RIGHT OF PASSAGE

The grapes simmer in the massive stock pot permeating the air with the thick rich scent of will-be jelly. My wooden spoon stained wine red as I stir. The steam has my skin glowing, my pores breathing in the velvety grape loveliness. A skill it took until my late 40s to learn. 


A clipping of grapes from the Ceraldi family’s vine in East Vancouver via Italy was originally gifted to my Mother and then to me. That piece of Vancouver’s little Italy covers my entire backyard in Pitt Meadows now. In summer the plump heavy bunches of fruit hang thick from the vine near crippling our aging rusted metal gazebo in the centre of the yard. It transforms a suburban plot of yard into a Mediterranean haven allowing us to bask in peace in our own little Heaven. 


Our suburban vineyard is interspersed with kiwi vines, thornless blackberries, blueberries, a tree with quince and pears grafted together and they all become part of this ritual of preserving. When developers bought the green space next to us and took out all the abundant mighty trees and bushes on the westside of our yard the vines exploded from the exposure to more sunlight. It tripled the harvest. The same expanse was felt in my soul when I finally learned what I had watched my Grandmother, Mom, Aunt and cousins do for generations. I mourned hard for the loss of the green space that 3 years later still sits as an empty dirt lot waiting for development. It deepened my appreciation for the grapevine refuge that preserves our solace. 


Life was busy with other things and I had missed out on this right of passage, the skill of canning. Most of my cousins had participated in the peeling and processing of fruit before they even reached their teens. My Mother no longer canned and the window of opportunity felt like it was closed until I was faced with a yard full of fruit demanding attention. 


Mom had always been a jam maker so she viewed jelly making as advanced and marvelled that I would first time out of the gate attempt it. My best friend joined forces with Mom and I and we laboured together boiling jars, stirring the grapes, straining the hot burgundy liquid through cheesecloth. That sense of belonging, that sisterhood, that wholeness I sought seeped into my spirit. A city girl all my life yet the farm stock in my blood and self-sufficiency in my bones rose to this occasion and that hollow space was filling like the jars of jelly. The lids on the jars made the triumphant popping noise signalling a successful seal and it is the sound of being complete.