Canning (2023)

(Published in Bramble Lit Mag's Summer 2023 issue)

In the months between a promised two-week “staycation” and figuring out that maybe my factory label was a misprint, I decided I wanted to learn how to can.

While preserving applesauce and learning what pectin is, I figured out a few things.

I don’t often feel my feelings. I see them, sure. Jar them, label them, shelf them for that far-off season of “when I have time” There’s never a good time to pop open 2016’s awakenings or 2021’s losses. But there’s only so much shelf space. Every so often as more is pressurized, labeled, and stored, one will fall and shatter

And I’m stuck feeling the ichor and poultice I should have boiled down in the moment But instead, I left them alone to fester with emotional botulism.

I’m prolonging the inevitable, pushing an impossible task onto future me as if They’ll be more equipped to handle the viscera in these jars.

How many jars have I inherited?

How many of these are someone else’s rotten, gelatinous feelings I had no part in canning that are now my responsibility

To house, sort, and

Maybe,

Someday,

Find a use for?

Why can’t I bring myself to toss pickled-people-pleasing from 1983 or rinse out the broken-self-image-brine of 1975? They’re taking up prime pantry space I could use for my own anxious applesauce.

In the time of abandoned sourdough starters and failed exercise regimens, I met a professional canner. We met twice a month, he’d listen while I sorted through each can, Dumped out the sludge, and scrubbed the years of neglect from under my fingernails.

There’s still more work to do
More jars to sort, empty, clean, refill, label, and so on

But now it feels less like an unattended pressure cooker and More like a simmer pot of cinnamon, cloves,
And everything I could become.