When we arrived at my parents’ house Saturday evening, my mom had her old recipe of rhubarb cake ready for us. She used to grow rhubarb in our back yard when we were little, just along the walkway through the yard, and my sister and I both burst out with our remembered terrors regarding that rhubarb plant.
Mother had warned us that the leaves were poisonous. She meant, of course, that we shouldn’t EAT them. Each of us, however, had believed for all those years that we shouldn’t TOUCH them. They tended to spread across the sidewalk, and both of us would leave the sidewalk to skirt their spread, giving them a wide berth and wondering all the while why on earth she would keep such a kid-trap in the middle of our yard. We were also—given our hyper-sensitive awareness of the Rhubarb Leaves of Death—somewhat wary when that same plant made it to our dinner table in the form of her (delicious!) rhubarb cake…
Our poor mother never realized, until this weekend, that we had misunderstood her cautionary warning and lived in terror of her harmless vegetables all those years. It’s moments like these that make family gatherings so priceless… And it’s also the magic of siblings—no one in the world except my Sister shares my exact experience of growing up. Deadly rhubarb and all.
Kana's Chronicles 
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