts of spiced pears and apples. This entire feat was accomplished in one hour from start to finish. Amazing! I think I finally feel relaxed about canning again, although my little kitchen presents its challenges.

Always my beloved first mother-in-law comes to mind. She would spend hours and hours canning in the fall. The jars stood like gleaming soldiers on her tiled counter at the end of the day,and her pride was obvious. Also Gert's kitchen arises in memory with a long counter of distressed plywood, unlike like Mom Klare's. Green beans, sauerkraut, carrots, tomatoes (stewed) gleamed as she cooked supper. In later years these items landed in the big freezer which they treasured more than a new car. Mom Klare had a huge chest freezer too that accumulated various items, and a fair amount of dirt, on it's topside--a task I often tended to, the level of household dirt in her home was an issue for me.

I stand in my kitchen with the canner at a rolling boil, and peels mounded in the sink, feeling generations of women behind me, reminding me to boil the lids and ringers, slide the butter knife between the fruit and the glass to release the air bubbles, wipe the jar tops before placing the sterilized lids. They whisper little phrases and coach me as I dream up the spices and sugar for a cough syrup. I am proud to be in this ancestral mothers' stream and deeply proud to pass it on to my granddaughter, a little every year. She too may move about her kitchen one day wiping counters as the timer ticks off the boiling time. I hope so.