Currant Jelly

I learned to make jelly in my Grandma's kitchen with its tall painted cupboards reaching to the ceiling, the Kelvinator refrigerator and the ironing board that came down on hinges from the wall.
I wanted to go swimming with Vicki and Debbie at the town pool on that summer afternoon but Grandma had other ideas.
The currants had been gathered in our backyard where they grew on bushes close to the river. I learned early on that the fruits of the currant bush were too tart to eat. They were easy to pick but if you waited too long, the birds would swoop in and devour them in one afternoon.
A hair net and a starched apron reaching below my knees replaced my bathing suit and towel. I needed a chair to reach into the colander in grandma's deep kitchen sink. We plucked each ruby berry from its stem and into the large enameled pot they went. Then to the stove, the heat rising before the steam. "A rolling boil," she told me.
The pot was moved to the table and she let me use her long-handled potato masher to crush the fruit. The colander had been lined with layers of cheesecloth and placed over a pot. She poured the crushed fruit into cheesecloth, steaming her silver-framed glasses. Her cobbler-style apron protected her everyday dress from splatters.
When the mixture was cooled enough to handle, she brought the corners of the cheesecloth together and tied it with kitchen twine from the drawer next to the sink. Grandma let me squeeze the candy apple red juice from the bundle.
Then it was back to the stove, adding sugar, turning up the heat to achieve the rolling boil. There was some kind of alchemy employed to know when it was time to take the mixture from the stove and she made me step back as she moved back to the table with the heavy pot. She used the pot holders I had made her for Christmas with chunky cotton loops.
The sound from the doorbell ringer on the wall in the kitchen came just as she laded the shimmering liquid through the canning funnel into the waiting jars. She sent me down the long hall to answer the door.
There stood Debbie and Vicki, their blouses buttoned over swimsuits, bare feet slid into their Keds. Grandma bustled up behind me. "Janie's busy now, girls." I was ready to close the door immediately, so very embarrassed that my friends had seen the hairnet and the apron.  "Why don't you come in while we finish what we're doing?"
That's how I learned how to make jelly though today, we don't use melted paraffin to seal the jars. But we do enjoy that little bit of jelly that doesn't quite fill the last jar just as Debbie, Vicki and I did, spreading it thick on slices of Holsum bread before setting off to spend the rest of the afternoon at the town pool.