So hard to believe we’re back in Lon­don… but it requires noth­ing more for ver­i­fi­ca­tion than to look out the win­dow and find GREY GREY GREY. Yep, we’re back.

To think that a week ago we were hang­ing out with Rol­lie in the yard, pulling old green shut­ters out of the big barn, hold­ing them up to the house, exam­in­ing the hard­ware. “Could be you could use some of these with­out much repairs at all,” Rol­lie opined, but we all agreed the paint needed to be darker, so it was off to the hard­ware store to choose. Actu­ally I let John, his mom and Avery choose (Ben­jamin Moore’s very first invented color, “Litch­field Green”!)while I acquired ingre­di­ents at the gro­cery next door (The Southbu Food Cent, Avery always points out, lov­ing to see each sum­mer which neon let­ters don’t work). Ingre­di­ents for what, you ask? Merely for the Best Lunch of the Summer.

Of course in order to have the best lunch of the sum­mer you need already to have had the best din­ner of the sum­mer, which involves order­ing four lob­sters from David Thomas Lob­ster in Isles­ford, Maine, and then sit­ting on your heels wait­ing for them to arrive. And arrive they do! Rol­lie was sit­ting on my new L.L. Bean white­washed cedar Adiron­dack chair, keep­ing us up to date with the progress of hay­ing on Platt’s Farm, the price of a gravel-mover pur­chased from the Depart­ment of San­i­ta­tion ver­sus the price from a defunct farm, when up pulled FedEx. Every sum­mer the guy is bemused by the square box from Maine marked “PER­ISH­ABLE,” and makes a big play of it bounc­ing around in his hands. “Hand it over!” I say, and he says, “Give me one of what’s inside, then,” and then tells me the lat­est about the guy up the road who gets ONE bot­tle of wine deliv­ered, OVERNIGHT. “Don’t want to think about what THAT bot­tle costs him, before he even gets to drink it, “the FedEx guy says, finally relin­quish­ing my lob­sters and chuck­ling, till it all hap­pens again next summer.

John’s mom smiled to see the box. “What’s this, then, per­ish­able?” and I had to grin to say, “Of course it’s lob­sters from Dave Thomas, you wouldn’t think we’d for­get a sum­mer tra­di­tion?” It was hard to tear our­selves away for our ten­nis les­son, and I think Avery and I were worse than ever. “You need two-hour lessons, two times a week so you don’t for­get every­thing between one les­son and the next,” Val instructed, and Avery looked quite faint. We sat down in the sun at the edge of the road to wait for our ride, and she said, “I think we should wait until we see how school goes, before I sign up for any more lessons…” John came to get us in Quincy, our intre­pid green Land Rover, a year younger than I am and MUCH more reli­able. How is it that our ten-year old VW can’t keep its bat­tery intact over the win­ter but the Land Rover starts right up every time?

Home for steamed lob­sters with the best aioli (just enough gar­lic and plenty of lemon zest, my condi­ment of the sum­mer), sauteed red pep­pers, baguette slices, bean salad. Avery hap­pily eats riga­toni alla vodka sauce as this car­niv­o­rous feast takes place under her nose.

And the next day for lunch, because John’s mom and I are appre­cia­tive if wimpy lob­ster eaters and leave plenty of leftovers:

Lob­ster Rolls with Aioli
(serves four)

1 lob­ster tail for each per­son, or what we had: three tails and one extra claw), steamed and chilled
1/2 cup good may­on­naise
zest and juice of 1 lemon
1 clove gar­lic, minced with salt
four hot-dog rolls, top-split as they do in New England

Cut each lob­ster tail and/or claw into small­ish bite-size pieces and place in a large bowl, then mix in all the other ingre­di­ents and let sit for a minute or two while you toast the hot-dog rolls. Note that these are not called “buns” as they were in my Mid­west­ern child­hood, nor are they side-split. They are top-split, which allows for much nicer presentation.

Open the toasted rolls as much as you dare, then pile on the lob­ster salad and enjoy!

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Tomato-Mozzarella Tow­ers with Pinenuts
(serves four)

1 per­fectly ripe tomato per per­son
3 balls moz­zarella, sliced thick to make 12 slices
1/2 cup pinenuts, toasted lightly in a skil­let or oven till light brown
good driz­zle olive oil, per­haps 1/3 cup
sprin­kle bal­samic vine­gar
juice of 1/2 lemon
hand­ful of fresh basil, sliced thin (chif­fon­ade)
zest of whole lemon
salt and pepper

On a nice plat­ter, start with a slice of tomato for each per­son, then build upwards: a slice of moz­zarella, another slice of tomato, until you run out. Sprin­kle with pinenuts, let­ting them tum­ble down onto the plat­ter. Then you may either mix the dress­ing ingre­di­ents (olive oil, bal­samic and lemon juice) or you can sprin­kle them sep­a­rately over the tow­ers. Zest the lemon right over the tow­ers, sprin­kle with basil and sea­son with salt and pep­per. Divine.

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This recipe was taken (OK, I adapted it a lit­tle: left out the red onion) from Lynne Rosetto Kasper’s new cook­book, “How To Eat Sup­per,” a present from John’s mom which I now CHER­ISH. I can­not explain what makes this salad so much nicer than just tomato-mozzarella, which you all know I can eat sev­eral times a week. It’s to do with the vel­vety crunch of the pinenuts, the refresh­ing tang of the lemon zest, and the fun of the tow­ers. Try them! Two more great recipes from that cook­book to come, below…

We ended the Per­fect Lunch with a quar­ter of a seed­less water­melon, sim­ply slic­ing it on the rind at the table and div­ing in. And plenty on the rind for Gary later on!

All too soon it was Thurs­day morn­ing and time for Nonna to fly away: first we took a walk up to John’s dad’s bench, with Rollie’s son Chris hay­ing, sit­ting high in his John Deere trac­tor mak­ing enor­mous cir­cles in the meadow. Guess where the expres­sion “hay” fever comes from, duh! I had never before iden­ti­fied it quite so closely with the real thing! I com­pounded this expe­ri­ence with a visit to the horses, Molly and Cisco in the back meadow, where every­one but me fed them treats and pet­ted them (I’m dumb, but not that dumb), and then we saw John’s mom off, John chauf­feur­ing her to the air­port. Avery and I stood at the lit­tle red gate and waved at them, feel­ing bereft.

