I can remember those big green leaves. The crunch of red stocks between my teeth. A sourness that seemingly turned my head inside out. Mostly, I remember my grandmother tapping on her kitchen window, followed by her muffled voice sternly telling me to wash the rhubarb before I ate it. I never knew why she demanded I wash that particular fruit and not any of the others, but I always obliged her by walking the rhubarb over to the pump house and washing it off under the spigot.
My grandmother’s backyard was a veritable Garden of Eden. You could walk around out there all day and eat a smorgasbord of fruits, vegetables and nuts. She spent countless hours back there working. Sometimes, I helped her. My favorite part was smashing potato bugs or those little green worms that got on the cabbage.
My grandmother loved to eat vegetables straight out of the garden, and she loved that I did, too. Sometimes, we would eat them right then and there. I don’t remember washing much of it. Her cherries were amazing, but you had to get to them before the birds did. I’ve never found an equal to the apples she grew. I loved them and ate them all the time. She never had me wash them unless they were on the ground, but mostly, I left them to the yellow jackets. The apples made for some of the best apple pies I’ve ever eaten, not to mention anything else made from them. Those trees stopped producing fruit not long after she passed. Say what you will, but in my opinion, them ole trees missed her so much they just couldn’t go on anymore without her there. I think everything on that farm felt a little bit like that for a while.
I helped hand-dig her grave in a spot that overlooked the old house and the entire farm. A few months after we buried her, I found myself standing in her kitchen looking out at the backyard. It was a beautiful day out, but still it felt gloomy. My eyes found the rhubarb patch, and I started thinking about all those times I tried to eat it and Mamaw stopped me and made me wash it. I wondered again why, out of all the things in the garden, she was so adamant that the rhubarb needed a good scrubbing.
No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than a cavalcade of dogs trotted in from the woods. Their bodies were wet and muddy from cooling off in the creek. They cut through the yard and passed the rhubarb patch single file. The last and smallest of them stopped, hiked his leg, gave the stocks a good urine bath, then moved on for a cool place in the shade of a tree. I stood in the kitchen staring out at those glistening stocks and started laughing. How many dogs had we had on that farm over the years? How many of them had Mamaw witnessed doing that?
My laughter slowly dissipated, and I began to cry. I hadn’t cried when she died. I didn’t cry at her funeral or the weeks following, but I was crying then. I walked outside to her swing, half expecting her to be there stringing a mess of beans, but she wasn’t and never would be again. As that overwhelming reality began to really hit home for me, I sat down and cried some more.
Stanley Kitchen, Ashland