The Tart of Darkness

Blackberries: My Tangled Christmas Lights of July 

It is done. Plum canning has ceased, and I have 54 jars to my name.  Another 30 jars’ worth reclines in the freezer, for me to deal with in August when I’m good and ready.  Finally, I was ready to pick up where I left off on my weight loss goal.  I’ve not gained or lost much in the last few weeks, but it’s a very fragile situation, ready to blow at any moment.  Suddenly I realized, the blackberries are here.  This is my only other claim to fame besides plum preserves and after this month, I’ve needed some positive mojo in my head.  If I can succeed at a great crop of blackberry jam, then it will be the perfect balm to my soul. 

You are so smart to know where this is leading.  I have a blackberry story for you.  How did you ever guess?

Blackberries bring out the acid in me.  However, we haven’t always had this despise/dread/obsessive relationship and we have become very unlikely bedfellows after our rough start.

On day seven of our marriage, my husband and I sat down for our informal, unspoken kickoff meeting to decide the division of labor.  I stepped out to go potty, and when I came back, he was voted in as Cook.  Through the years I have offered, but he’d hurry up to cut me off at the kitchen doorway and say, "No!  I mean, it’s fine, I got it." 

Shortly thereafter, we invited his esteemed colleague and successful wife to dinner.  I already had a stellar reputation as a kitchen liability.  But this did not stop my husband from including me, pretending I had something to offer.  “How about I do a side dish?” I asked faux-brightly.  “No, just buy a dessert.  It’s pretty hard to screw that up.”  To an outsider, this would sound demeaning.  But we both agreed this was said lovingly, dealing with our strength as a team, where I’m the Ideas, Planning and Ambiance Department and my husband is Food Superhero. 

All was well as I plated the fresh blackberry pie I purchased from a chain known for their Stepford blackberry pies.  The talk was flowing and I saw my husband’s stock rise in the market of fantastic humans who could lay out a fine meal.  I was doing great in the career world and I liked watching his professor career start to blossom.  A fine meal can certainly be a deal breaker. We all had made some headway into the dessert when I saw those little, black, tiny, pinhole sized, furry hairs that one normally sees on berries.  

Then, I noticed they were moving.  Swimming for their dear lives in the mode of the a la.  

In my life, I have rarely been confronted with so painful a decision to be made with such haste.  As I was minding the gap…do I jump in the train or stay on the platform?  I know the rolodex of my mind went back and forth ten times in the space of one second.

‘Keep eating…people eat worse things in other lands.’ 

‘No, don’t let your guests eat insects.’ 

And then the shame of: ‘I had one job, and I screwed up a store bought dessert.’  I formed my deceptive strategy, designed to save my husband's career and to hide my sha----… 

“WAIT!!!! Stop eating. The pie has bugs.”    It was the only thing I knew how to do, as I halted dinner like a crossing guard. 

So, don’t you think it’s ironic that we now work together, these blackberries and I?  As my wise friend said, my ancestors cooked because they loved to boil the hell out of things.  Well, I’m also an Aries, so when there is boiling, there’s fire and so of course I pull up a stool to ask if I can have a go at it.  

I can’t preserve peaches, pickles or beans, or even arrange flowers very well in a vase.  But imagine our surprise when my first jar of blackberry preserves made its debut and my husband looked at me anew, proud of the former corporate career woman who worked 60 hours a week in the city to avoid her kitchen.  To quote my family prior to that, “Gee Mom, you should try to make jam out of those,” said no one in our house, ever. 

I was ready to try more store bought cheater berries, but I noticed a neighbor on the corner had a killer blackberry tangle.  The house was always in foreclosure and so I had no problem helping myself in between abandonments.  Oh yes, I judged.  A bad blackberry owner is like a wicked pet owner who doesn’t take good care of his ward.  These blackberries were jewels and need to be treated as such, so yes, I judged those who were absent and neglectful.   

There were two problems with this arrangement however.  First, it was smack dab under a hissing power line, making the berries freakishly large.  I don’t mind telling you they grew fast too.  In the middle of picking, they’d turn from red to purple, like little mood berries.  Tick Tick Tick Tick----DING!  another bunch would ripen.  And the long arm of the branch would grow like a cobra, circling my leg as it was fed by the electro-magnetic field from the power line.   

