Courage in the Kitchen

The compost bin is particularly lush today. Fat rhubarb leaves and fallen cherry blossoms, lemon peel and ginger skins. I am making a quick cordial for a dinner party tonight. There will be people of all ages and stages with various beverage needs. I thought a pink cordial and a few ice cubes would add flair to sparkling water. 

It’s a little batch; our rhubarb patch is in its early stages. About 1 ½ cups of chopped rhubarb will yield a cup of syrup. I spoon an equal amount of honey into a pan with the sliced rhubarb, add a thumb of roughly chopped ginger, a few slices of lemon and bring the mixture to a boil. I am using an old copper pan that belonged to my grandfather. It needs a shine.¹ I turn the temperature down and let the mixture bubble away gently, barely at a simmer, for about 15 minutes, then I turn off the heat. When it’s cool I will strain the mixture through a sieve, and store the pink liquid in a glass jar. Tonight I’ll use an old bourbon bottle that also doubles as a vase. Use what you have. 

I do this all with relative ease: twisting the rhubarb stalks until they pop free from the their sockets, picking a few branches for the mantle as I walk by the weeping cherry tree, simmering the rhubarb with flavours I know work together, straining it into a measuring cup that has a lip so it will pour easily into a glass serving bottle. It’s easy because I’ve done it many times before.  

Familiarity takes the fear out of life. In his early days of retirement, my Dad used to ask for a demo on how I wanted the carrots cut, exactly, when he was helping in the kitchen. He was scared to do it wrong. Eventually we learn that it really doesn’t matter how the carrots are cut; it will work out just fine regardless of shape. But this knowledge only comes by pushing through an action until fear becomes familiarity. 

Being scared, fearful and courageous are emotions that have been surfacing around me lately. Like yesterday, when I was in a Lululemon changing room and noticed a message taped to the wall that read: Do something everyday that scares you. (If trying on a tight sports bra in front of a three way mirror counts as scary, my mission for the day was quickly accomplished.) Or today when listening to a podcast,² where the host said that fear is just the price of admission for writers, it’s something that will always be present when we write. The skill is recognizing it and just pushing through. And then last week in a line from Last Dance in Shediac, a book written by Anny Scoones about her mother, the late New Brunswick artist Molly Lamb Bobak. Scoones writes, “I heard Mum say once that she’d never become a great artist or be as daring as someone like Picasso because she didn’t have the courage.”

Molly Lamb Bobak was a Canadian War artist, the first member of the Canadian Women's Army Corps to hold that position. She was a printmaker and painter who worked in oils and watercolours. Lamb Bobak received the Order of Canada. Her studio was in the attic of the Fredericton home she shared with husband Bruno Bobak and two children. Her daughter says her mother worked under a bare light bulb. When her eyesight began to fail, her work loosened, became more expansive and details were less important. She painted until “she didn’t have anything else to say,” writes her daughter. That was not long before she died in 2014 at the age of 94. 

What does it take, then, to be a courageous artist? Does it mean not being scared to capture darker themes in painting, the way Lamb Bobak’s husband Bruno Bobak explored melancholy tones and themes in his own paintings? Or Guernica, Picasso’s enormous antiwar painting that stretches over 11 feet tall and 25 feet wide? Lamb Bobak’s work was varied, from women in army uniforms during gas drills to scenes of crowds filled with colour and movement to delicate wildflowers dancing across the page, free from the expected vase on a counter. Was she bored of these scenes, the ones I find so intriguing? Was it all too familiar for her? Was she not scared enough everyday?

These days I am finding the courage to carve out time to make art. What once felt indulgent now feels crucial. Like when I placed the rhubarb on the counter with branches from the weeping cherry and tiny pink flowers fell into the folds of the fat rhubarb leaves. It was a riot of pale pink, rich red and vibrant green. I wanted to mix the colours in a palette and brush them across wet paper, so wet the colours would bleed and twist together. I wanted to wait and see what would happen. Is that courageous? 

I pour a little cordial into a glass and top with a few ice cubes and a big splash of sparkling water. The cordial bleeds upward into the bubbles, thining out, softening. It’s a scene I know well. I made a version of this recipe this time last year, only with white sugar instead of honey and wrote about it too. I had forgotten.³ The familiarity of this seasonal drink is breeding a repetitiveness in me. It’s time to push myself, to try something new, to get scared in the kitchen. Next time I’ll try fermenting the rhubarb. A rhubarb shrub perhaps, made with vinegar and sugar and left to fizz and ferment and bounce with life. Maybe I will paint it.

1. To shine or not to shine? I explore this question here.

2. The Secret Library Podcast, S10 E9

3. Read the The Late June Garden here.