It was hard to sep­a­rate the symp­toms of miss­ing John’s mom from the symp­toms of extreme aller­gic reac­tion, so I decided med­ica­tion was the bet­ter part of valor and took a Benadryl and some other anti­his­t­a­mine and felt awful. Luck­ily, Kon­nie and Tay­lor came over to visit, and after play­ing with Hast­ings for a bit, they all took Avery to wash Pokey the Pony with them and do some­thing com­pli­cated in the sta­bles, so with lit­tle regret I watched them all walk up the dusty road, away. John turned in at the dri­ve­way and I fed us lus­cious crab rolls (just the same as lob­ster rolls only you need copi­ous amounts of fresh-picked Maine crab sent to you along with the lob­sters), and then Avery turned back up and she and John went to Quassy! I, on the other hand, col­lapsed for an allergy-induced nap… two hours of absolute bliss!

Avery and John returned in time to get cleaned up for Rol­lie and Judy’s din­ner visit, and would you believe when I looked back at my blog of last sum­mer, I fed them EXACTLY the same things?? What are the odds? That’s why real host­esses keep logs of these things, no? But the chicken recipe deserves to be men­tioned one more time:

Lil­lian Hell­man Chicken
(serves 8)

8 bone­less chicken breasts
1 cup Hellman’s may­on­naise (get it?)
1 cup grated pecorino or parme­san cheese
juice of 1 lemon
sprin­kle gar­lic salt
fresh-ground pep­per
1 1/2 cups fresh breadcrumbs

First, make sure your assem­bly line works: you need a flat sur­face to trim the chicken, then to the right of that a bowl in which you’ve mixed the mayo, cheese, lemon juice, gar­lic salt and pep­per. Then to the right of that bowl you need a shall bowl of the bread­crumbs, then you need a cookie sheet past that. Whew.

So smear the chicken breasts one at a time lib­er­ally with the mayo mix­ture (just dip­ping will not work, smear it with a spoon), then push them each firmly onto the bread­crumbs on both sides, then place on the cookie sheet with space between each. Bake at 400 degrees for 30 min­utes, until nicely browned. But not much longer (I did once and they were drier than I’d like).

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With this we had scal­loped corn (just cut raw off the cob, sprin­kled with gar­lic and with some cream poured over and baked) and the inevitable tomato moz­zarella salad, not even tow­ers! But we enjoyed our­selves. Hast­ings dis­cov­ered how much more fun it is to go out onto the ter­race when it’s nearly dark than when it’s after­noon, and how ALL his peo­ple will fol­low him madly if he runs away! Both Rol­lie and Judy proved a dab hand at res­cu­ing an escaped mad kitten.

We sat long into the evening over the cook­ies John’s mom had left behind, and the two fla­vors of Rich’s ice cream Judy brought. Anne and Katie popped in to carry away the remains of the scal­loped corn to have with their own salmon, and got a hand­ful of cook­ies too! We heard Dave’s car pull into their dri­ve­way and it was so cozy to think of them all together across the road.

Well, sadly Fri­day morn­ing was spent try­ing to clear up our messy house to show to our beloved friends Olimpia and Tony who were com­ing to lunch: we have been to their coun­try hide­away in the Catskills sev­eral times for Olimpia’s incom­pa­ra­ble Ital­ian feasts, but I had never cooked for her, nor had they seen Red Gate Farm, so… it was time to make nice neat piles of all the detri­tus of our busy sum­mer: Avery’s lan­yards (both the raw mate­ri­als and the dozens of key rings, bracelets, zip­per pulls and such that resulted), beads and the result­ing bead rings, piles of books opened to the pages where they were left, library books care­fully sep­a­rated, clean folded laun­dry with no drawer space to hold it! The swim bag filled with tow­els and suits, water bot­tles on the win­dow sill, ten­nis rack­ets, bad­minton rack­ets, bird seed! Recipes cut from Real Sim­ple, Hello! mag­a­zine, the local news­pa­per… Hast­ings’ toys with strings, bells, feathers!

And then Olimpia and Tony arrived for lunch on pos­si­bly the most beau­ti­ful after­noon of the whole sum­mer. I tried two new recipes (both from Lynne Rosetto Kasper’s new cook­book, so you can see how much I love it), and they were very much appre­ci­ated. How happy it makes me to see peo­ple eat! John began at one point to take away a plat­ter that looked empty and Olimpia slapped his hand, “What are you doing? No, no, that’s not ready to be taken away!” and sopped up a lit­tle more bal­samic dress­ing with a piece of baguette! Per­fect. The two new and notable dishes of the day were:

Slow-Simmered Warm Canellini Salad with Rose­mary
(serves four hun­gry peo­ple with other bits on offer as well)

1 tbsp but­ter
3 tbps olive oil
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
hand­ful fresh rose­mary, then chopped roughly
2 soup-cans canellini beans, drained and rinsed
1 cup fresh bread­crumbs
4 tbsps grated parme­san cheese
salt and pep­per
1/2 bag baby greens (radic­chio, arugula, baby spinach, etc)

The key to this dish is be GEN­TLE, and don’t rush it. You can cook the gar­lic, rose­mary and beans ahead of time (as in an hour or so), but the assem­bly must wait till right before serv­ing so noth­ing gets mushy or disintegrates.

Heat the but­ter and oil and add the gar­lic and rose­mary. On a VERY low heat just barely bub­ble them till the gar­lic is soft. Do NOT brown. Then add the beans and stir around, and let sim­mer super low as long as you want, within rea­son, as in about an hour TOPS.

Put the bread­crumbs in a skil­let on LOW heat and toast them till they’re dry. Again, be patient. Don’t quit toast­ing them till they’re dry. You want them to float on top of the salad, not absorb any oil. When they’re toasted, take them off the heat and when they’re room-temperature, scat­ter the cheese on top.

When you’re ready to serve, turn the heat UP and add the greens and bread­crumbs and cheese, and salt and pep­per. Toss with tongs until mixed well and serve immediately.

