The Times, They Are A’Changing

One morning, while enjoying our first cup of coffee, Gerry and I talk about fruit. If we were still living in British Columbia, we’d be eating our way through flats of fresh strawberries by now, tucking some away in the freezer while eagerly awaiting raspberries and blueberries (my favourite!). I’d be thinking about pulling out my canning supplies and making jam.

Here in Saskatchewan, we’re still waiting for the first truckloads of B.C. berries to arrive. Last year, I missed the raspberries and didn’t make jam. We ran out, and I bought a jar from the grocery store. After enjoying my own jam for years, I couldn’t abide the store-bought processed stuff with far more ingredients than are needed to make jam. Never again. Thankfully, there’s a wonderful little store here that sells home canned things so when the store bought jam ran out we picked up a jar each of blueberry and raspberry jam. They are both fresh and delicious.

We talk about the price of fresh fruit—expensive in B.C. and even more so here in Saskatchewan, and come to a joint decision. We’ll buy enough fruit for eating and enjoying over the summer but forgo our practice in years past of buying flats of fruit so I could make jam and put some away in the freezer. (Except of blueberries. One MUST have frozen blueberries to tide one over during the winter months.) In the past, I’d share my canned bounty with our daughter, but it’s a little more challenging now that she’s two provinces away and how much jam do two people really need? Going forward, we’ll buy jars of locally canned jam made by someone else and I’ll forget about making some. I have mixed feelings about this, but it seems the wiser choice both in terms of economics and the amount of energy I have to expend these days.

In this, as in all things, the times are changing.

With all the talk about fruit, Gerry stops at the greengrocer on the way home from the gym to see what’s available (knowing that there’s nothing local there yet). Among other things, he brings home a bag of red potatoes. I rarely buy red potatoes and decide to take advantage of having them to make an old-fashioned potato salad the way my mom used to make it. In fact, I plan for an old-fashioned cold supper with the salad, butter buns, cold cuts, spinach salad (from my garden), and jello.

This morning, after a short hike and with list in hand, Gerry stops at Safeway for a few things I’ll need. Butter buns, Miracle Whip, eggs, cold cuts, and red jello. I’ve just gotta have red jello with a cold summer supper. He arrives home and we talk about the exorbitant price of things and the choices he made to make substitutions. (A trip to the grocery store, or anywhere else these days, is an exercise in disbelief at the price of things. Case in point: the other day we went to a new restaurant that just opened for lunch. It’s nothing fancy, something like an old fashioned burger joint. We queued at the counter to place our order and were aghast when the family of four in front of us forked over $100 for their meal (thankfully, ours cost a lot less than that). How on earth do young families do it these days? Dual incomes helps, I’m sure. But are wages high enough to bear the increasing cost of everything?

I digress.

Anyway, this morning, I put a pot of red potatoes on to boil—early, before the house got too hot, just like mom used to do. I turned on the local “oldies” radio station and puttered in the kitchen and was overcome with a sense of missing my mom. It seems to happen more often, this longing to be with my mom. I’m older by a decade than she ever was. What I wouldn’t give to be able to sit down with her and visit? The longing doesn’t stop there. I miss my other mother, too—my birth mom whose body I grew in but who I never spent any time with. Funny that. How one can miss someone they never knew.

The other evening, while Gerry was watching the hockey game, I stumbled across one of those long lost family shows where they track down people who have been separated. Often, it’s birth parents and their children who were adopted. Once upon a time I used to love watching the reunions—doing so with tears streaming down my face because I was denied the opportunity because my birth mom died before I found her. And yet, I can’t stop the hunger I have to feel my birth mom’s embrace.

I can no longer watch these programs because the toll to do so is too steep to pay. All kinds of emotions bubble up and, while I’m not a proponent of stuffing feelings down (been there, done that, got lots of t-shirts), it’s just too much for me now. The wound is still there just below the surface, but it’s a scab I don’t want to pick at too much. Similar to how I find myself longing to be with my mom, I feel the same ache to be with the woman who birthed me. I wish I had a clear photograph of her, but even there, all I have are shadowy images.

Oh my. This post has meandered, hasn’t it? I’m going to wrap it up now and maybe go outside to the back yard. Wandering in the garden, plucking a weed here and another one there, grounds me. It’s looking like it might rain so I better head out there quickly.

Hope you’re enjoying your weekend.