Snapshots of My Mother

Today, I catch the zucchini staring at me. Last week, we found 5 giant zucchini hidden in the garden. We obviously lost track of them somehow because they grew into monsters. We brought them in, sat them on the counter, and went back to ignoring them. Until today.

Today, I feel their weight on my shoulders. I have to do something with them. Clearly, they are too big for sautéing and now full of seeds. Remembering my grandmother sharing that she freezes shredded zucchini for bread, I hop to it.

As I work, as during all food preservation tasks, I constantly think about my mother. I feel as though I'm channeling her. I can't decide if it's intentional or not, but there's something that feels incredibly tangible about it. As if she is in the room with me.

Maybe it's all the flashbacks of the times I saw her in the kitchen doing the same thing. Not this exactly, but similar work - putting up green beans, cherries, strawberries, apples, peaches, tomatoes, corn... or making applesauce, vegetable soup, and jelly to put up...

I have snap shots in my mind of her standing in her kitchen. Always a cluttered mess, yet containing a systematic madness to it. Boxes of cherries she had recently picked from a local orchard, some system or contraption in place to pit them, giant bowls everywhere each filled with cherries or pits, and always juice splattered all over the counters. Or a similar set-up and subsequent mess for whatever else she was putting up at the time.

In these snapshots, every surface of the kitchen is covered. Either by things associated with the current task or whatever was already present when she dove in. Something about that "chaos" feels so damn homey to me.

I think of that - even now - when I splatter my own mess. In this case, shredded zucchini is on the floor, the cabinets, the counters, my self... and with every splatter, all I can do is smile and think about my mother.