13
May
My mother’s favorite beau of mine is teasing me on Mother’s Day.
We laugh as he retells his conversation with the friendly clerk at the bank when she inquired what he might be doing for me on Mother’s Day? “She’s not my mother!” As we are unpacking bags in the tiny kitchen from our excursion to the Dupont Circle Farmer’s Market, he says with a kiss, “You could write your next essay on rebar and rhubarb.”
At his favorite cherry tomato and spinach tent, I snagged the last bundled few stalks of pink-red rhubarb. Another seller offered piles of green ribs, but knowing that the green stems under the leaves are toxic, they held no appeal. The color red, especially rhubarb red is important to me, so I steered clear of them. Nearby, Twin Springs Orchard from Orrtanna, Pennsylvania, still offered greyed wooden boxes full of over wintered green, yellow, and red apples. Although looking a little tired on the outside, they have proved dependably crisp and tasty on the inside for fine snacks and outstanding rhubarb applesauce.
As for the invisible ribs of rebar cemented in the walls and floors of our apartment building, like the fresh organic foods from the market that nourish our more stressful life in the capitol city, its presence ensures the stability, solidity, and longevity of the building. Inside the windowless kitchen, the rebar forms a Faraday cage and prevents the transmission of cellular phone signals. In the Washington, DC kitchen I cannot both cook and talk on the cell phone.
Permanent ribs of iron rebar resemble the rigid stalks of seasonal spring and early summer vegetable rhubarb. As things unseen and seen, imbedded and subsumed, inside and outside, both strengthen life, health and happiness.
On Mother’s Day when our children were small, the old beau would often give me a good book with a twist, the time to read it. This day brought a neat variation on the theme. Nurturance and gift. Mother wit and mother love. Ribs and ribbing.