Reminiscence of Gold

While shucking fresh ears of corn I picked up at the market today, I became fully immersed into a memory I had no idea I had. The sound of pulling back the husks, the feel of the soft silk and the smell of the raw sweetness overcame me.

The July day was a typical hot, humid Carolina summer haze. And, it was time to harvest and put up some corn from my grandparents grand garden. My Papa had been at it for hours, pulling corn by hand, lost in his long rows as tall as buildings. When the wheelbarrows of ears were dumped into a pile as tall as me underneath the shade trees, my Nanny put us to work.

Picking out corn silk was not my favorite thing to do. Shelling butter beans was much more fun. But, this hot day called for peeling back the husks in hopes of finding the biggest cutworm to scare my sister. Of course, my Uncle Kyle, only six years older than me, looked for the same to scare me.

The ears of gold went into huge pans and buckets to wash them then taken inside to prepare for blanching and freezing. “Putting up a mess of corn” was what my Nanny called it. I always thought “a mess” was what the process was because every surface in the kitchen would be covered up with corn. It was always with particular pride that I would hear my Nanny tell people later exactly how many ears and how many quarts of corn she had put in her freezer chest.

My Nanny doesn’t freeze or can vegetables anymore and my Papa barely keeps a garden. It’s just too much for them. Despite hating the hot work then, the memory was a gift of gold that I unwrapped again while shucking corn in the quiet coolness of my own kitchen.