I had one of those moments today. One of those moments where I very nearly lost it. I felt the sinking feeling of loss, the aloneness, the end of a tradition, the tears began to well up.It all started with at peanut butter sandwich. I went to the kitchen, opened the bread, grabbed the jar of peanut butter, took a table knife from the drawer and lathered on that glorious concoction of little more than crushed, smashed, ground…peanuts.
As I started to close the jar, I remembered a jar of apple butter in the fridge. It’s not just any apple butter, it’s my mom’s own home made crock pot apple butter. For years she has made this sweet treat each fall, canning multiple pints of it, and giving away most of it to friends and family.
Every Christmas we would look forward to opening our goody box from home and tucked among the date nut balls, the Chex Party Mix (mom’s own recipe), the ice box fruit cake, cookies, date nut bread, fresh pecans in the shell and more, there would always be a jar of crock pot apple butter.
In the early days mom and dad would go to the orchard in the fall and gather from that fresh crop bushels of apples. Bringing them home she would wash, peel and core, all by hand. Cutting them up she began cooking them slowly while mixing in the special spices that made this sweet treat her own.
As time went by, all that manual peeling and cutting became too difficult for mom's tired hands, but she giggled like a school girl when she found an apple peeler that did all the work, peeling and coring. And she found a special joy in her task.
Of course what really made it her own was the love and personal effort that went into making every pint which was labeled “Millie’s Crockpot Apple Butter” and often decorated with a colorful square of patterned cloth, tied on with a bit of matching yarn.
Each time I would dip a bit of that sweet, tart treat, it took me back to mom’s house, the smell of the apples cooking, and mostly to her hugs. Those hugs that usually ended with her standing back, holding me at arm’s length, looking up squarely into my eyes and declaring, “I believe in you.”
Wrapped up in that bit of apple butter I peered at in the bottom of that glass jar was all those things, all that love, all that history. And this was the last of it. The end. I had been carefully measuring out the little bits and tastes of it since she left us in March, but this was the end.
Yes, I have somewhere in storage mom’s special recipe, she gave all of us a copy. She was good about that, preparing, looking ahead to the inevitable. If I can’t find it my sis or brother have their own copy of the recipe, but it just wouldn’t be the same.
What really made mom’s apple butter special was mom. The love and effort, the special care she put into each batch, into each jar. And now, with this last dollop, it was over, there would be no more…
And as the tears began to rush to my eyes, the flush of blood to my neck and cheeks and ears. As I began to despair over this yet one more loss of something so precious, so dear, so…so…mom. A sudden thought came to my mind.
I rushed to the pantry and desperately scanned the shelves and then, finally, there, on the third shelf, tucked in between the Parmesan cheese and the Bush’s Best Honey Baked Beans, I spied a flash of color. The red cloth square was cut with Pinking shears, the pattern of crossed candy canes tucked among holly leaves dancing across with holiday while red and green yarn double wrapped around the lid and tied off in a bow. Classic mom.
And just peeping out from under all that holiday cheer, a label declared, “Millie’s Crockpot Apple Butter.”
Tears, despair, you’ll have to wait for another day.
"We are all in the same boat on a stormy sea and
we owe each other a terrible loyalty." - G. K. Chesterson
