Salsa

Today I miss my mom.
And how it will be fall in Iona soon-which means it will smell like salsa. The tomatoes will line the windowsill of the kitchen and my mom will slowly watch them ripen, saying things like, "I think they'll last another day." She'll say that for about three days and when finally they really won't last another day, she'll pull out the grinder, and the slicers, and the cutting boards, and the jars with the clunky metal rings, and her canner that's older than I am.

Water will boil, tomato skins will fall, knives will chop, and then steam will erupt. The little cuts on her hands from gardening all day will sting as the tomato juice runs over them as she slices. She'll have Johnny turn the handle of the grinder(this is the only job he will do willingly) as she slowly feeds pieces of onions and peppers into the top. The kitchen counter will be covered with the pots for boiling, pots for cutting, pots for stewing, and pots for canning.

She'll pour her conglomerate of vegetables into the jars, her hair flat from cooking in the heat of early fall, and her apron smeared with tomato seeds and onion skins. Carefully monitoring the canner, she'll take out and replace batch after batch, jar after jar.

She'll labor day and night as the fumes of salsa permeate the air everywhere. Upstairs, downstairs, bathroom, garage, all you'll smell is salsa. And maybe your mom makes salsa, and I'll bet it's great, and it probably smells good too, but our salsa always smells the best. Because my mom made it. And so therefore, it has to be the best.

I wish I had even one jar of my mom's salsa right now. I'd put it in the crockpot and keep it on warm all day. That way my apartment would smell like fall too.