Pandemic pushed aside by Puyallup Valley summer family ritual

The first day of summer found me canning with my mom, once again. It is a timeless tradition, but this year it feels different. This year, there is a sense of urgency as the world around us bends to the tectonic shift that is COVID-19.

Everyone now, it seems, is canning, gardening, thinking about raising chickens, hoarding such random items as toilet paper, yeast and flour. And while I, as many in my family and others, bear the anxiety born by first responders and essential workers, somehow, in the center of my mother’s kitchen, I am overcome by a sense of normalcy and peace as we prepare to make our annual batches of jam.

In her typical, determined fashion, my Swiss mom has called on many a local farmer to secure berries for this canning tradition. Her call is immediately answered by her local friends, the Sidhus.

In their typical generous spirit, they recognize my mom’s voice as their (now-retired) nurse from Kalles Junior High. They have responded with the promise of beautiful flats of sweet and tender raspberries, crisp and tangy tayberries, pungent and juicy loganberries, and deep, floral boysenberries.

As I pick up the berries the Sidhus have promised us, I find myself profoundly moved in the midst of the selfishness and pettiness I have witnessed during this time of pandemic.

The berries were originally slated for Seattle, where demand (and cost) is higher. But the Sidhus not only put aside the flats of freshly picked berries for my mom, but also offer a discount in respect to my mother — a public employee to most, but “their school nurse” to them.

And so, bearing these splendorous gifts of the Puyallup Valley and the Sidhus, I spend this July day making jam with my expert-canner mother; my Cuban father who hums Latin folk ballads as we work; a dear friend Sean who was inspired by the bounty of the berries in his own pea patch to learn to make jam; and a neighbor who has passed the mornings of quarantine doing yoga with my father and mother and has, quite accidentally, found herself captivated by the whirlwind that is a canning day in my mother’s household.

Pans filled with water and lined with jars and lids simmer on the stove. Sean swirls the exotic Northwest fruit through the food mill so that our jam is sweet but not seedy. I take the prepared fruit and mix in pectin and sugar (reduced, of course, because my mom is, after all, a retired school nurse).

I bring this elixir of summer to a hot boil until the timer sounds, then pour it into the hot, sterilized jars, top with the hot, sterilized lids and transport them gingerly to the fresh towels that line the long countertops.

I move between stove and jars in a somewhat meditative trance. We cover them with more fresh towels and begin the next batch.

The day ends after the sun has begun to drop. Our masks, valiantly stained with our efforts, wilt against our faces.

I finally sit down after preparing an unprecedented number of batches, hopeful that the bounty of summer, the generosity of neighbors and the efforts of this crew will carry us into the starkness of an unfathomable winter.

As is usual at the end of a day of canning, I go to bed and awaken to the traditional call from my mom about the seal count. It is not a perfect count, nor is the time we live in.

I accept the imperfections as a reason to spread jam on toast sooner rather than later. The rest of the jars become an opportunity to share our bounty with others, as our friends have done with us, and await the moment to open a jar of this goodness of summer in the middle of the season that awaits us.

Laura Penalver-Vargas, a former TNT reader columnist, is a clinical psychologist practicing in Puyallup and at Kaiser Permanente.