What the White Queen Said . . .

I’d like to clarify up front that this is not a blog about jam. Well, not exactly a blog about jam.

Will we be eating jam and making jam? Yes, sometimes. Will we be jamming? You betcha. Will we be getting into jams and out of jams? Most assuredly!

So, you see, this is a blog about jam.

Is and isn’t. Jam yesterday and jam tomorrow. And, good lord, I hope sometimes jam today.

Because if ever there was a year when The White Queen’s words from Alice in Wonderland resonate, it must be this year of eternal pandemic.

Alice with the White Queen and Red Queen

Written in 1871, Lewis Carroll’s book proves itself timeless and often wise. Sometimes sweet promises seem always out of reach.

For me, 2020 and early 2021 should have offered extra time at home to write and indulge myself with personal projects. Instead, it presented a muddled mess. There was anxiety over encroaching illness. There was grief over lost friends or the family of friends. There was the joy of family all home, 24/7, for work and school. Then there was the madness of everyone STILL home, months later– God love them, but we were no longer working from home, but rather living at work. Through the looking glass we had gone, into the funhouse mirrors where work/home, day/night, anxiety/relief, coziness/captivity were an unholy and indistinguishable mess.

Or was it just me?

No?

So here’s my new Jam blog– a place where I can write and reorder my life, to get me out of this jam that was 2020. Where I was stuck and life was sticky. Sweet? Yes, in so many ways. But the promises that seemed they would never come– jam yesterday and jam tomorrow; normalcy and re-opening; the crowded bus, the movie theater, the shaking of hands– I think they are getting close.

I believe we will soon enjoy jam today.

In the meantime, and as a way of retraining myself to get moving in a new space, welcome to my Jam Yesterday and Jam Tomorrow blog. Where I work myself out of this pandemic jam by jamming on many a subject, especially food. So, yes, this is a blog about jam.