the art of canning peaches...

 at least in one's mind.

Every August my mother and father would roll into the graveled driveway of our then farm home, ladened with two bushels of vine-ripened peaches. They had stopped by the peach orchards on the way to my house while I was at home making preparations by pulling out the pressure canner, the quart-sized jars and the new lids.

So is this why I have had a strong desire to can peaches this season?  It has been at least a decade since my mother and I would spend the last of our summer days canning peaches. We anticipated the joy of canning peaches together every year. I still hear in my mind's memory the dancing metallic sound of the weight as it jiggled atop of the pressure canner and the sight of the many quart jars of peaches stored on my pantry's shelves.

Even before I opened my eyes to the haze of the morning's light spreading into my bedroom this morning, the very first glimpses that stirred in my consciousness were of my mother's face, she was wearing pink and she was smiling. And I thought of those late summer days we would spend canning peaches once again.

 But now September has arrived and the peach season is past.

sprouts of grief

"She was no longer wrestling with the grief,

 but could sit down with it as a lasting companion

 and make it a sharer in her thought."

                                                      ~George Eliot

Somewhere in the crevices of my mind I was hoping there was a designated place specifically that would read

"Time to Grieve". One would spend an appropriate time of grieving and then one would consequently  move on. Maybe it was conditioned in me when I was younger upon the death of my grandfather. Grandma wore black for a spell, I understood it to be her time to grieve.

I planted a little clay pot of tiny black basil seeds the day before yesterday.  I water the black rich soil daily knowing those little seed's propensity to sprout quickly and thrive in hot weather is inevitable. Something about those little now hidden seeds created a sprout of grief in me. 

Wrestling with it is to no avail. It is a loosing battle at best. Much better to let it sprout in its own good time in its own way and then tend it.  Better yet, allow it to be a companion that will produce in the end something good. Several women had come up to me since my mother died and with a tone of voice that makes you stop and listen, they basically all say the exact thing,"There's nothing quite like the death of your mother, you will always miss her."