Bubbles' Rhubarb Custard Pie

This was my mom's favorite pie. She went by "Bubbles" her whole life, and that's what my kids called her, so that's what I called her.

But the last dish Bubbles cooked in her Brookdale apartment in Lubbock wasn't pie, it was gumbo. It was April 2020, and her senior living center was still in lockdown. Queen of Tarts, our bakery, had been permanently closed for a few months, and King Street Pub and other restaurants were not yet back to being allowed to operate at full capacity. I had quite a lot of spare time since David was managing the restaurant in the evenings. We were still closed for lunch.

Spring had sprung. Birds were singing and flowers were blooming. Bubbles texted me a long grocery list for gumbo. I’d never known her to be particularly fond of gumbo, but she’d probably watched a cooking show featuring gumbo or shrimp. At that point all the Brookdale residents were still getting their meals delivered to their apartments, so except for doctors’ visits and walking down the hall to do laundry, she rarely left her apartment, so . . . . oh the boredom!  

Afterward, Bubbles probably shared the gumbo with a friend by dropping it off at her door. I know she froze most of it; it was still in the freezer several months later when we cleaned it out.

Mother’s Day came a few weeks after Bubbles made her big batch of gumbo. Videos had been popping up all over the internet, of masked-up family members holding giant hand-made birthday banners and such outside of buildings where grandpas and grandmas were still being held prisoner.

Sara, Teddy, Halen, David, and I thought it was a good idea to cheer up Bubbles and do the same, that sunny Sunday in May.

We gathered on the lawn outside her apartment window, which was three floors up, and I called her to tell her to look out the window. She opened her blinds. The five of us waved mightily, holding tight to the colorful eight-foot “Happy Mother’s Day Bubbles!” sign so it wouldn’t blow away in the West Texas wind.

I remember how small she looked, how still she stood, and how . . . unhappy she sounded on the phone.

In fact, she could barely talk she was so overcome with emotion. She hung up. I hung up. The five of us rolled up the paper banner and left, walking back to our cars in an anti-climactic cloud of, what? I don’t know, maybe never-give-up determination? Tomorrow will be a better day? Next week the sun will burn away all the Covid germs and be gone poof just like that? Possibly it was just hope for hope’s sake. We humans are like that, most of us. It’s not always a good thing. Because when it’s gone, when the hope has been kicked in the head by reality, the damage can be irreversible. Recovery may be near impossible.    

Later, thinking back on it, I determined that what we thought —what I thought —would make Bubbles feel less lonely, maybe a little less afraid, only compounded her loneliness and fear. There we all were standing outside, freely walking around, freely walking around together on a day meant to celebrate her, while she and so many other people her age were being held in cruel solitary confinement. We all thought it was for their own safety, of course, but health-wise, I’m not so sure anymore that risks to our physical well-being should always and forever trump threats to our emotional and mental well-being. Maybe for extreme introverts, for people who prefer being alone most of the time, maybe Covid confinement was easy, welcome even, but to people like Bubbles, who had always been socially active, seeking out community events, starting clubs, teaching and taking classes—being locked down in an apartment where you lived by yourself must have felt like cold, hard, undeserved punishment.

I continued delivering Bubbles’ groceries, prescriptions, and other necessities after she made the gumbo (we were required to drop off such items at the front door and someone would take them up to her), but she never cooked again. Her grocery lists were short, consisting of not much more than coffee creamer and ice cream.

A few weeks later she fell.

I was able to go up and see her, finally, at the end of those long torturous ten days of trying to get her insurance company to approve an MRI, ten days of her hobbling around by herself on a broken hip while the insurance companies, overwhelmed as they were, prioritized Covid patients and cancer treatments and heart attacks.

I took Bubbles her favorite fast food once, a McDonald’s fish sandwich, but she refused it. Told me to take it home and give it to David (he’s not a fan, but she probably didn’t remember that).

Maybe I should have made her a rhubarb custard pie. It was a pie that she made frequently, a recipe given to her by a neighbor in Iowa, back in the late ‘60s.

Rhubarb is not a popular ingredient, partly because it has a short season, but it’s not well-liked even when it is in season due, in part at least, to its sourness. I have only ever had rhubarb in pie, from Bubbles’s kitchen, but it’s so good, I don’t know how it’s stayed under the radar all these years.  If you’ve tried rhubarb and made at face at how tart it is . . . well, the high sugar-to-fruit ratio fixes that here. Maybe it’s that sourness that makes the sweet so . . . bitterly sweet.

 Serves 6 - 8.

Line a pie pan with the crust and fill it with . . . . In a large bowl, blend  together  . . . . . . . . . . . . Add in and beat well . .

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1 unbaked pie crust 3 c. diced  rhubarb 1½ c. sugar 3 T. flour ½ ea. nutmeg, salt 2 eggs 1 T. melted butter 1 t. vanilla

Preheat the oven to 450°. Pour the egg mixture over the rhubarb and bake for 10 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 350° and bake for another 25 - 30 minutes, until the center is done.