Jammin’ to the Good Stuff

My kitchen shelf is stocked to the brim with homemade jam. Admittedly, I became spoiled at the tender age of twenty-two. It was the first time I tasted Monika’s fine bread spread. Hand-picked, summer ripe fruit and a little sugar are the only ingredients she uses. We are talking Slow Food, locally grown and consumed. It is the kind that is so Slow it can’t even crawl.

My favorite jam is raspberry. Unfortunately, it seems to be everyone else’s too. As abundant as Monika’s garden is, even it has its limits on the raspberry yield it brings every growing season. I am mindful not to be too greedy during my sporadic visits to her house. Inevitably, she will offer me an array of flavors, which I take with a humble bow, trying hard not to eye the jars for fear raspberry might not be among them.

One day, after biting into a not-so-satisfying pear jam, I placed my bread back on the plate and wondered why I didn’t just open up a jar of raspberry jam. What was I saving it for? Why was I being so stingy with myself?

We do this. We put off the good stuff for later. Vacation? One day. That trip with the girls? Maybe next year. That visit to family? Well, they’ll always be there…won’t they?

We deny ourselves a lot of things, but jam? I mean really. Life is too short for bad marmalade. Why suffer when you don’t need to? When you already have a shelf full of stuff that makes you happy? I looked at my reflection in the marmalade spoon and asked: What on Earth are you saving it for?

So I got up, dumped the pear jam and opened a new one filled to the rim with raspberry delight.

We are worth having the good things. And when we forget what we’ve already got, it’s good to be reminded.

Take time to enjoy the good kind of jam. The jam that makes you jump in the morning and say “Yeah!”  It is what makes life so very sweet.

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