Yesterday was Memorial Day. This is the day where we are supposed to remember those that not only served their country, but died for it. And every year, on Memorial Day, I cry. Sometimes it starts with thinking about the young, young men and women that don’t even have fully developed frontal lobes that sign up for the military. Sometimes it starts with the parade. Sometimes it isn’t even about the soldiers at all and is all about the traditions.
When I was young, I looked forward to Memorial Day weekend as the beginning of summer. It not only meant that I could start wearing my white shoes to church, but it also meant that my grandparents were coming to visit. Every year, they would spent Memorial Day weekend at our house. They would arrive in their Buick with suitcases, worn plastic bags full of kringla and chocolate chip cookies, and enough string cheese from the Star Dairy to tide us over for a few days. In my memories, Grandma and Grandpa are younger than my parents are now. They were full of energy and ready to take on projects. 
It wasn’t just because of us that they came up. Every year, we’d head over to my Aunt and Uncle’s house to celebrate my young cousin’s birthday. We’d head over to their house midday and eat delicious food. I remember a black bottom banana cream pie and some sort of cheesecake. I remember reading my cousin “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”.
When my grandparents were choosing their assisted living facility, they chose one that is close to her. I wonder, as we pass Memorial Day, whether or not proximity reignited that old tradition of them seeing her on her birthday.
Every year, along with the birthday party, we would wake up on Memorial Day and eat breakfast at the Woolworth’s lunch counter. From there, we would shop the sales downtown. Stores would bring displays out to the sidewalk and people would mill about looking at everything. There was always at least one bargain that was too good to pass up. 
It was from that tradition that I started the tradition with my children of diner breakfast on Memorial Day. There was a place we went to in our old town that we liked to frequent. As seems to be the case with me, while we eating our breakfast there one morning, we started talking to an oldtimer. He explained to us that that building had been a Woolworth’s at one point in time, long before my time. It seemed that everything was coming full circle.
But time changes everything. My ex-husband decided that he wanted the boys on Memorial Day, which meant that my diner breakfasts with them stopped. There just wasn’t enough time before they were picked up. Another thing that makes me teary. 
It is through these endings that we find new beginnings. We honor the past and its memories and traditions as we create our path going forward. This year, in between diner lunch, and eyes welling up with tears, I picked rhubarb and dug through my recipe cache and made my first canned recipe of the year. I figured it that it might be a good time to preserve some rhubarb for the months where I am longing for spring.
This beautiful red jam gets its color from Raspberry or Strawberry Jell-O. I happened to have a package of raspberry left from when I made the Rhubarb Salad. I had previously scorned the use of Jell-O to set jam, but it works. The gelatin sets the the jam into a smooth spreadable texture that is firmer than I normally make my jam. I used a hot water bath to seal my jars. The recipe makes about 5 half pints.
The Recipe:
Rhubarb Jam
5 cups finely cut rhubarb
4 cups sugar
Heat slowly. Boil 10 minutes. Remove from hear. Stir in 1 3 oz package of strawberry or raspberry Jell-O. Ladle into jars and can in a hot water bath.
Love all these rhubarb recipes! YUM!!
So glad you like them. I’m planning on giving you another one tomorrow.