An old-fashioned wash board hung on the wall in our dining room. She scolded us for playing with it, but we loved to rub our fingernails over its bumpy glass surface, to hear the clicking sound. In one of the old albums, under crinkly clear plastic was a faded photo of the 70s held on sticky backing board. A long-haired woman in bellbottom corduroy and my dad’s checked shirt grinned, her hand on the crank of an old-fashioned laundry press, out on the back deck of the cottage. By the time I was laying down memory, though, our laundry passed through shuddering metal cubes with heavy doors on top that slammed shut with a satisfying clunk.

But canning, that is, preserving things in glass jars for the winter, was a big piece of home. Mason jars in all sizes illustrated a bountiful harvest in bumpy glass fruits and veggies; they were so pretty. I’d run my fingers around the glass threads around the top of the jar, feel the sticky red seal under the shiny copper tops, and enjoy the tinny scrape of the metal rings that held the two together while magic was worked in the steamy depths of the giant canning pot. I could undo the screw tops on my own, but to release the seal from the jar itself I needed a tool; the little wave-shaped hook of stainless steel on one side of the can opener.

As you pry it up, there’s a satisfying sucking sound, a soft pop, before you can get at the treasures within.

Of course, at the time I didn’t think of my Mom’s mason jar goodies as treasure, it was just food to me. Canned summer peaches, homemade applesauce and I swear to god she didn’t add any sugar. Blackberry jam, that fruit of scratchy scorched days in late August. Pickled beets, cinnamon scented and sharp to stain your tongue and the white tablecloth of Christmas dinners. The chantrelle mushrooms that still held a few pine needles in their succulent wrinkles. And the spicy pickled green beans that I loved so much.

Mom would tell me to get a jar of mushrooms for the chili. With heat from the wood stove at my back I’d open the door, letting in cool air from the garage. I’d pad down three carpet-wrapped steps to land on the cold, cold, cold painted concrete floor. A few frigid steps to the cupboard, with plywood doors hung on flat hinges, swinging outward to reveal the darkness within. As I poked about for right kind of jar, I’d hope to hell I could avoid touching a spider web, a dead spider husk, or, worst of all, startle a hairy wolf spider and send it scuttling on sharp little claws across dusty plywood into the deeper dark.

Jar in hand, I’d let the cupboard door slam as I hopped back up the stairs as fast as I could to the warmth and light of the kitchen, filled with comforting steam of frying butter and garlic.