In a pickle

Our relationship began thirty years ago in my mother’s pantry. With paper towels in hand, my sister and I would disen”cu”cumber the Twinkie-sized vegetable trapped within its pressurized glass chamber in search of a snack. Pickle retrieval can be a difficult task. In fact, a man’s strength is often measured by his ability to open pickle jars with his bare hands, but the challenge only made the prize more desirable. Now that I am old enough to make a mess in my own kitchen, my mother has handed over the dill pickling baton.
The journey is the same every year: obtain large quantities of dill seed, garlic, coarse salt, vinegar, mason jars, pickling cukes and prepare for a full day of steam-thick nostril-burning brine. Some years I have grown my own cucumbers and dill; other years I have depended on my grocers or local vegetable stands for the main ingredients, but this year was different. This year I visited Shelton’s Farms where I picked a peck of my own cucumbers to pickle. I even invited some of my pickle-loving friends to share the joy. Only one taker: thank you, Marianne. (No pickles for the rest of you this year.)
There they were, sleeping in straight rows upon their sandy beds under leafy Velcro textured canopies, joined together by a prickly green umbilical cord like preschoolers on a walking trip to Memorial Park, unaware that their lives were about to change. A bushel basket announced its arrival, standing just off to the side of the open air dormitory ready to collect this year’s class. I examined my prospective students before the selection process began knowing I could only select the students whose complexions were free of blemishes and whose bodies were properly proportioned. Two’s and three’s were the most desirable. The one’s were too small and the four’s were too big, according to Bernardin standards, but for Miss Bick these standards were too restrictive. The task had become much more personal somehow. I was in a real pickle.

“But if I don’t pick them, who will? I can’t choose some and leave others. Where would they go?”
To separate them from their friends and family was unconscionable. I loved them all. I knew Miss Vlasic and the Klaussen twins were equal opportunity picklers, finding other ways to use their talents as spears or slices. I, too, would do the same.