Preserved

It was a wordless memory.

Reaching up in the dark larder towards the row of jars on the high shelf, glints of light on the glass. The white label on the one he inched towards the edge said "strawberry." Neat blue letters enticed him. The jar started to topple on the edge of the shelf. He tried to hold it but his small hands weren't strong enough. It slipped and smashed on the larder floor.

He'd expected a walloping, but Grandma had just cleaned up without speaking. And she'd wept silently.

He was too young then to understand why. Only later did he put that memory together with one from a few weeks earlier. Grandma and his mother, in the kitchen, sweating over huge pans. Baskets full of fruit, glittering mountains of sugar and rows of sparkling jars covered the table he played under, only half listening to their talk and laughter.

Then his mother was gone.

And Grandma wept over a broken jar of jam and saved the handwritten label in a kitchen drawer even after it went yellow and the ink faded to a ghostly grey.

end

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© Elizabeth Charles 2006