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Scan­di­na­vian Flower-Egg Salad with Mus­tard and Dill
(serves four hun­gry peo­ple with other bits on offer as well)

2 tbsps may­on­naise
1 lb small red pota­toes, steamed
8 eggs, hard-boiled
1 head Bibb (Boston, but­ter, depend­ing on where you are) lettuce

Mustard-dill dress­ing:
1 part white wine vine­gar
3 parts olive oil
3 parts heavy-grain mus­tard
2 tsps sugar
1 clove gar­lic, minced
salt and pepper

Shake up all ingre­di­ents in a tightly cov­ered jar.

hand­ful dill, chopped
1/2 red onion, diced small

On a large plate, smooth the may­on­naise in a thin layer. Slice the red pota­toes thickly and arrange them in a layer on the may­on­naise. Cut the eggs in quar­ter wedges and arrange on the pota­toes as flower petals. Chop the let­tuce into sliv­ers and scat­ter over eggs.

At serv­ing time, driz­zle pret­tily with dress­ing and then scat­ter with dill and red onion. Deli­cious, and so light!

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Oh, these were so lovely! I also roasted a nice plump chicken breast and sliced it thick on a bed of but­ter let­tuce, more (as John rightly pointed out later) as a sop to the feel­ing that one had to have some MEAT than for any menu-planning rea­son, and there were plenty of baguette chunks for sauce-sopping, believe me. Lastly, there was the beau­ti­ful tomato-mozzarella tower I’m so fond of. We were so happy! My favorite way to eat: lots of dif­fer­ent things but they all go together.

We took them on a tour of the strangely-neat house, as well as the lovely horse meadow. Such fun to show off what I truly think is one of the most peace­ful spots there is: Red Gate Farm. Becky arrived to pick up Avery for one last Green­wich adven­ture of the sum­mer, and I loved intro­duc­ing two of my favorite peo­ple to each other! It occurs to me how much fun I had all sum­mer, intro­duc­ing my beloved Becky to peo­ple. It turns out that who­ever I’m with, they’re some of my favorite people.

Of course Olimpia left behind a tub of her pre­cious meat­balls and beef ribs, sim­mered FOR­EVER in her inim­itable tomato sauce, so John and I self­ishly ate them ALL for sup­per, spar­ing not a thought for Avery who would return the next day. We went for a ride on what Avery calls “scary road,” off Hull’s Hill, in Quincy, nearly split­ting him into pieces with the state of the pothills! Avery hates the road for its sheer drop on the left side, over a ravine and a creek, but what I always object to is John’s turn up an aban­doned road that becomes nearly impass­able and ends in a pile of charred logs with lord knows what dis­gust­ing things left behind by maraud­ing teenagers. We turned back down, and were met at the bot­tom of the road by… one of Southbury’s finest. What are the odds? “That road pass­able?” he asked John to which John replied, “It was to me, not so sure about you.” We decided some neigh­bor had called the police on us!

We packed up some more, watch­ing the Olympics. My friend Alyssa and I have come up with any num­ber of drink­ing games based on the ridicu­lous hyper­bole indulged in by the com­men­ta­tors (“unbe­liev­able!” “iconic!” “superla­tive!”) but my favorite phrase of all was uttered dur­ing the men’s pom­mel horse. “He lit­er­ally fell apart dur­ing the semi-finals!” I’d love to see that. LITERALLY.

Sat­ur­day after­noon saw us on the Mer­ritt one last time to pick up Avery from Anna’s house and to pry both Anna from Avery AND me from Becky. Not nice. But we have high hopes of Christ­mas together, so we refrained from too much weep­ing and wail­ing. Mostly Avery was totally silent in the back­seat, until we could con­vince her to tell us the plot from “Legally Blonde,” which they had watched the night before. It’s funny what will com­fort any given per­son at any given time. We didn’t have much time to be melan­choly any­way, with Joel, Jane, Anne, David and Katie com­ing for The Last Sup­per, so I was grate­ful for that. Sit­ting one last time on the ter­race stones shuck­ing corn and watch­ing Hast­ings bound around… and a crazy mixed-up din­ner of “Grilled This and That,” clean­ing out the fridge of veg­gies and condi­ments to go with. Chicken mar­i­nated in sesame oil, lime juice and soy sauce, burg­ers on hard rolls, hot sausages: and plenty of sliced onions, toma­toes, avo­ca­does and cheese to go with every­thing. Joel brought the tra­di­tional Fred­er­ick­son toma­toes: con­trary to most people’s morays, we peel them after a quick boil, then chill them all after­noon in a stain­less steel dish that looks like it just held a kid­ney dur­ing a trans­plant. Cold peeled toma­toes are a lux­ury, as far as I’m con­cerned: thanks, Joel.

John appointed Jane “Chef’s Assis­tant” which she tried valiantly to pro­nounce. She appeared at one point dur­ing the cook­ing and put her hands on her hips (as she so often does). “John says the chef’s assis­tant needs to tell you… [momen­tary hes­i­ta­tion for pro­nouns’ sake] that he has dropped a sausage on the ground and what should he do with it?” Avery played games of allit­er­a­tion, “Kinetic Katie,” “Crafty Katie,” although that brought on the debate: is allit­er­a­tion sound or let­ter? Tough ques­tions. Katie her­self remains above all these petty con­cerns, merely open­ing her china-blue eyes wide and smil­ing at us, if we’re lucky.

Sun­day we exe­cuted such sad chores as rolling the tram­po­line into the big barn, lock­ing the Every­thing Shed, putting the swim bag away in the laun­dry room, and get­ting ready to… leave Hast­ings. The car ser­vice arrived and Avery car­ried him up to her bed, where he sleeps with a crazy fluffy cat Olimpia gave her many Christ­mases ago… and she had to leave him there, all wet from her tears, to be picked up by my dear friend Shel­ley on Tues­day. A hor­ri­ble, hor­ri­ble moment. And off we went. “Was it not worth it, Avery, to have him this sum­mer, if it makes you so sad?” I asked, and she looked at me and said, “But being so sad is what MAKES you know it was worth it.” If only I could always approach sep­a­ra­tion and bereave­ment so wisely.

