Ode to Ruth

The doyenne of the neighborhood block party was an indomitable woman named Ruth.  Ruth put up her own jam, learned pottery in her 70s, hybridized day lilies and was always good for a glass of wine when you went over to borrow a cup of sugar. Ruth was well-educated and had been a working woman, but by the time I really knew her, she was retired and leading a life of cussed activism with a side of pioneer spirit.

Ruth had a grape arbor in her yard, and picked piles of Concord grapes each fall.  Some of them became jelly, but others went into the freezer for her grape pie, her recipe for which was once published in an AP story by Cecily Brownstone.

One year, Ruth had a bumper crop of grapes and invited us over to pick some. I got enough grapes for two pies so I made one and, channeling Ruth, stashed a container of the prepped grapes in my mother's freezer for a future pie.

My mother's frugal tendencies have made her a heavy freezer user, sometimes to the good, sometimes to the "what the hell is THIS doing in the freezer?". My siblings and I have been working on the freezer, fishing things out to use or discard as the case may be. Recently, the grapes surfaced. The grapes I'd stashed away in 1994. Yes, they were 14 years old. They pre-date my wedding.

Out of perversity more than anything else, I decided to make that concord grape pie with those 14 year old grapes. And you know what? It was just fine.

Ruth would have been pleased.