My mother’s apricot jam
Every day, we waited for the unveiling.
Like a small army, our bodies buzzed inside the confines of the dark modular, our eyes wandering up to the clock and then following the line of the ceiling to the hall of cubbies where our lunch bags hung on alphabeticalized hooks. Our attention, too, wandered past Ms. Blackwell’s desk that functioned as barricade to the outside world, overflowing with endless piles of worksheets scribbled with multiplication and cursive practice, fortified by bulky old computer that, in my memory, groaned and lurched with each use. And then, when we thought we could no longer stand it, we were released.
Lunch was a beacon, our tie to the sunlight on the other end of the long day’s journey into third grade. Those of us who were too poor to afford the private school lunch–which was far more expensive than bringing your own–scrambled to our cubbies to collect our stashed goods, and the ceremony commenced.
I unzipped my dirt-stained pale pink Strawberry Shortcake lunch bag only to reveal my worst fear: apricot jam and peanut butter. Again. The rich kids pulled out their lunchables, and the chocolate milk they bought from the beverage cart.
I pulled out my juice pouch.
Then, with the elements of the midday meal in front of me, I began my own daily rite of peeling my sandwich apart and scraping, scraping, scraping the little chunks of apricot off the sticky bread. It was the jam in particular I despised, the too-sweet smell and the orange bits of fruit that always required a bizarre amount of extra chewing. And then, inhaling the fragrance of peanut butter and grimacing as I swallowed the now-too-dry bread, I prayed for a miracle, for it to, somehow, taste of strawberry jam instead.
But apricot jam was my mother’s favorite. And every day, there it was, carefully placed alongside the juice and a piece of fruit, usually accompanied by a kind little note she included on a napkin, or right on the plastic baggie–something like “I love you!” or, “Have a great day!” or, “Don’t forget Grandma is picking you up!” Rich kids didn’t get notes on their napkins with their catered burritos or pizza or noodles. They didn’t get apricot jam, either. But as it turns out, on some thrilling days, those crazy eight-year-olds would trade their lunchables and chocolate milk for my apricot jam and juice pouch and we’d all be happy: me with their money and them with my mother’s love.
Later, she and I talked about this.
“Why on Earth didn’t you just tell me you hated the jam?” she laughed, her dark eyes squinting under her purple glasses. “I would’ve just bought a different kind if I had known!”
But I would not have admitted this to her in a million years, not even if some mad, food-obsessed dictator forced me to eat an entire jar of apricot jam with a spoon. Because to me, like some third grade eucharistic ritual, my mother was the apricot jam. I wasn’t just eating a sandwich. I was eating the bread of my mother, eating her energy, her effort, her stigma of being the only working mom in my class, a mom who didn’t fit in with the tall blonde women in their designer clothes and fancy cars in the drop-off line. I noticed the grace and fire with which she moved through that cutthroat world and I loved her for it with every part of me, including my stomach.
I made a vow that I would never admit my cardinal sin of hating those sandwiches. On particularly shameful days where no one wanted to trade, I threw them away and was done with it. But most of the time, on those days where I felt overwhelmed with pride for the kind woman who worked harder than anyone for a few copper coins in that sea of money, I choked them down, the essence of my mother, her body broken for me.
"Homemade Jam" by TinyTall is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.