And guess what? “Home” is still here! We’re back in Lon­don to set­tle in, to remem­ber the new house I spent less time in before we left than I spent at Red Gate Farm! And the kit­ties are HUGE! All of them. Keechie is limp­ing today, so she’s des­tined for the first visit to the new vet this after­noon; I can’t think what she’s done to her ankle, but it’s since we arrived back home, because she was rac­ing around greet­ing us when we came in.

Hon­estly, it’s nice to be back. John goes off for work in the morn­ings just like a nor­mal hus­band and father! He came in last night just at din­ner time, to Avery prac­tic­ing the piano and me stir­ring the bolog­nese. “So this is what it feels like to have a job!” he laughed.

I spent all after­noon yes­ter­day sewing the new-school name tapes on Avery’s PE kit: it turns out that no mat­ter how excited we all are for her to start her new school, name tapes are a big, honk­ing BORE any­way. But they’re done, and she has cleaned out her pen­cil case, put name tags on all her back­pack belong­ings, and all we need is lacrosse boots (Avery is mas­sively under­whelmed by THAT prospect, I can tell you).

We’re back.

Every once in awhile all the stars are in align­ment: the right peo­ple, the right energy, the right weather, and a cou­ple of unex­pected ele­ments, and… you have the best party. It was like that for my mother’s birth­day party on Saturday.

First we tied dozens of yel­low and white bal­loons to the fence (admit­tedly still in its lying-doggo state at the dri­ve­way end, but still), and can I tell you how beau­ti­ful the day was? Bright blue sky, the kind Avery is ter­ri­bly tired of hear­ing me talk about, wav­ing trees, a crispy feel­ing in the air. Then the bal­loons had been prop­erly arranged, and John’s mom and I had done most of the under­ch­eff­ing for the party foods (scal­lops and shrimp with red pep­pers and aspara­gus! chicken liv­ers wrapped in pancetta to be grilled on rose­mary skew­ers! chicken breasts mar­i­nated in soy sauce, sesame oil and lime juice, per­fectly grilled by John! tomato, moz­zarella and basil salad, dev­illed eggs, you name it, we ate it, and there is no hol­i­day tra­di­tion I love more than cook­ing with my mother in law). I jumped in the shower and not a moment too soon: up turned the birth­day girl in the dri­ve­way! Jane was jump­ing out of her skin with excite­ment, Joel was pre­pared with his incom­pa­ra­ble arti­choke dip to heat up, and then Anne came from across the road wheel­ing Baby Katie, and then there were Becky’s fam­ily: with a new PUPPY! Just what the party ordered: an eight-week-old choco­late lab mix called Cocoa.

I’ll tell you, if your party needs liven­ing up, try six chil­dren between the ages of 3 months and 14 years, a kit­ten, a puppy, a preg­nant lady and a much-too-small grill, and you’ll be all set. But between the oven, the toaster oven, the stove and the grill, all the food came out at the same time, and we sim­ply fell upon it. My mother smiled and smiled, and we all ended up hang­ing out in the new Adiron­dack chairs under the hydrangea tree, my sis­ter hold­ing Anne’s baby in an amaz­ing feat as both accom­plished mother of a tod­dler AND mother to be. My dad and Joel and John and Becky’s hus­band mark toured the prop­erty in var­i­ous groups, vis­it­ing the horses in the meadow, look­ing at the gor­geous sign pro­claim­ing “Red Gate Farm” made by my dad that finally lives proudly on our fence.

The girls slip ‘n slided to their hearts con­tent, since Becky gra­ciously adhered to my request and brought their REAL slip ‘n slide, so we could eschew the one stud­ded with sta­ples that I had cob­bled together to make work dur­ing Cici’s sleep­over. The sun shone, the girls slid (Jane had every­one lined up prop­erly!), they jumped the pony jumps and tram­po­lined and we adults chat­ted and ate and relaxed. And dessert? Don’t get me started, not that I eat any, but I had asked Becky to make her famous chess pie for my mother, and she made not one but two, the sec­ond a choco­lately ver­sion that every­one went nuts for. Recipes desired, let me know and I shall beg Becky for them! And the oblig­a­tory birth­day cake that was much nicer than oblig­a­tory, say­ing the now-traditional “Happy Birth­day, Mona.” And then? It began to rain. So we repaired indoors for what turned out to be sort of the per­fect amount of time for Jane to nap, for the grownups to hud­dle in the kitchen and gos­sip, wash dishes, put the odd and sundry refrig­er­a­tor item away, for Ash­ley to try to train Cocoa to use her pee­ing pad, and… then the sun came back out!

The weather reports had been that Con­necti­cut thing: almost per­fectly accu­rate. We we were able to sit out again then, and I made up a silly tram­po­line game for ALL the girls involv­ing eggs siz­zling in a skil­let, joined by bacon, and then sud­denly a spat­ula, and… BOUNCE! Just the sort of game for an adult to invent and then… dis­ap­pear and let them con­tinue. Finally full-family pho­tographs, and sud­denly every­one piled into cars and were gone… sad good­byes all around. It was hard to think who to feel sad­dest about say­ing good­bye to, so I just didn’t come to any con­clu­sions. It was so quiet when every­one had gone.

But the next day brought another party, the wed­ding shower for Farmer Rollie’s daughter-in-law-to-be, a lovely girl called Tri­cia. For this, John and his mom repaired to New York City to see a show of pre-fab houses at MoMA, and gosh was I relieved to miss THAT. So Avery and I con­cocted our con­tri­bu­tion to the shower, a tra­di­tional “Eton Mess,” put on our best duds and headed off to a great Amer­i­can fem­i­nine tra­di­tion.

Eton Mess
(serves at least 10)

2 lbs straw­ber­ries, hulled and quar­tered
2 pints heavy whip­ping cream, whipped with a trace of vanilla and a tbsp sugar
2 cups meringues, crushed up to peb­ble size

In a large tri­fle bowl (don’t have one? nei­ther did I, so go to KMart and get one with Martha Stewart’s bless­ing and about $6), put in a layer of straw­ber­ries. Add a layer of cream, a layer of meringues, and so on until you run out. End with a straw­berry on top.

