Which Is Why . . .

My Earth Mother Phase began in 1972 and lasted a good ten years. Maybe a little bit more. We were doing time in the Midwest, Ohio, Illinois, and then Ohio again, just wishing to return to Near Philadelphia.

I baked most of our cookies and I learned to can. I made jam: peach, strawberry, blueberry, raspberry and even grape jelly (but only once). I canned tomatoes, peaches, applesauce, and pears. I felt so wholesome! So accomplished! And when finances were tight, family members received a small assortment of jam for Christmas.

My manual was "Putting Up Stuff for the Cold Time" by Crescent Dragonwagon (I kid you not), and it was very thorough. Crescent spoke of the immense feeling of pride and satisfaction at the end of the canning session, when the mess was all cleaned up and one finally got to sit down and then would hear a sweet, soft "ping" as the lids sealed. I loved the whole business.

At one point during all of that my sister and brother-in-law came to visit and left their two tween daughters to stay with us for a couple of days. It was canning season and the fruit was ripe and whether they liked it or not, my nieces learned to can. I remember Susan's being as enchanted by the "pings" as I was.

Some years ago, now a young mother herself, Susan began canning. Her specialty is tomato sauce and one summer she tagged me in a Facebook post wherein she wondered what her life would have been like had she not visited us that summer. That post pops up in my "Memories" every August. And I love it.

There's more to the story, though. That same Susan had an expansive Earth Mother phase. She learned to sew and eventually took a class or two (or three) in quilt making. And one day, about thirty-five years ago, my sister and our mother and our cousins all gathered at my sister's house and Susan gave us a private lesson on making a Log Cabin quilt using Eleanor Burns's Quilt In A Day Method. The rest, as they say, is history.

The canning memory showed up like clockwork again this summer and I smiled a sort of teary smile full of love. I'd changed her life, it seemed. But -- look -- she also changed mine! I sent her a message to the effect that much as she wondered what her life would have been like without learning to can, I wonder what mine would have been like without learning to quilt.

Her reply was almost instantaneous: "Our lives would be incomplete. Which is why family matters."