Strawberry season

In New York, strawberries ripen in June, when the springtime chill makes way for summer heat. And every June, Grandma would gather all the grandchildren, aunts and uncles to pick strawberries. Bushels and bushels of them. We’d speckle the field, talking, bending, searching, picking, tasting.

Sticky sweetness dripping between our fingers and down our chins.

I don’t know how long we were out there or how many rows we walked end to end. I don’t know how many strawberries we picked, or threw at each other…or who picked the most. But at some point when we were sweaty and tired, Grandma would declare that we’d picked enough and someone would shout across the rows that we were done.

That’s when our work ended, and the magic began.

I wasn’t in the kitchen while Grandma and the aunts washed and capped the strawberries, but I knew there was magic in the way they held the paring knives and swiftly prepped hundreds of strawberries.

50 pounds of sugar crowded the kitchen table, as strawberries boiled down to liquid rubies and their aroma clung to the air in the small, humid room.

Strawberries, pectin, sugar…strawberries, pectin, sugar…over and over again until the mixture thickened, and the bushels of berries transformed into jelly.

Grandma scooped the jelly into dozens of giant, empty, ricotta containers, saved and collected all year.

We’d follow the swirling scent and gather at the kitchen door for a sampling, a taste…hot and drippy, on a golden croissant. Licking fingers, smacking lips, we’d hum our delight before running back outside to play.

Each family would bring home containers of coveted jelly. A prize for a job well done. And though we had our own at jelly home, it tasted best at Grandma’s house. When winter came, we’d sit at the kitchen table waiting for croissants to crisp and jelly to melt into the middle…reminding us of June.