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And we had to bum a ride from Anne, who had more than enough on her plate going to a memo­r­ial ser­vice in town. “Every­one who isn’t here,” she remarked on let­ting us off, “will be there.” At least I had a moment to speak to Anne’s gen­tle and better-worldly mother, author of two of our family’s favorite books, mother of two of our favorite girls… how I wish my sum­mer included a long, leisurely chat with her that would let us flit from topic to topic with­out regard for a minute sched­ule involv­ing so many mov­ing parts. Alas, not this sum­mer, I fear. But some summer.

And I must tell how: if you are try­ing to attract a ground­hog, Gary will attest to the time-honored appeal of many, many straw­berry tops from Eton Mess! We were seri­ously pop­u­lar that afternoon.

More tomor­row about the adven­tures of John’s mom’s last cou­ple of mag­i­cal days with us, but for the moment, can I report in GREAT sat­is­fac­tion the repair of our fence? I will doc­u­ment this minor mir­a­cle on film (or a mod­ern fac­sim­ile thereof) tomor­row, but suf­fice to say, it’s lovely, and ALMOST worth the wait. What a summer…

Good­ness, what hap­pens when your daugh­ter and her house­guest have a dull moment? You set up a triathalon, of course, on the lawn. And then, heaven save you, you try it YOUR­SELF. Even though a tiny voice is telling you, “Sit down and let the younger gen­er­a­tion at those pony jumps before you tear a ten­don and force the chil­dren to run six miles to find help.” But no. I had to run the race.

So the triathalon went like this: jump the first pony jump going UPHILL, then around the tram­po­line and over another jump then… throw your­self onto the slip ‘n slide KNEES DOWN and slide toward the well-water-temperatured FREEZ­ING pool of water at the bot­tom, then jump up (assum­ing you’re still ambu­la­tory at this point), and run toward the bad­minton net and get two birdies over, then hit two fur­ther pony jumps and let’s see, five non-identical jumps on the trampoline.

I can tell you that by the end of this regime, one par­tic­u­lar 43-year-old com­peti­tor was lying on the ground howl­ing at the pain in her knees, but she did fin­ish the course!

Thank good­ness lunch cooked itself. Because din­ner the night before had… cooked itself.

Ulti­mate Cooks-Itself Brisket
(serves four for din­ner and four for leftovers)

1 brisket, flat end
1 large can toma­toes
5 cloves gar­lic, sliced
1 white onion, quar­tered
1 bot­tle of beer
1 slug (per­haps 1/2 cup?) molasses
2 soup-size cans beef broth

Place the brisket in a large soup-size stock­pot or casse­role for stove­top use. Cover with EVERY­THING ELSE. Cover and bring to a boil.

Now. Turn the heat down REALLY LOW, like a bare sim­mer, and leave it for four hours. If you’re home you can turn it now and then, if it makes you feel like you’re cook­ing. But hon­estly: if you keep the heat low enough and keep it cov­ered, it cooks itself. You can break up the toma­toes if you’re nearby, but cover it again right away.

About hour three, I can guar­an­tee you’ll be hang­ing over the pot with a fork and some lame excuse like, “I should test it to make sure it’s OK to eat,” and start shred­ding away choice morsels. I’d say you should resist this inevitabil­ity, but why? You’re the cook, you deserve it.

At the end, put the brisket on a cut­ting board and slice it against the grain as thinly as you can. If you have a sug­ges­tion for the rest of the cook­ing liq­uid, I’d love to hear it. It’s beer, tomato, molasses, gar­lic ambrosia. But I throw it away, for lack of any other ideas.

******************

For the left­over brisket, how­ever… I have no such hes­i­ta­tions. I offer you, middle-aged triath­lete with sore knees but game spirit:

Ulti­mate Brisket Sand­wiches With Gor­gonzola and Red Onion
(serves four for sandwiches)

good chunk of left­over brisket
8 slices toasted rye
a good chunk of Gor­gonzola or other blue cheese
1 red onion, sliced
(mus­tard if you like, or butter)

Slice the left­over brisket thin. Then sim­ply build your sand­wich in the pro­por­tions you like. UNBEATABLE.

***********************

Through it all, Avery and her beloved friend Cici made… bead rings. I can­not explain except to say that… they made rings of cop­per thread and tiny, tiny beads. We are all wear­ing them now, and the girls turned them out like… well, like bead rings. So peace­ful in the sun on the tram­po­line, after we all tired of the triathalon, which took awhile.

I can­not describe the peace of the land­scape! Avery sighed in exas­per­a­tion at me, finally. “OK, OK, Mommy, ‘the blue of the sky, the red of the barn, the green of the grass.’ Enough!” But… how about the red of the gate? And the white of the fence, and the green of the tiger lily bed? Pretty nice. And just take a look at the wildlife who gath­ered around that after­noon: Gary the ground­hog, the car­di­nal, chip­munks, who knows who comes to eat at my house.

Finally poor John who had been pay­ing some sort of ter­ri­ble life dues at the DMV reg­is­ter­ing the car and get­ting a Con­necti­cut license returned… not on his shield after all, but safe and sound and ready for a trip to the pool! We all con­curred, and were ready in a split sec­ond. It was one of those pool after­noons that looked like a poten­tial dis­as­ter: clouds over­head, was that a sprin­kle? Surely not… then we got in the pool… FREEZ­ING! Scream­ing, dar­ing each other to go under, finally a cou­ple of laps, and we were good to go. A Hello! mag­a­zine straight from Lon­don, a Soap Opera Weekly from the super­mar­ket… two happy girls and a hus­band whose nov­elty had not worn off. We were all in heaven. The pool’s unof­fi­cial social sec­re­tary, Bar­bara, was back from her Alaskan cruise. “My hus­band doesn’t like to fly and he didn’t want to go any­where. But I was an ele­men­tary school teacher long enough to know how to phrase the ques­tion. ‘Honey, do you want to go to Hawaii, or Alaska?’ And he said, ‘Doesn’t Hawaii have an ocean between us and it?’ and I said yes, and so it was Alaska!” They had a won­der­ful time and saw Mount McKin­ley which, as it tran­spires, only 20% of vis­i­tors get to do. AND her grand­daugh­ter still refrained from being born pre­ma­turely dur­ing their absence. That does not sur­prise me AT ALL. It’s good to have Bar­bara back.

