Making Rhubarb Crumble With James

The smell of rhubarb steaming from the pot, up my nose and into a place of nostalgia. I remember growing it in all the places I have ever lived, and there have been more than a few. I’m reminded especially of Store Cottage in Nonington when Ruth was three and Jacob was born in the bedroom upstairs on Bonfire night.

Me and Paul took out a mortgage, fixed up the house, salvaged the old piano from my parents’ house and Paul hung his bass guitars on the living-room wall. Ruth would play the piano and it was clear she was a natural with a musical ear or two. Later she would become proficient on piano and a talented harpist. It became her profession.

The two years we lived in that cottage were significant and memorable in many ways, not least because it was Jacob’s birthplace and where he took his first steps. It was a good home in all seasons but mostly the warm and fruitful summers.

The cozy kitchen looked out over a garden, where moles dug tunnels in newly laid grass, where columbine and alyssum grew in a rock garden and where rhubarb thrived. A winding, brick path curved around to a back gate and an overgrown patch of land where we assembled a climbing frame. A cluster of gooseberry bushes tried to get my attention but I always found them sour. Blackberries grew among the tangled brambles and tall grasses. But the rhubarb was prolific. I made strawberry and rhubarb jam, orange and rhubarb marmalade, plain rhubarb compote with sugar and lemon and rhubarb crumble.

The smell of rhubarb all these years and another continent later, conjure a whole new feeling. The past and present wafting in the air. The sounds of Paul playing ‘James’ with Ruth brought all my senses together. She, playing the melody on harp, he, driving the rhythm forwards. Pat Metheny and Lyle Mayes wrote it in 1982. Their music has been one of the soundtracks of our lives.

I look out the kitchen window and watch a Blue Jay splashing in the bird bath and a red poppy dancing above the lavender. Time and worlds collide, stitched together in a patchwork of beautiful sounds and aromas.