The second problem: it was at a visible street corner and so all my neighbors would pass by and look at me with a sweet we must know more! friendliness.  Don’t get me wrong, I love a good corner shot of hello.  But I was driven and not in the mood for a little meet and greet.  I had no shower, no shave, and wore my worst clothes because you get messed up pretty bad when picking.  Plus, I liked my solitude when harvesting.  Especially near power lines.  However, I wished blackberries were growing in my very own yard.  Suddenly, like some Grimm fairy tale, I discovered one in my yard the very next day.  Apparently a bird dropped one out of its front or hind end earlier that year, and the tangle had been growing, festering and spreading like a bad rumor.  Now, I could pull a Howard Hughes and pick all by my little self.  In private.  

And it is with picking that all the fun starts.  The whole scene takes on a twisted story in my mind, so come on into my head and have a listen.  

Blackberry Playbook: A Simple How-To Guide on Dealing With Very Naughty Berries 

These purple gems will tease you as they become the ultimate flirt.  They coquettishly hide behind leaves and you will pay a heavy price to pick them from their pit-viper den.  Gaze at them every day whispering, ‘you little wenches will be mine next Tuesday.’  Trust me.  You’ll know just the right picking day because you’ll feel a shiver down your spine one morning. 

To pick: dress up like a Hobbit.  Items needed: a curved stick, falconer gloves, a bush machete and shit-stomping shoes.  This is because you’ll be dealing with the Fruits of Prey. Your family will start to circle the room in a state of delirium because they know that unlike the 12-hour labor of plum jam, they’ll be having warm biscuits and even warmer blackberry preserves in two short hours.  Like they’re sitting at a While-U-Wait Laundromat as you do all the work.  

But first, you must survive the actual picking.  The bushes are the nastiest bastard bushes you’ve ever known.  Think: Serpents with swords, winding around to form a cage, protecting the coveted prize.  They will clamp onto your leg, waiting for a neck biter moment. The bramble will let you have at the berries, but it will cost you.  It’s like grabbing a toy from the paws of a very pissed off cat.  To make it worse, it has a wine pairing from hell:  it always has to partner with a rose bush.  As if a blackberry bush is not crappy enough all by itself, it has to recruit another bush with a bad reputation.  Your hands will be bloodied by either the berries or your own plasma, but just keep picking as the plant lures you closer, closer, just a little closer, as you stretch at inhuman dimensions to….reach….just….one….more. 

These sirens of the shrub are so sneaky, they even slide under leaves to hide from the birds above.  You have to peek underneath to get at them, which then forces you to hunch down in unnatural positions, to humiliate you into an unflattering squat.  Then you realize it’s a subservient pose and even though you refuse to bow before anything, you will be forced off balance.  They plan it this way, these blackhearted Jezebels, trying to make you take a header into the maiming machine of the vine.  You’ve never been mauled by a mountain lion, but you’re pretty sure that’s the agony awaiting you if you lose concentration and balance.  You have to wear your shit-stompers to step on the feisty arm of the vine, which is always under tension, trying to spring upwards to reach for the tender portion of your underbelly.  

Sometimes, on your lucky days, you’ll misstep and the branch will snap back up in the air with catapult whip action, giving your undercarriage a fine ‘how do you do!’  (To borrow my favorite phrase from Austin Powers.)  

Thank you all very much for being such a patient audience with your hands folded so nicely in your laps.   

Despite this berry torture I’ve described to you, I keep going in for more.  I am out of my mind as I taste a few here and there.  If garnets had a taste, it would be these, with purple music coming from their little pods.  Oh, the delicacies I’m going to make with this lot!  I can’t stand it and this is why I take risks unknown to my family (unnatural positions, blinding thorns, power lines.)  But I have survived satellite dishes and it hasn’t hurt me none.  

I realize: Blood on the hand is worth two cobblers in the oven.  Seriously.  I think to myself: what a wonderful world. 

And then, sometimes I get lucky and produce a small batch of the rarest form of preserves.  This jam makes men not share.  It makes them forget they have wives and kids.  (My husband? If you’re reading this, yes, I’m referring to you.  Sharing is caring, so don’t hide them anymore.)

If I knew a creature as nasty and menacing as these bushes, I wouldn’t bother to throw water on them if they were on fire.  So why do I go back for more?   Because I learn a life lesson in one ten-minute session: take risks…reach, stretch, endure the pain, picture the end result!  You know, just as deep and meaningful as a Yahoo! news story.   

