When I was a little girl there was a time we were homeless - staying for short periods of time with a lot of different people my mother was introduced to from church, people who wanted to help us.
Then we were able to move into our own place in the projects but we couldn’t afford a refrigerator yet because my mom couldn't find a job for a period of time (eventually going back to school as a single mother to become a Registered Nurse).
But it was winter now and we had no refrigerator, thankfully in Western New York winter means cold snow, so we enjoyed the simple mercy of the cold allowing us to keep our food and milk refrigerated outside on the window sills.
That year we wouldn’t have any gifts under the Christmas tree, and we were grateful for our little artificial tree.
Christmas morning came and the lone item under the tree was a can of home canned white cherries mom had made the year before. I remember how pretty they looked in the bottle and how good they tasted.
After that year no matter how we were doing financially we always had canned fruit on Christmas morning. It reminded us of how blessed we were.
Then we were able to move into our own place in the projects but we couldn’t afford a refrigerator yet because my mom couldn't find a job for a period of time (eventually going back to school as a single mother to become a Registered Nurse).
But it was winter now and we had no refrigerator, thankfully in Western New York winter means cold snow, so we enjoyed the simple mercy of the cold allowing us to keep our food and milk refrigerated outside on the window sills.
That year we wouldn’t have any gifts under the Christmas tree, and we were grateful for our little artificial tree.
Christmas morning came and the lone item under the tree was a can of home canned white cherries mom had made the year before. I remember how pretty they looked in the bottle and how good they tasted.
After that year no matter how we were doing financially we always had canned fruit on Christmas morning. It reminded us of how blessed we were.
Years later we were living in a nice neighborhood across the road from an old gentleman we would periodically bring treats to. At Christmas time we decided to share our tradition of homemade canned white cherries as a Christmas gift to our neighbor.
As I handed him the canning jar of cherries and wished him a Merry Christmas his eyes got misty and I could see he was somewhere in the past…as he returned to the present,
he smiled with a gentle smile and shared with me a treasured memory.
As he shared his story his eyes looked again, like they were in the past somewhere. He went on, “It was World War II and I was in the Army fighting in Germany at Christmas time. A kind and elderly German woman took me and one of my friends into her home for Christmas. At that time everyone in Germany was living on rationed food. Food was very difficult to come by. When we woke Christmas morning there was a fire blazing in the fireplace, and on the table were simple wooden bowls and spoons. When we were all at the table our hostess smiled with a gleam in her eyes and placed a jar of canned white cherries on the table. How had she come by this precious fruit? Somehow she had saved it, hidden away for a special occasion. I remember how the cherries seemed to glow in the canning jar from the fire light and how beautiful they looked. They looked like a jar of warm miniature suns. I felt like a kid peering inside a department store’s window at Christmas time. After a prayer of gratitude we slowly took turns carefully removing a few cherries from the the jar and placing them in our bowl. As we ate we felt like we had been fed manna by an angelic being, because who else or where else could we have received this impossible gift from? Yes I remember it well -thank you so much…for this gift”
When he said thank you I wasn’t sure if he was thanking
me or the old German woman or both of us at the same time.
I knew this year we hadn’t just given an elderly gentleman a kind Christmas gesture but that we had been inspired to help him
relive a treasured experience in his life,
which made it an extra special Christmas for us.
I knew this year we hadn’t just given an elderly gentleman a kind Christmas gesture but that we had been inspired to help him
relive a treasured experience in his life,
which made it an extra special Christmas for us.
Picture
http://www.cupcakeproject.com/2012/07/homemade-maraschino-cherries-this-time.html#CTZmtPktRidTkFiA.32
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