Excerpt from: Wild Plum Jelly
Tracy Wilson
Wild Plum Jelly
By: Tracy Wilson
1 In the winter of 1976, when I was only four years old, my family moved into a modest home in a growing Greenville neighborhood. Upon a slope on one side of the house, stood a dozen tree sprigs looking rather bald and barren. By springtime, however, the little trees began growing taller and bushier by the day. Upon exploring the hillside in mid-July, I noticed hundreds of quarter-sized, pinkish orbs dangling, daring me to pick just one. Of course, I did.
2Plums? I questioned. Yes, plums. she reiterated. She explained that these were not the same as the deeply colored, voluptuous kind I had seen in the market. These were a smaller and much sourer variety.>
3 Knowing that they were safe, I ate enough that one afternoon to give me a stomachache that lasted two days. As the plums became riper and sweeter, my grandma and I picked enough to fill two enormous buckets. She taught me to make jelly from the tiny fruits which we could enjoy all winter long.
4 Years later, I was driving down a long, winding highway when I noticed several wild plum trees lining the hedgerow. I had to pull over. I picked a heaping handful. As I sat there on the side of the highway, I basked in the tartness of my childhood fruit and in the sweetness of the memory of making jelly with the greatest woman I have ever known.
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