Strawberry Jam and the Process of Remembering
My grandma is a twin. I found this out as a teenager at a family picnic when I asked, “Grandma, where should I put the potato salad?” And was told by a woman who looked exactly like my grandma, “I’m not your Grandma.”
She was born in the rural west to a hardscrabble ranching family. The doctor was so thrilled to have delivered twins that he offered not to charge my grandmother’s parents if he was able to name the babies. So they become Joy and Joyce. Their family moved around multiple times as the stock market crashed, the dust bowl whipped up, and the tender American economy stumbled along.
“We were moving again. Can you imagine how it felt as a young girl sitting in our dirt floor basement, told we had to leave everything behind? I had these wonderful, tiny muffin tins. I used them to play like I was my mother. But even these I wasn’t allowed to bring.”
When she passed away, she had eight twin-size mattresses stacked alongside every newspaper and phone book delivered to her between 1960–2010. Like many of her generation, her attitude toward possessions was forged in a time of radical uncertainty. She fully believed those newspapers and phonebooks would have a purpose, and to throw them away would be wasteful.
Her scrappy resilience also made her a dedicated gardener. In my twenties, I moved in next door, and we shared a garden. I planted a few seedlings, weeded, and watered occasionally. I reaped a harvest as bountiful as Streganona’s pasta pot. Only after I moved away and had my own garden did I realize how I had so passively reaped the rewards of my grandmother’s skill and dedication. The way she tested the soil, mixing in special organic fertilizers, the hours she spent weeding, and the drainage system she designed herself. How she told me exactly what to do and when my effort was lackluster, rather than see life die, she stepped in and helped.
My other grandmother moved her large family to an apple orchard several miles from her husband’s university — because she wanted them to grow up with the ground. When her husband unexpectedly passed away, leaving her with several young children, she did not shirk from her massive orchard but continued to raise the trees alongside her children.
My grandmothers had pantries stocked with glass jars lined with preserved food — pickles, tomatoes, sauces, and preserves. I remember spending hot autumn days making applesauce and red pasta sauce. The jars filled our shelves, and we knew there was always applesauce for our pancakes and Sunday night spaghetti. The year I lived by my grandma, I joined her in the bottling of tomatoes, peppers, salsa, and fruits. I learned the simple joy of knowing I was independently conserving my food for winter.
I am not a gardener. I have five pots of herbs on a balcony. Three of them are mint. But every spring, I take my kids to pick strawberries, and we make jam. I don’t like jam. I wouldn’t even buy it if my kids didn’t adore swirling it in yogurt or adding it to my husband’s freshly baked bread.
My jam is not award-winning. It’s a simple freezer jam, and it rarely sets properly. Yet, I stubble through this same charade every June. When I wash my bottles and spoon the compote into the jars, I feel deeply connected to my grandmothers. It is a ritual that has nothing to do with the actual product but everything to do with the process. It fuels connection. A reminder that my life grows on more fertile ground because of all the unseen efforts that were sown by those who came before me. Their hardships, sorrows, and challenges carved much of the irrigation system on which my shallow roots thrive.
My grandmothers were not perfect — much like my jam. We may be quick to canonize our deceased relatives — but we can also be quick to cast aside the gifts they have given merely because humanity exposed them to faults.
Remembering is not passive. It is an active pursuit of connection we feel through peppering our day with simple acts. It is pie and outlandish stories on my husband’s father’s birthday — a tradition designed for my children who never met him — to know the incredible man who loved them fiercely before they were even born. It is a legacy of traditions and rituals adapted to our contemporary lives and unique personalities. Free from guilt-imposed obligations. Guided by love and an innate desire to remember those who loved us before we were even ideas. The people who are our homeland.
And so I make lousy strawberry jam half a world away. In a place, my grandmothers never visited. We place the jars next to our Barlauch (wild garlic) pesto we make together in May. We eat the jam until all the bottles are gone. My children run to grab a jar from the freezer whenever it runs out. When it is all gone, we buy it from one of the nearby farm shops, and no one minds. Because, like many things in life — it’s not so much the product but the process.
