KINDRED RHUBARB SPIRIT (A short story)

 "No friendship can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever."  Francois Marie (1830-1901)
Let me see, it would have been 1994, I think. We had another posting. This time to Fredericton, New Brunswick. Brand spanking new, we were. There  about a year, and yet it became one of my favourite places to be. And it was the Rhubarb that  did it. Something I never expected.  When I moved to California, I never paid attention to Rhubarb. Then coming back to Canada to Ontario, every place we lived was  loaded with the vegetable.It's not technically a fruit, you know. We were a military family; moving, moving, always moving from pillar to post. From Pembroke , Ontario, in 1988-1990, to Cornwallis , Nova Scotia. I planted rhubarb there, but never thought of it much. Till we made it to Fredericton........Fredericton is where it all started.

1994 Fredericton, this pic.

It was a TALL house. Big yard. I had to start a garden from scratch.  Ugh. The grass was hard and annoying to dig out. So we made boxes. Big empty things full of dirt. Decided I needed some rhubarb.Every garden seemed to have rhubarb in a patch.   I never really liked rhubarb. But it was easy to grow. 

 So off I trucked to the greenhouse at the edge of town. Big sprawling place. Pots of trees, pots of herbs, pots of this and that. And rhubarb. Pots and pots. $10 $15  each.

 I couldn't decide. I had really never had a garden before. The rhubarb would be my jumping off point.

 An older lady was milling about. She wasn't buying anything. Just milling. She sidled over.  Asked me if I was in the market for some GOOD RHUBARB. Said she had a deal for me. If I was interested...

 It sounded like a shady deal to me. Three days in Fredericton and already one of the locals was trying to sell me some GOOD RHUBARB. 

 She gave me her address. A house five minutes away. Said to bring a shovel. Didn't give me a name. In fact NO names were exchanged. Just an address. Somewhere at the edge of town.

 To get the GOOD STUFF. From her. From her place.  So I'd better hurry, if I wanted the  BEST.  Said she'd meet me there. AFTER 3 o'clock. NOT before. She had to meet some "friends". Said she didn't often do this. Invite perfect strangers over. She liked to get to know people first. Before she gave them the GOOD STUFF. The Good  Rhubarb. But I looked lost at the greenhouse, she said. She could fix that. She was GOOD at fixing things, she said.

I got a shovel from home. and  toddled over to her house. To get the GOOD rhubarb.  I was beginning to wonder just what constituted BAD rhubarb.

 Her house was like something out of Anne of Green Gables. With a wrap around porch. White washed. Clean. Fresh.  Her garden was long and narrow, surrounded by a white picket fence.

She sat on her porch with a glass of lemonade, and told me I cold dig out as much rhubarb from the patch as much as I wanted. She would supervise.  She turned on a radio, and sat with her feet up on her porch, with her lemonade.  I eyed the rhubarb.

 Mounds of it. Masses of it.  I started to dig.  It was about 3 in the afternoon, and it was  warm. I dug and dug. While the lady on the porch listened to her music and drank lemonade. Every once in a while she would lift her glass and  cheer me on.

 "The best  batch is over in the corner," she hollered at me.   I ripped  tons out of that corner. Plopped it in the car on a garbage bag. Definitely , the GOOD rhubarb.

 She  waved at me at the end of everything.  She had finished her lemonade. She told me good luck. "Remember you got the GOOD STUFF!" She sunk back in her chair and poured another lemonade, and turned her radio louder.

 I brought it home. Planted all of it, in my new garden boxes.

 And waited for it to grow. It grew. But since we were only posted to Fredericton that year, it didn't get very far. We had to leave. Something told me to take the Rhubarb. So I dug it up . Stuffed most of it into a large pots. It overflowed. I left a large chunk behind. 

 The next summer, we were posted to Kingston, Ontario. A long move . I refused to leave my rhubarb. Rhubarb that I never cooked.  So I dug it up. Stuffed it into pots. Not as many as from the move from New Brunswick, but pots nevertheless.  Told the moving guy that he HAD to take it. He did NOT want to put it in the truck. Bugs. He said. Dirt all over.  He said. He took it.

 And off it went to Kingston. With us in tow.

We left Kingston  in 1997. Once more I wrestled with that same Rhubarb. Which was large, but not quite as big as before. Enough for a few pots. I left a piece of it behind.Kind of like leaving a piece of myself . And took the pots of rhubarb in the moving truck, by an even more unsympathetic driver, to St. Albert, Alberta.

 First thing I did was find a corner of the pie shaped lot and dig it up . Plunked in the Rhubarb. It lived there for three years.  Then I promptly dig it out of the ground again, stuffed it back into the a few less pots, same black pots and asked the nice moving man if he would load it up. Another piece of the rhubarb was left behind again.This time we were headed for White Rock, British Columbia. Going through the Rockies. Rhubarb and all.

 Well travelled Rhubarb. Once we reached White Rock, I found a nice corner for the three pots of GOOD rhubarb ,by the house, where it was hot and sheltered. It lived there, for 7 years.  By this time I actually had made jam out of some of the stalks.First time ever.  My Rhubarb from Fredericton  weathered well.

 In 2006, another move. Another piece of the rhubarb left .  And only one pot of it to take on the moving truck. This time to Vancouver Island. To here. Campbell River. Where it has thrived for the past ten years. But slowed down the past couple of years.  Rhubarb can live about 20 years in the wild.  And this one has given it's all. This might be it's last year. 22 years on the move......

 I wonder if that nameless lady in Fredericton ever knew what a cool thing she did for me. Because of her, I got into some serious gardening.  Just because  of that Good rhubarb I dragged with me. And left pieces of it   where we used to be. Not sure if any of them are growing still. But you never know.

 All the people I've met, all the friends........ Those kindred spirits   in all the places  we've been. I feel like a little piece of me, like that silly rhubarb, still  survives in those places. 

 Part  of heart stays in each place I have been.....just like that GOOD RHUBARB . Part of me  is where my kindred spirits live. Part of me is here. I have a second rhubarb just above where the  travelled one was located. I hope it's a GOOD RHUBARB , like the 22 year old one, that is slowly melting into the dirt. It's growing with gusto at the top of the hill.  Maybe some day, if it gets big enough, I'll divide it up and share it with someone who may need to be  grounded in the earth....Maybe I will take a piece of it with me, if we are on the travelled road again................

 "We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in fill a vessel drop by drop, there is a last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over. " James Boswell ( 1740-1795)