At home, show­ered and rel­a­tively braced to face the ele­ments, I repaired to the kitchen finally to watch my beloved “Gen­eral Hos­pi­tal” and get din­ner ready for… John’s mom’s arrival! It was, self­ishly, my favorite sort of din­ner: lots of dif­fer­ent things, and you can choose what you like. I’ve given you all the recipes already, but here’s what I fixed: Pan-Fried Salmon, Red Gate Farm Bean Salad, Scal­loped Corn, Roasted Beets with Bal­samic Vine­gar. Just lovely!

And then, sud­denly with a crunch of my pre­cious gravel, there was a car. “I won­der who that is?” I asked stu­pidly, in denial that I might have to give Cici up. “That looks like my par­ents, oh no,” Cici said… And it was. But there was Rose­mary too, in her iconic white shirt, black skirt, sum­mer tan, gold bracelet and neck­lace so shim­mery in the early evening, her smile, tight hug, “Sweetie…”

Cici departed and it was sad but all right because we had Nonna to show around, give presents to, intro­duce to Hast­ings! Of course he won over John’s mom right away, who car­ried him around as we led her to the cozy guest room with its barn-red cov­er­let, the pitcher of hydrangeas I had put by her bed, the books and mag­a­zines and news­pa­per bits I thought she could not live with­out… I wanted noth­ing more than to stop the clock, stop the cal­en­dar, and stay RIGHT THERE: a sum­mer evening at Red Gate Farm with crick­ets start­ing to chirp, the tree limbs over Stillmeadow turn­ing black while Anne switches on golden lights across the road, din­ner aro­mas steal­ing through the house, presents being exchanged, Hast­ings leap­ing after wrap­pings and rib­bons, John bring­ing cock­tails and wine, me stop­ping to look through a per­fect new cook­book… I gave a deep thought of grat­i­tude to John’s dad who paved the way for all these reunions, smil­ing over us all, full of quiet joy at our being together, lug­ging in suit­cases, accept­ing a Scotch with plenty of ice, his deep voice echo­ing through the house, “Rose­mary…” What a mirac­u­lous sum­mer we had last year, and none of us took a moment for granted. I will hold that in my heart for­ever. And he was with us, for me, that first evening with Rose­mary here.

Well, pathos never lasts long around here, and it was but the work of a moment to wake up and wend our way to West Hart­ford to be reunited with MY side of the fam­ily! To hug my dar­ling mother (more on her birth­day party tomor­row!) and father and brother and Jill, to tour their gar­den with Joel’s unbe­liev­ably… how to put it… thor­ough anti-squirrel devices on his tomato patch. But before I gig­gle: those toma­toes looked pretty darn healthy, and unscathed, too. From there, with the usual fam­ily con­ver­sa­tional depar­tures into “Remem­ber when…” and then the var­i­ous voices of dis­sen­sion, “That’s not how that hap­pened!” or even more likely in my side of the fam­ily, “That is not what I said!” We are in a con­stant bat­tle over the truth as some­one remem­bers it, and the story as it’s bet­ter told.

I felt com­pletely vin­di­cated when we arrived at our tourist des­ti­na­tion, the Mark Twain House Museum in Farm­ing­ton, to see his quo­ta­tion, “I start out telling the truth, but some­where between pen and paper it becomes fic­tion.” I felt such a kin­ship! Although now that I write that down… I’m not sure it’s a direct quo­ta­tion! How per­fect is that.

A gor­geous Vic­to­rian man­sion to tour, with the ulti­mate Tour Nazi shout­ing at John to turn off his phone! “It didn’t even make a sound, it only LIT UP!” Avery said, always the first to feel per­se­cuted by author­ity. Where that comes from, I could not say.

Well, I must sleep. Today was my mummy’s birth­day party here and a glo­ri­ous time it was, but as a result I’m pooped. Every­one else is long asleep in my house, the can­dles are burn­ing in the front win­dows, and all is right with the world… just remind me, if any­one offers: no more triathalons, thanks. But on a tiny small-world note, can I just tell you that Avery’s beloved for­mer babysit­ter Amy’s dad (stay with me here) is the voiceover guy for the Olympics! The guy who tells you all about Bud­weiser, and what’s com­ing next… that vel­vety, choco­latey voice. That’s my child’s for­mer babysitter’s dad! Hey, fame has to come from some­where… Con­grat­u­la­tions, every­one in Beijing…

There is such a MAGIC to the light in these sum­mer days, a light that actu­ally trans­lates sur­pris­ingly well to pho­tographs, that I sim­ply can­not stop tak­ing pho­tographs and try­ing to cap­ture the fleet­ing beauty of our time here. Believe it or not, when I have tough days in the other 10+ months of the year, as much as I love our British lives, I go back to these sum­mer pages and remem­ber that it is always STILL HERE. The seren­ity, change­less­ness, com­fort and famil­iar­ity of Red Gate Farm sus­tains me all year long.

Part of the expe­ri­ence is in read­ing the writ­ings of Gladys Taber, from across the road 60 years ago, and hear­ing in her “voice” the same tim­bre of love and appre­ci­a­tion of these trees, hills, bird­song, dusty roads, neigh­bor­li­ness, wildlife, fresh pro­duce, I could go on and on! I love it all. Of course our lives 60 years on are very dif­fer­ent: in some ways won­der­fully the same, but the dif­fer­ences are some good, some bad. I wish I were a gar­dener, but I am not, don’t know if I would ever be, but being first a weekend-er and now a “summer-er,” I have not ever had a chance to find out. So my sum­mer mem­o­ries do not include a glut of cucum­bers (as my dar­ling father’s gar­den in my child­hood yielded, along with toma­toes), or peaches to put up, or a must-create-zucchini-recipes insis­tence in August, or six dif­fer­ent vari­eties of beets to glory in. I wish these were my expe­ri­ences! In my next life I will not be strug­gling with Lon­don traf­fic or super-competitive children’s school accep­tance, or dying to break into the British food-writing mar­ket, or mov­ing every two years. In my next life, I will be set­tled at Red Gate Farm grow­ing hol­ly­hocks. My mother in law’s dream for me! She loves them.

