Bittersweet moments

Dill spears and bread and butter pickles

September’s here; summer’s gone. A few Sundays ago, I put up some pickles, all the while remembering watching my aunt Florence can beets on a broiling hot day many years ago. My father’s sister was a no-nonsense mother and aunt. Every summer when I was small, I’d go to visit her and my cousin Susan on a farm not at all like the idyllic view we might have of rural life now. No indoor plumbing, swimming in a mossy horse tank, walking to call in cows in the evening through rough terrain where rattlesnakes hid — for a timid girl who longed for city sidewalks, the farm in Southwestern Kansas held little allure.

So why after all these years, do I dream of Florence, with her arms up to her elbows stained red with beet juice? She was known as the smartest in her family and could do anything in housekeeping — take a zipper from a purse to make a child’s pants, grow sweet, sweet watermelons, fry chickens to perfect crispness, stretch a dollar farther than seemed possible, and though she wasn’t the giggly type, comfort a visiting sick child. Putting up vegetables wasn’t a romantic notion — it was necessity. And if it took days to scrub away the beet stains, so be it.

Here are some of my pickles. I wish I had Florence’s beets to put in the pantry beside them.