What is the value of a letter? The value of a photograph? I have a box full of old letters, mostly from long-lost friends, although a few from close relatives, most of whom are now deceased. I read these letters eagerly when I received them, and I usually wrote back almost immediately, knowing that if I didn’t do it right away, the impulse would be lost, and I might never get around to it. But all the letters in that box are old enough to vote, and I have never gone back to re-read any of them. There are letters from my grandmother and my aunt, friends from Germany and Finland and England, and college friends that have moved on to lives much different than mine. I have no desire to read these letters again, but I would never consider throwing them away (nor even the greener option of recycling them). The contents might be interesting, but probably not. It’s been so long since I read them, I don’t remember. I never knew anyone who wrote letters like John Keats, so I don’t feel bad about assuming they are just a little boring. Just the same, I like knowing they’re there. Having them, even though I don’t read them, is comforting. And although I have no plans at present to read them, I might read them one day.
The old photographs are different. They are mostly in albums, the good ones anyway. The out-of-focus ones and ones that are otherwise improperly exposed are in boxes. These I go through these boxes rather often, every time one of the kids needs a photo for a school project. But whereas the letters are from a relatively brief period, the photos range over most of my life, thus the letters more completely cover the time in which they were written than the photographs. The photographs are scattershot; the letters are concentrated. I seldom wish for more old letters, but I am constantly wishing for more old photos, all those little things that we took for granted: my father’s beautiful vegetable gardens, the unbelievably enormous blackberries, my mother with her flowers that she worked so hard to raise; us at the town pool where we went swimming every day of the summer; the pond where we used to go for picnics; our friends we used to play with; the results of playing dress-up with my mother’s old fancy dresses; our “secret place,” a gigantic boulder in a clearing in the woods where my friend and I used to meet. My parents were not photographers. My mother would take a photo or two on birthdays and holidays and if we got dressed up for a wedding, but she was not one to photograph the daily stuff, and it is the daily stuff I remember best. I would like to share these memories with my children, but they have no frame of reference for the kinds of gardens and fields and forests I grew up with. The open fields are gone now, the gardens and berry patch no longer exist. I like to think that if I could show them photographs of these things, they could better understand the things I want to explain to them.
As for the letters, they arrived only when I went away. Without having left home, I would not have any letters at all.
I bought my first digital camera just over two years ago. In that time, I have taken many thousands of photographs, more often to learn how to use the camera than to have the individual photographs. Now am beginning to feel for the first time that I know what is important to me, and that I can begin to record things with greater meaning. Small things, common things, single elements of my surroundings that have an influence of which I was previously unaware. I can’t make up for what has passed, but I hope to do a better job of capturing the nature of our life now so that I can better explain “how things used to be” to my future grandchildren (and they had better be a long way into the future!).
One of the things that no one would have ever thought to photograph despite its grandeur was our rhubarb. We had a very well established rhubarb plant that, if size is an indication of happiness in rhubarb, was undoubtedly the happiest rhubarb plant in all the world. It was on the edge of the garden and in the full sun all day long. Never did this plant have shade, and it grew and grew and grew. The closest thing to a photograph of it I have is from when Cousin Butch was visiting from Washington State. Cousin Butch was about 6’4″, and the yellow plant behind him is the rhubarb that had gone to flower late in the summer.
That rhubarb was one of things I took for granted in my young life. Now that I have to go to the store to buy rhubarb, I am wistful for that big old plant and all that it offered. For free. And fresh. If I only had that rhubarb now…
And I do want that rhubarb now. Certainly it is no longer there, but if it was, I would make rhubarb coffeecake with it first, and then strawberry-rhubarb pie later.
I went to the farmer’s market especially to buy rhubarb last Saturday. Only one guy had some on offer, so luckily for me, he had just picked it that morning, and it was still dewy fresh and crisp.
I debated a long while what to do with it once I got it home, and although I considered making rhubarb pie, I decided to wait until I could find local strawberries and make pie then, assuming I could still get more rhubarb. I also considered rhubarb chutney and rhubarb crisp (one of our favorites), and a few other delights, but in the end I settled on rhubarb coffeecake because I wanted to really taste the rhubarb without interference from too much sugar and spice.
This coffeecake can be made with just about any summer fruit. I usually make it with blueberries, but it’s good with peaches too. The rhubarb worked just fine. It doesn’t have a crumbly streusel topping, so the flavor of the fruit shines without competition. The cake itself is buttery and well flavored, and there is a lot of cake in proportion to the fruit. I like that too.
The original recipe was intended to fill an 8×8″ pan. That is too small for us, so I doubled the ingredients and baked it in a 9×13″ pan. If the larger one is too large, you can always halve the recipe again, and bake it in the smaller pan.
3 c. flour
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. butter
1 1/3 c. milk
1 tbs vanilla
2 eggs
2-3 c. rhubarb or summer fruit of your choice
1/4 c. cinnamon sugar
Preheat oven to 350° F. Butter a 9×13″ pan.
Whisk together the dry ingredients until well combined. Add butter, milk, and vanilla, beating until smooth. Add eggs, beating until smooth again. Pour batter into pan and spread evenly.
Spread rhubarb (or blueberries or peaches) evenly over batter.
Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar over the fruit, more or less to your taste. I like the taste of rhubarb, and I don’t mind it being a little tart, so I probably put less sugar than most people would. Remember, however, that some of the fruit will sink down into the cake as the cake rises, so the sugar in the cake will help sweeten the fruit.
Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, or at least without cake batter on it. It is a little tricky sometimes to tell exactly when this cake is done because of the liquid in the fruit: it can make the cake seem less done than it is.
Oppositely, the browned bottom of the cake can make it seem done before the center is fully cooked.
Watch it carefully and test it often. I baked this one for about 70 minutes, although I think it was done a few minutes sooner. The bottom wasn’t overcooked by too much, but if I was serving to company, I would have preferred it be a little less done. Nevertheless, it was moist and tender and delicious, and I ate too much of it for breakfast. But I enjoyed every bite.
If I could summon back that old rhubarb plant, I would eat this cake all summer long.
Tea Time at the Old Hotel 