And even though we built up many won­der­ful mem­o­ries of win­ter­time Red Gate Farm on our week­ends from New York (the wood­fires John tended with all his heart, our exper­i­ments with pop­ping corn! puz­zles on the kitchen table, count­less dishes of meat­loaf com­ing out of the oven), my fond­est mem­o­ries are of summertime.

What’s changed for the good? Well, I must vote for cell phones and email. It is pos­si­ble to feel quite close to those we love most by those beloved calls and mes­sages in our inboxes! I think Gladys Taber would have LOVED email: any way that keeps peo­ple writ­ing and shar­ing sto­ries is a good thing, I believe, even if it’s harder to keep copies of what you say. I absolutely cher­ish the emails I receive from Lon­don friends, beck­on­ing through the sum­mer dust motes like mes­sages from another world! And in the Lon­don world, how won­der­ful it is to receive reports on our dar­ling farm­house from Anne and David. And to have the phone ring and it’s my best friend Alyssa, tak­ing me RIGHT to her beach in Fire Island, with her lit­tle boy shout­ing in the back­ground. These things make mod­ern life almost worth the… let’s see, real­ity tele­vi­sion and icky polit­i­cans of mod­ern life? And children’s med­i­cine that is now sold in “pre-measured” dose pack­ets? What­ever hap­pened to the per­fectly good word “mea­sured”? Pre– to what? I am really a curmudgeon.

Good­ness, I’m digress­ing! But I do adore every lit­tle thing about our golden sum­mers here, even the gray and lash­ing after­noons of glo­ri­ous rain that only under­score the shim­mery bits we enjoy so much.

Well, John’s home! We reunited with him at Becky’s house in Green­wich on Sat­ur­day: such a shock to see him so much taller than I remem­bered, and with a fresh hair­cut and smil­ing at us all. We repaired to the lovely Old Green­wich Beach House with Becky’s fam­ily, enjoy­ing some whole­some Amer­i­can food like burg­ers, baby back ribs, cole slaw, French fries! Then home for John to take a nap (after duly admir­ing Hast­ings, of course: and Avery is most anx­ious that every­one know he’s named after Poirot’s side­kick, NOT the “Bat­tle of”!). Avery and I of course ended up at the beloved if grotty old town pool, just what we had been wait­ing for all sum­mer, all YEAR: the per­fect sunny after­noon, com­plain­ing to the lazy life­guards that the music is too loud, lying about try­ing to get com­fort­able with our books, know­ing that John is here!

His first morn­ing home, we headed to the Lau­rel Diner for that brunch that kills all other brunches: the two twin cooks, one fat and one thin (we’re con­cerned, though, because the plump cook is slim­ming down!). The entire stick of but­ter siz­zling on the grill for our hash­browns, corn beef hash (or “rash” as Avery said as a baby), Avery’s Reuben with­out dress­ing… we savor every bite! And the same bright-eyed wait­ress Kerry every sum­mer, who loves that we come back from Lon­don and never for­gets that I drink some­thing crazy: half iced tea, half lemon­ade! Only this morn­ing, on our way to the diner, we glanced around our prop­erty to fill our hearts and… there were HORSES in our MEADOW! OK, pit stop!

We knew they were com­ing, but still! Horses in our meadow, swish­ing their tails in what we know is an effort to get rid of flies but still looks lovely, drink­ing from an aban­doned bath­tub as you see! We suc­cumbed to hunger, but were happy on our arrival back home to see our neigh­bors Mark and lit­tle Tay­lor work­ing in the meadow, and they stopped to chat. Mark is a career fire­fighter, with that inef­fa­ble aura of author­ity and just-this-side-of-intimidating boom­ing voice that marks any town’s Bravest. He’s the kind of guy who has the local police force 1) on his cell­phone speed-dial, and 2) in his debt for some­thing gen­er­ous he’s done for them, so if he needs help… look out for the sirens! He curbs his nor­mal total author­ity to get down on Taylor’s three-year-old level, and it shows in her: she is the total explorer and intim­i­dated by noth­ing. John said, “I love your hair­cut,” and she imme­di­ately jumped down from the tram­po­line, cov­ered her head and said, “No one talk about my hair­cut! I refuse!”

We gave her the cookie she expects at my house and then headed to the ten­nis courts, where we have as much fun as two really BAD play­ers and their long-suffering male com­pan­ion can have. Home again, hot and red and sweaty, to see Anne, David and lit­tle Katie cross­ing the road to meet John, home from oceans and oceans away! So many thou­sands of miles he’s come and gone, in so many direc­tions, to be with us. After prop­erly admir­ing the blue-eyed elf, we walked the prop­erty, dis­cussing dredg­ing projects, fence-building projects around the pro­tected bor­der by Phillips Farm, weed­ing and window-replacing. And dis­cussing the ancient stinky smoke­house! “Years ago,” Anne remem­bered, “we were given a head cheese that was smoked in that place, and… it sat in our freezer for YEARS before we threw it out!”

Through it all Katie smiled opaquely at us, look­ing for all the world like a philoso­pher who has yet to come to a con­clu­sion about the state of things around her. As always we talk over and over each other, all four of us, never enough time to dis­cuss, com­pare, agree, add com­ments. Increas­ingly I think what we all need is more power out­ages: that evening sit­ting in the can­dle­light with Anne, David and Katie, Avery and I had a more relaxed, free-floating con­ver­sa­tion than we’ve been able to have with any­one else all sum­mer. We were forced to sit qui­etly. There’s some­thing Gladys Taber’s world under­stood: the beauty of sit­ting qui­etly and bask­ing in the com­pany of beloved friends.