Also, I feel like my weight loss goals are like these blackberries.  Gorgeous, rare, shining moments of success, trying to grow around the snarls of life.  Trying to succeed despite the thorns that coil around you and try to get in your way.  Yes, yes, roll your eyes at my metaphor.  Go ahead, laugh at my life as a blackberry.  But for me, they are shiny Blobs of Hope Amongst A Tangled Mess.

Time In A Bottle

Settle in.  I have a little summer story for you.

I am not a good cook.  You would not want to come to my dinner party because you would be served food that was beige.  And not in a good way.  I sincerely try to cook well, but my problem is I just lose interest somewhere around the second ingredient.  I over-think it and become conquered if there are too many things happening on the stove at the same time.  My head gets in the way of just enjoying the process. 

I’m German and come from a long line of women who knew their way around the stockpot.  One would think I should kick ass in the kitchen.  But while I was in the middle of puberty, we lived near a bunch of satellite dishes and I may have received some accidental radiation overspray.  That stuff just mucks up your cooking gene. 

I knew something was wrong when someone handed me a ziplock bag of Friendship Bread when I was 28.  Raise your hand if you know what I mean.  It’s a ‘goo’, with spores and yeast from all the way back to the Pilgrims.  You babysit it for two weeks.  You burp it on day one, shake it on day two, stare at it on day three, repeat.  Then you make a parched loaf of bread from it, sending a bit of the uncooked dough off to your next victim friend, who starts the simple process over. 

It is a liquid chain letter that will burden you, trust me.  I followed the instructions and on day twelve, it turned black and developed a heartbeat and possibly teeth.  It is designed to thrive with neglect and I still screwed it up.  I was so irritated that I tossed it into the back yard and waited for the sink hole the next morning.  So, I lay this evidence at your feet.  This is why my husband stepped in by the third day of our marriage, because he saw things heading south pretty fast in terms of dinner. 

Which brings me to the fantastic irony I’m about to tell you.  Despite my failure in the kitchen, I have apparently nailed one thing.   I can make homemade Santa Rosa Plum preserves.  It has been said that it ‘tastes so good, it will make you leave your spouse.’  For some, it’s ‘A Swanky Las Vegas Night Club’ in a jar.

“Seriously?”  I said. 

“Yes,” they said. 

Cool, thought Sheri.

‘They’ are my regulars, the ones who score a jar every year.  I tell my regulars, “If you bring back the empty jar and leave it on my porch, I’ll refill it for y------“

And suddenly, there are empty jars on the porch, sucked dry and turned upside down like drained shot glasses.  They are not shy about refills. 

For me, the taste is more like Jumping On Stage And Dancing in the Dark With Bruce Springsteen.  I really don’t know why it’s so good.  Anyone could make it, but I truly think it is because of the tree they come from (in the yard next door) and the mystical training I received. 

My neighbor was a sweet old lady who looked like my grandma.  This woman poured her soul and virtues and perhaps some gypsy magic into her yard.  She planted those trees in the disco era (when I was getting overspray from the satellite dishes, if you remember.)  About 15 years ago, she decided to teach me the humble art of canning and preserving.  She has since passed away, but I continue to can every year.  I’d like to tell you it’s to honor her memory, but the reality is, I despise it.  I dread it and curse the grueling process, yet I salivate at the chance to turn them into preserves.  This leads me to believe I’ve got a tad of the bipolar, but that’s another story.  All I know, is there is a force bigger than me which dictates it shall be done.  

I watch with a heavy heart as the plums start growing around March.  Little beady pellets of hell, swelling through the spring so that they can suck up my most precious week of summer and make me slack off on my laundry.  I find myself planning vacations around that week so I can be in town, even as I fantasize about sneaking in at night to pinch their little blossoming lives off the branch.  This would be easier than wasting ripe ones, easier to snuff them out before we had a chance to meet.  But they weave a spell.  One year, I fell off the 6 foot ladder while picking them and landed face down on the hard ground.  That happened to be the best batch of preserves ever.  

The new tree-owners are a young couple whom I adore, and they too are under the same spell.  We watch in June as the sun does its final trick and turns the fruit into glowing rubies.  We can’t bear the thought of a single one wasted.  We mine the internet for new ways to quickly use up the plums, cheap and easy shortcuts to keep up with the bumper crop.  But the plums laugh at us…"We are best used as preserves," they say condescendingly.  Do they care that I don’t really have 75 hours to go the long route?  I think not.  

