"I stand here ironing…"

Well, I wasn't ironing, I was making beach plum jelly as I reflected on my life. I remember taking a literature class in college, my senior year. Actually, I took a few. One was on Virginia Woolf. Another was something like a retrospective on feminist literature. It was from that class that I learned the work of Tillie Olsen. It was over three decades ago and I remember reading "I stand here ironing", but I'm not positive. Did Tillie Olsen come speak to my class, I think so, but I'm not sure.

My story is different from the mother in Tillie Olsen's story, but there are plenty of parallels. I've been through hard times and like the mother in the story, I wonder what I could have done differently as a parent when my first marriage fell apart.

It was the day after my wife's 47th birthday and the 14th anniversary of her mother's death. Kim, and our daughter Fiona were out at dinner with a friend, and I was home making jam.

I've been thinking a lot about societal constructs and gender roles. I was creating something special, yet transitory; another batch of beach jam. We will give it away as gifts, eat a little bit of it ourselves, and then, before another Labor Day roles around on Cape Cod, most of it will be gone.

The domestic arts. Throughout the ages, the fine arts and literary arts have been dominated by men while the domestic arts have been dominated by women. Should I submit my jam to a county fair? Maybe make a quilt some time? Challenge some of the old gender roles?

This year, my middle daughter wrote the book, "Don't' Make Art, Just Make Something". It is about not letting the word 'art' stop you from being creative. There is an art to making good beach plum jam. I'm not sure I've mastered that art yet, but I am making something, and that something, my friends tell me, is some really good jam.

Fourteen years ago, my wife's mother died, and the tears still reappear each year. My mother is more recently deceased. I'm coming up on the first year, and I find myself drifting more and more towards something between the dreams she had for me and my idealized memories of her.

As I stir the heating syrup, soon to be jam, I think of those days as a child when I would help her with jelly making and canning. It was part of my childhood, part of who I am now.

Seventeen jars of jam yesterday; sixteen more today. Another batch to be made. Then, I'll probably find some time to start a batch of hard cider.

And, in my spare time, I make space, here and there, to write. I feel no closer to my aspirations of literary grandeur than I did over three decades ago, studying in the shadows of some great writers.

But, at least I know I can make some good jam