The Jar Trick is a Symbol.
I had to open a jar, and the lid was on tight. So, excited to show Shane what I knew, I pulled out a butterknife and held up the jar for Shane, who was eating breakfast.
“Wanna see a cool trick?” I asked.
Shane rolled his eyes at me. “Not really.”
Unperturbed, I continued. “You take the handle of the butterknife, and you whack the lid a couple of times in the direction that you want to turn it – just gently.”
“You already showed me this,” Shane said.
“But look!” I tried again. “Just two or three simple whacks in the right direction and it will open right up!”
“I know,” Shane groaned. “You’ve told me this like a million times.”
I backed off, opening my jar with less enthusiasm – but still happy to be opening the jar.
Because: that jar trick belonged to my grandmother. It is one of the few things I know that was handed down through the generations. And it’s such a cool trick that I wanted to make sure my own kids would pass it along to their kids, too.
And it’s disappointing when my kids don’t react as they should, about something as exciting as opening a jar. I mean sure, maybe Shane did better with it the first time I told him – but probably not. He doesn’t understand what it’s like to have a history – or what it’s like to hold on to that history after your grandmother dies.
He doesn’t know that the jar trick takes me right back to Grandma’s tiny white kitchen, with its short shelf of breakable things that I wasn’t allowed to touch, an enormous jar of Lemon Blennd on the floor behind the door, and a lidded pot of stewed tomatoes cooking on the stove.
Shane doesn’t know how proud I am that my ancient grandmother, who was in her mid-sixties when I was born, found a way to open a jar without any silly man around to do it for her. I’d spent my entire life handing jars to my dad or boyfriend, until I learned the trick.
Shane doesn’t know that for me, the jar trick is a symbol of the strength that oozed from my grandmother. The oldest of ten children, she survived the death of an infant, and then raised four beautiful girls completely on her own since my grandfather disappeared long before they coined the term “deadbeat dads.”
Then my grandmother got to know all eleven of her grandchildren and some great grandchildren, outlived all of her siblings, and never once wavered from her strong Christian values.
And my grandmother did it at a time in history when women were generally considered incapable.
Shane doesn’t know that my own mother showed me the jar trick. He doesn’t realize that from that day forward, I felt empowered.
Shane doesn’t know that the simple act of opening a stuck jar is a testament that women can do anything – and everything. We can tackle tasks that, once, seemed impossible.
Still, I think he will remember the trick. Shane likes tricks.
And I think Dylan probably remembers the jar trick, even though I’m not there to remind him. And I think he remembers the other stuff I told him about how to do things.
I don’t know which things my kids will choose to do the way I did. But I can hope – with as much hope as I am able to muster – that I’m leaving them a positive example of how to live a life, like my grandmother and mother left to me.