Wednesday, June 26, 2019

Mrs. Cunningham

Relative to nothing but, many decades ago my friend Stephen Johns discovered a woman by the name of Mrs. Cunningham whose family owned these wonderful fig orchards right off of Coast Highway in Malibu. Every year Mrs. Cunningham would make fig jam and it was the best fig jam I ever tasted, Golden, incredibly sweet and just delicious. For several years after discovering it (and her) I would order two cases of that incredible jam and I would dole it out to myself, two bottles per month at 12 bottles per case. Ghoulish though it may sound I would always wish Mrs. Cunningham well (albeit only to myself) as I walked away from her little stand with its primitively written “Homemade Fig Jam” sign knowing that, as went Mrs. Cunningham‘s health, so went my supply of fig jam. I’m not proud to admit it but, if I was addicted to anything at that time in my life, it was to that jam and maybe a little bit to Mrs. Cunningham’s wry smile that she gave to me along with my change, knowing that she had hooked me good.
I’ve heard it said that anything bordering on perfection can’t and won’t last and such was the case with Mrs. Cunningham and her Jam.
We had gotten to the point in our relationship where Mrs. Cunningham had given me her private phone number so I could call her to ask about “the Jam” and like clockwork, she was always there to answer the phone and, after a little prodding, would finally say “oh yes I remember you dear, before reminding me that her jam was always “first come first served.” She would go on to explain that she couldn’t possibly put any aside for me because it just wouldn’t be fair. I would have to take my chances like everybody else which I always did. And then one year it happened, I made the phone call and the line was disconnected. Though I knew I wouldn’t have to drive all the way to Malibu to know what I knew was true in my heart, I drove by anyway. I can’t say how many times it was that I made that drive but I did go and it wasn’t until I drove by once and saw that they had subdivided the property and put in a strip mall where I had turned off to get to her little stand that I admitted to myself that she was really gone.
As I said at the beginning of this post, my words are relative to nothing else that’s going on in the world in general or in my world specifically other than one thing. On my birthday, knowing how much I love figs, Stephen and his lovely fiancĂ©e Dunnia gave me a large bag of dried figs from Costco.
I don’t know what possessed me but I took a couple of handfuls of these very precious figs, I chopped them up, put them in a pot with some water and, in this case Splenda, and I reconstituted them into my version of Mrs. Cunningham’s Jam. And you know what? It was good. I don’t know what Mrs. Cunningham would say but my jam tasted just enough like hers to my brain that I was able to sit back with a freshly toasted bagel, some good butter and not only the jam but all the sweet memories that came flooding back with it.
I have since bought more figs, made more Jam and with a surety that only I can promise to myself, have guaranteed my supply of Jam, at least until my little stand with my little sign is no longer there on the side of my mind’s Coast Highway and that’s all I can ask for. God bless you Mrs. Cunningham wherever you are, you made my life so much sweeter in ways you’ll never know.

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