The rhubarb came to me 12 years ago. I was a new wife, a new homeowner, a new gardener. It was the first the thing I planted in what is now my little St. Paul urban homestead.
The rhubarb came to me from my parents’ yard, also in St. Paul. At my request my dad divided it, dug it out, and sent it home with me in a brown paper grocery bag.
Before that the rhubarb had been in the large, suburban backyard of my childhood. There we had an expansive garden. Every spring my granddad would bring his gas-powered tiller to till up the dirt and we would plant tomatoes, sugar snap peas, carrots, and green beans. We had a good sized raspberry patch and, of course, the rhubarb.
A hearty perennial, rhubarb comes back on its own early each spring, sometimes pushing its curly green leaves up through a late snow. It’s always the first thing ready to harvest, making it a very satisfying addition to the garden. I have memories from my girlhood of breaking stalks off to eat raw, dipping them in little bowls of sugar to offset the sour flavor. My sister and I would find the stalks with the biggest leaves and use them as fans, recreating the “Sisters” number from White Christmas. Once during this routine we got caught by a neighbor passing by on a walk. We were absorbed in our song and dance and didn’t realize we had an audience until she called out, “is that rhubarb?” In answer we screamed, threw our rhubarb in the air, and fled to the house.
Before the rhubarb was in my childhood backyard, it was in my grandparents’ backyard. At the back edge of their yard is a hill, and at the top of the hill is where the garden sits. When we were little, my cousins and I would climb that hill and roll down, climb and roll down, climb and roll down. We’d run in and out of the laundry my grandma had hanging on the clothes line, pick lilacs and hydrangeas. then go inside and have homemade rhubarb bread with a strudel topping that is the stuff of dreams. No one bakes as well as Grandma.
The rhubarb has been in that garden on top of the hill for over 50 years. But that’s not where it started.
Before that it was out in Howard Lake, Minnesota, at the farm my granddad grew up on. When my dad was a boy he’d go visit his German speaking grandparents there. His grandmother would cook on the big cast iron stove, which also served as a heat source for the house. The oven had neither a thermostat nor a timer, so she judged based on smell whether or not something was done. She probably baked rhubarb bread. Or maybe rhubarb pie, or rhubarb jam, making sweet things out of the sour as they farmed their way through the scarcity of the Great Depression and the rationing of World War II.
That’s as far back as I can trace my rhubarb. I don’t know where it was before that. Maybe a neighbor gave it to my great grandmother, maybe it was native grown. I like to think some 19th century ancestors of mine carried it across the ocean along with their trunks and crying babies– a link between the old world and the new.
Last summer I was able to verify the history of my rhubarb. My family had had dinner with my parents and grandparents and as often happens when the plates have been cleared and the decaf is brewing, people start telling stories. In my opinion, this is best part of the meal. The old folks start remembering things and the young folks quiet down to listen because all those bits of family lore, like that old cast iron stove with no thermostat and no timer, seem just too remarkable to our modern sensibilities. They are the heirlooms I want to be in possession of. Someone at that meal last summer must have shared a memory about the farm in Howard Lake that reminded me of the rhubarb. I asked my granddad about it and my all facts are straight, my story is true.
Earlier this spring we went out to Howard Lake to lay my granddad to rest in the small German Lutheran cemetery where his parents and grandparents lay. Granddad: World War II veteran, hunter, gardener, fisherman, farmer boy turned Firestone Tires salesman, keeper of stories and memories. He was a link between the old world and the new. He is missed.
This started out as a story about rhubarb, but I think it’s really a story about stories and collective memory and keeping alive those links to the old world. A world where things were harder and took longer, but they were also more meaningful and satisfying. Where people had to be patient and resourceful. They baked instead of bought, grew their own food and made their own clothes instead of ordering them on a smartphone. They cooked on a cast iron stove that had neither thermostat nor a timer; instead of relying on technology they relied on their senses and instincts. I like the modern world I live in just fine. There is much to be grateful for. But it’s the things of the old world that bring me the most pleasure. Knitting a sweater, or baking a rhubarb pie from scratch. Getting dirt stuck under my fingernails while I labor in my little garden to grow at least some of my own food. I feel like I’m reliving parts of the stories that I grew up hearing, and that feels important.
A few months ago I started telling my kids the stories of my grandparents and parents, and stories from when I was a little girl. Much to my delight, they love them. “Tell us a story!” they say. And, “Tell another! And another!”
And so the stories live on.
