"Mama's Little Baby Loves Rhubarb, Rhubarb......"

Lovely surprise! My son, Jamie, performing in Annie Get Your Gun at the Good Speed Opera House, came for a brief visit. We spent the day traveling back in time. I'm once again living in the city in which my kids grew up. So all the things I see daily are memories to them. We went to Wingaersheek Beach. Gorgeous day -- warm, light breeze; the tide slowly departing. Very few people there. And we strolled into his childhood and out again. Continuing the journey, we went to Woodman's in Essex for a chowder lunch. We walked after from antique shop to antique shop. We both really like that stuff.

In front of a tired looking 19th century house there was a sign: Rhubarb -- with an arrow pointing to an even older house in the backyard. On the side door of this house a sign read: Rhubarb in the refrigerator. Honor system! The rhubarb, stalks tied in easy-to-carry bundles were, indeed, in the refrigerator. We put the asked-for amount of money in a container (also inside the fridge) and walked out --delighted with the process and even more delighted with the prospect that we'd have stewed rhubarb for dessert. Jamie and I do love it and I haven't cooked it in way too long. We continued our stroll through the antique shops; I carried the bouquet of rhubarb.

And so, in the late afternoon, I washed and cut-up the vegetable -- oh, yes, it is a vegetable. But it has traditionally been used as a fruit in pies and cobblers. I set in on the stove to simmer, and after 10 minutes I added the 1/2 cup of sugar. I added the sugar from the sugar bowl in my cupboard, forgetting that it was NOT filled with sugar. It was filled with Splenda, which as you may know is much more sweet than sugar. Yuk!! It was not eatable! I really had to turn my mind back to recall how the sugar bowl got filled with Splenda. Of course it made little difference. The Yuk!! wound up in the disposal. We were very disappointed.

We are resourceful. Having so brief a visit there was no time for regrets. (a lesson to be translated into a life philosophy!). So we traveled back one more time to Putnam's Pantry -- the do-it-yourself sundae emporium, where we'd celebrated many a childhood birthday. And today, I have all the events of yesterday to add to my memory bank. Being undeniably resilient, I am now on a search for another cache of fresh rhubarb. It's become a thing! I've gotta get it right!

Buttercups and Bluebirds

We had a small garden patch behind our house on East 10th Street in Brooklyn. When I was little, there were empty lots behind the houses on our side of the street. In the late 1950s when the lots went up for sale, my Dad went from house to house on our street trying to enlist the home owners to go in with him to buy the lots; to protect the properties. And the environment. The lots were like a park back then with trees and wild flowers. Our private little wilderness. No one would go along with my Dad and he couldn't afford it himself. So the lots became used car lots. Enough said.

We had lots of floral weeds where ever the grass grew in Brooklyn. The most populous were the Buttercups. Not like Dandelions; Buttercups were tiny and awfully sweet. We had a small front yard, and never thought of the Buttercups as unwelcome weeds. Suburban homeowners would be appalled. I thought of these flowers today walking past the large lawns in Beverly, MA where I'm living. There was a blanket of yellow across one of the green lawns. I couldn't trespass to see if they were Buttercups. I figured they couldn't be. I haven't seen any in probably 40 years.

Also among the missing in the world of nature as I knew it, are the Bluebirds. They were the birds we grew up with; frequent visitors to our garden and the berry bushes in the lots behind the houses. I'm delighted when the red birds arrive in the summer; and of course the robins. But Bluebirds are scarce where I'm living. There's actually a society that I've recently discovered that exists to re-populate the Bluebirds. I am thinking about buying the special bird house and bird feeder designed for the Bluebirds. I don't know if I can go so far as to purchase meal worms. I have to think about that one.

There was a children's book that I owned once-upon-a-time. It is called The Bluebird and it's a magical story from the play by Maeterlinck. It was a film with Shirley Temple in 1940; an animated film in 1970; and a not-very-good film with Elizabeth Taylor in 1976. I've never seen a stage production of the original play. The book was charming; I can't recall what happened to my copy. Time, I guess, can be blamed for its disappearance.

Somehow, a walk on a sunny Sunday passed houses and lawns and sand and sea sets one's mind spinning backwards. I haven't thought of Buttercups in the longest time. I do think about Bluebirds each Spring when they don't appear in my current patch of garden. Or the books. I suppose if I let myself get swept up in this memory game, I'd hear the sounds of the lots behind our house. And the voices of my playmates laughing and calling at play in those lots. And the next thing I'd know, I'd be hearing that familiar voice calling me home to supper.

Who'd have thought that a patch of yellow flowers could accomplish all of that?