I spend a day retooling my entire house to get ready for good old Plum Week.  I am bitter at having to put my life on hold for seven days, with an aching back and neglected family in my near future.  From my porch, I watch the hanging scoundrels (the plums, not my family.)  I look at their color and size and the way they look in the sun, but I say, “Not yet.”  

Then one day, it’s The Day.  In my head, I hear, “Now.”  I mutter and sigh as I take the claw/cage on the end of a broomstick and head next door.  I pass the cage through the branches like the donation basket at church.  I get little satisfaction at the jackpot the tree decides to drop in.  I remind you that at this point, I’m still full of resentment and dread at all the work ahead of me.  So much work for 5 bloody pints!

I hand pick certain ones and I can’t put it into words, but they are the ones that have three months of trapped sunshine in them.  I can smell several heady summer afternoons steaming from their skins.  My hands always know which ones to grab.  My husband is fascinated that I, a total screw-up in the kitchen, can use the same set of instructions as anyone else, and yet seem to create a one-of-a-kind orchestra in a jar. To tell you the truth, I’m morbidly curious as well.  He thinks, gosh, she really looks like she knows what she’s doing.  We both know I don’t know what I’m doing, and yet, somehow, I’m doing it by feeling my way and listening to the plums.

When I get them home, I am lulled by the age-old process of canning.  I like the concentration it forces upon me and suddenly I am multi-tasking.  I’ve got lids boiling here, the oven preheating there, the plums bubbling, the jars getting rinsed, the sugar and pectin getting measured.  All by little old me, pulling all the levers and pulleys of a huge machine, not overthinking it.  All that’s missing is a lit cigarette clenched between my teeth.  I do have my to-die-for playlist going on my iPod, because I believe if you’re in a great mood when you cook, you will produce things that taste fabulous and give joy to your guests.  It's the first step to world peace. 

For six hours, my kitchen looks like a butchery, complete with bloody floor and clothes.  There is red everywhere, even on my forehead and on the ceiling.  The kitchen is hot and the work gets faster and more critical.  I am sweating like a blacksmith as my face burns hot in front of the smelting pots.  We finally get to the crowd pleasing summit: the Pouring of the Boiling Gem Liquid Into The Glass.  I swaddle each full jar in a cloth and carry it like a warm newborn to the waiting arms of the cooling table.  

Miraculously, I always seem to estimate it to the last perfect plum.  I have just enough; not too much, not too little.  I attribute this to the good karma from my grandma’s magic stockpot and ladle.  I glance as my counter has two, then four, then twenty pints of home-wrecker preserves.   Suddenly, I hear the PING!!!! of every lid as each jar gives me the thumbs up that it has sealed the hatch.  I go from tired and depleted, to absolutely ready to propose.  

That’s how the transformation happens…my cold and bitchy heart starts to warm as these become like my offspring.  

But it doesn’t stop there.  These glass children have a hold on me.  When I started giving them out during those first years, I jealously hoarded them.  As I sent them off into the world of Texas, Arkansas and the East Coast, I had to check in on them to see if they arrived safely.  Were they loved? I hoped they represented me well.  One time, someone said, “Oops! I dropped it on the porch.”  Or this brutal confession: “Darn! I forgot about it and it spoiled in the car.”  My eyes narrowed, and I added their names to the list of the No Longer Deserving.   

Mistreat my jam, and you stab me in the heart.  Wink, wink. 

I look at the hours put in by me, the sun and God.  I think, that jar has my entire Sunday in it.  Made while listening to Van Halen, Prince and the Black Eyed Peas.  There’s a lot of stuff going on in that jar, and especially stuff that happened prior to that jar.  Those could be jars of the epoch one day. 

My husband said I could be the Plum Whisperer.  But I think perhaps, the plums are taming ME.   

I wanted to tell you this story for two reasons.  One is because a weight loss journey sometimes has to be placed on ‘pause.’   This is so that you can have your hard-earned plum jelly on fresh biscuits, to celebrate tree jewels and summer’s bounty.  

Secondly, I wanted to tell you about one thing I’m good at. 

Because this month, it wasn’t weight loss.   

Thank goodness that’s what they make July for!!!!