This fall, preserve the jams, the pickles, the tomatoes, but most of all PLEASE preserve the family traditions. Your kids will one day, tearfully thank you!
If you haven’t already noticed, traditions involving these activities are fading fast. But it was pretty easy for me to notice that the 600 pounds of tomatoes sitting in our garage were rotting fast too. We couldn’t hold off until the weekend, so on a rain-soaked Tuesday, we chose to drop everything else and “do the tomatoes.”
For those not familiar with this process, the end result would be jarring at least 100 quarts of tomato sauce, which would hopefully last the entire year. I’ve been participating in tomato day for over fifty years now, from cutting off the stem to counting the jars! No need for details, for a picture tells a thousand words.
All I know is after all these years, it’s the most anticipated, precious, and most physically torturous day all at the same time. The whole thing is the perfect example of how the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Like everything else, technology took over, and gradually tomato weekend became tomato day, thanks to our efficient OMRA electric tomato strainer! This made the whole task so much faster…. and so much sadder because one thing remained constant throughout the decades; this was the one day out of the year we were confined in one location with our family. After about 12 hours of “tomatoing,” the only thing that kept us from kicking that last crate of raw tomatoes down the driveway, was the enjoyable chatting with parents, siblings, kids and even the grandparents, if we were very lucky.
In years past, the norm for tomato day was Saturday, when the kids had no school. But miraculously, they jumped out of bed early, even my teenagers, who usually rolled out of bed at noon. Every kid settled into their roles over the years, doing what they did best. There’s always the one who had the dexterity to handle a knife, and could cut the tomatoes in half at lightning speed, and the one who ran the tomato strainer for hours on end, to the strongest kid who tightened and sealed the jars when filled.
Witnessing such a collective effort made me so proud of my children. No bickering, no complaining, and no whining. Just all of us working side-by-side trying to get the job done. What a beautiful thing!
The only problem was as the kids got older and became more helpful, I somehow was getting pushed out and my own role was now being the gofer to everyone. “Ma, please grab me a spoon,” or “I think I need a cutting board,” to “How many more glass jars do we need?” And of course, the usual lament, “I’m hungry, what are we having for lunch?”
So I started to admire my family from a distance, watching them work together, in the garage and the memories from my past “tomato days” came flooding back. I wish I could’ve recorded a twenty second video of each one, but I did in my own head. I could still picture my grandmother trying to tie an apron around my rotund irritated grandfather with a sharp knife in his hand, who was getting hammered at the same time with my questions about our ancestors. If it weren’t for those days, jotting down names with my wrinkled hands, my prized possession of our family tree would not have happened.
Gosh, I really missed those days, but then I looked around in my own garage and realized my kids were creating their own memories, and hopefully would go on to re-create all this with their own kids someday. Was it really a coincidence that my daughter announced to us on Tomato Day a couple of years ago that she would have our first grandchild?
So now, here I am chasing my two-year-old grandson on Tomato Tuesday while the rest of the gang went full force plowing through those hundreds of pounds of tomatoes. I was content on the other side with unwrinkled hands waiting for my jars of tomato sauce, and so grateful knowing that this tradition was still alive and well, truly hoping our affair with the love-apple would survive a few more generations!
