This week I've been canning peaches. Lots and lots of peaches! As always the boxes were lined up in the garage and every time you walk by their delicious smell wafted up making you salivate! There is nothing like a fresh peach with cream for breakfast or hot peach cobbler with its crunchy topping and the juices bubbling around the edges. Mmmmm. When it is time to can peaches I remember a service rendered to our family one day in 1985 that even now so many years later still has power to move me. This is absolutely true.
I was carrying Angie down the stairs to lay her down for a nap when I tripped and fell. I managed to turn enough that she landed on top of me and was unhurt but I was not so fortunate. I pulled the ligaments in my right leg. And I was 7 months pregnant with Ben. The doctor ordered me off my feet. Yea right! A couple days prior we had traveled as a family to the orchards and picked seven boxes of peaches. All seven boxes were lined up against the wall in our kitchen. Every day we checked on those peaches waiting for them to ripen. Here it was almost a week later and they were ready. It was Monday morning. I was crawling up the stairs and stopped to rest on the top stair when my door bell rang. In walked my dear friend Evelyn Dilg with her kids in tow and a bag full of supplies to help can peaches. She got right to work boiling water, gathering jars, organizing the kids and settling me onto a chair in the kitchen with my leg elevated, handed me a paring knife, and we began.
That day we canned up all seven boxes and what followed next made me very, very grateful for such a willing and kind friend. Shortly after Dennis lost his job and we moved to Boise where he worked for 6 weeks when that job ended. Ben was born 2 days later at home. Dennis did not work again until the last two weeks in December. That job ended. It was not until the following April that he was gainfully employed. And through it all we feasted on peaches.
We thought 1985 was a year full of trials. Now I look back on that year as one full of some pretty wonderful blessings. One of those is my dear friend Evelyn. What she did for our family goes down in the Elton family annals as one of the sweetest and kindest gestures I've personally experienced. And it only takes peaches to remind me.
