The Deal

What if I were to tell you that everything I know about love is in a tiny glass jar of pear jelly?

What if I were to tell you that love made that? When my 8-year-old legs pulled the faded red wagon at my grandmother’s farm. Pulled the wagon that was as big as me to the old worn-out pear tree standing alone at the fence line between furrowed rows.

And what if I were to tell you that my 8-year-old fingers plucked the ripened fruit that had fallen on the ground as I was too small to reach the branches. And then the pears filled the wagon, and I trucked them back to grandma. That was our deal from love, of love - that I would gather the pears and she would make jelly.

And then my summer visit ended and I went back home, back to school and had forgotten all about the deal. And what if I were to tell you surprises didn’t happen often in our little trailer so as another ordinary day came and went, and I arrived home from school that day and my mother asked how my day was and I told her it was okay, like any other day. Then she did something that was somewhat miraculous. She opened the door to the refrigerator and took something from it cupping it in her hands like a small pot of steaming tea - a small glass jar of pear jelly that had a tiny white label that stretched across its belly that read {Pear Jelly, 1962}.