Of course, I shouldn’t be so hard on myself: cram­ming all our love and fond­ness for each other, all of these peo­ple all sum­mer, into six weeks is not easy! But we try, and it builds the blocks for next sum­mer, and the rest of our lives and our children’s lives. Funny to think that some­day, when they are middle-aged and old, the 10-year dif­fer­ence between Avery and Katie will be… noth­ing. They’ll still have just as many silly sto­ries to exchange about their dot­ing par­ents, no doubt, and, I hope, the many nights we spent around our pic­nic table, and their can­dlelit liv­ing room, chatting.

Anne and David told a hilar­i­ous story about a gift of veni­son one year from Rol­lie (“was it road kill?” I asked, and they thought it prob­a­bly was, got to love Rol­lie). “There it was, year after year,” David said, “this big bloody deer leg in the freezer,” and I thought of Lord Peter Wim­sey when he says “some­times ‘bloody’ is just a good old Anglo-Saxon adjective!”

After a spec­tac­u­larly thun­der­stormy after­noon, we ended up sit­ting on garbage bags at the pic­nic table, unwill­ing to eat inside no mat­ter what, feast­ing on slow-braised brisket, mac­a­roni and cheese and bean salad. And just as we watched the skunk come to claim the left­overs, up popped… Rol­lie! In his iconic bat­tered blue pickup. I made a pre­tense of chat­ting for a moment, but then wisely left him to his long-awaited reunion with John, who he is tremen­dously tick­led to find work­ing again! Out came all his best sum­mer sto­ries. “All this rain, we’ve been hayin’ two days, off two days…” I issued my annual all-boys din­ner invi­ta­tion, which as every sum­mer I call din­ner.” Out comes his cell phone: “I’m callin’ the boss.… Hey, how are you? Lis­ten, can we make sup­per tomor­row night?” I call it din­ner, he repeats it as sup­per, every year. Got to stay true to our­selves, after all.

So today we got up and drove to Mys­tic to see my old friend and stu­dent and bril­liant painter Kath­leen, and to divest her of her eldest child, Cici, who hap­pens to be Avery’s old­est friend. Hard to top it: they met when Avery was three days old! We stayed for lunch and then headed home, to arrive in time for the girls to “slip ‘n slide,” a totally plas­tic thing from Tar­get, inspired by Becky’s girls, a hose-filled affair that they throw them­selves on, stom­ach first, and slosh down­hill. As it was the end-of-summer clear­ance sale (weep), this gem of a play­thing was reduced from its orig­i­nal astro­nom­i­cal price tag of $20 to… $2.48. Seri­ously? Seri­ously! And the fun they had, in the blinky late after­noon light? Price­less, as they say.

From there to our less-than-stellar, but always fun ten­nis les­son, and our indi­gestible but lovely clas­sic Cici first-night din­ner at Mag­gie McFly’s… I sang to the girls as they went to sleep, and I couldn’t get over how LONG they are under the cov­ers! Their being together, as I have seen them since Avery was prone on her back as a new­born baby, then to tod­dler­dom, lit­tle girl­hood, and the long sad sep­a­ra­tion in our Lon­don years, under­scores the incred­i­ble STRETCH­ING of their lit­tle bod­ies! The ever­last­ing upward length­en­ing of who they are! Quite mag­i­cal, and also to hear their back­seat con­ver­sa­tion, the same as every year, as every Tues­day after­noon in our New York days when I drove them up to the Bronx to ride together, their chat­ter­ing from num­ber­less sleep­overs, Book Clubs at our house, birth­day par­ties and Hal­loween traipses. John and I exchanged a word­less glance that said MILES: “It’s the same as always. Some things never change, and one of them is Avery and Cici.” Long may it last.

Well, I’m relax­ing to the Olympics and try­ing to remem­ber when I last did a roundoff-back-handspring-back-flip! Some 30 years ago! But in the glass-half-full mode I plan to take back with me to Lon­don: I should be glad I could ever do it at all! And here’s hop­ing the next 30 years are as much fun…

Well, it was a won­der­ful thing to have hap­pen, and all that we had wished for, but let me tell you, it’s very heart-wrenching to say good­bye, sud­denly, unex­pect­edly, in the final silent moments before a mas­sive thun­der­storm, to two dar­ling kittens.

But say good­bye we did.

How did it hap­pen? I will explain.

Yes­ter­day began par­tic­u­larly pun­gently, as in with a car full of garbage cans and recy­cling bags and piles of flat­tened card­board boxes to take to the dump. Ick! I hate the dump. But I felt a spe­cial pride in doing it, since in the­ory I could have waited till John got here tomor­row (yippee!), but I wanted the cans and the garbage room to be EMPTY when he got here, to show that I had taken good care of every­thing while we were here with­out him. So I went, and strug­gled with my cans and bags and what­not, bel­liger­ently dressed in a white ruf­fled t-shirt and lit­tle denim skirt: I will not be defeated by the dump! Home singing loudly to the radio, win­dows open, gor­geous blue sky overhead.

I roasted a chicken breast, whole and on the bone, with noth­ing but a smear of but­ter and a sprin­kle of salt and pep­per, for my Ladies Who Were Com­ing To Lun­cheon: two great fans of the won­der­ful life and cook­ery author who lived across the road in days gone by (grand­mother to my great friend Anne), and the morn­ing was pro­ceed­ing fairly nor­mally, Avery read­ing qui­etly, the kit­tens play­ing like crazy nuts. Then… the cable guy came. Which I was expect­ing, albeit at the far end (as always!) of his two-hour win­dow… I explained to Avery that if one is 15 min­utes late for an 11–1 appoint­ment, the guy will arrive SPOT ON the begin­ning of the win­dow and you’ll miss him. BUT, on the other hand, if you find your­self need­ing to leave a half hour after the END of the two-hour win­dow, he will come at the exact end of that win­dow and leave you bit­ing your nails till he fin­ishes and you can LEAVE.

Well, this guy, and his col­league, arrived spot at the moment of 1 p.m., when my lun­cheon guests were expected at 1:15. Two really nice guys, one short, one tall, one plump, one thin, just like Jack and Mrs. Sprat. I led them upstairs in the steamy after­noon air to the bed­room tele­vi­sion, left them there to labor, and as Amanda bounded into the room, asked rhetor­i­cally (I thought), “Do you guys want a kit­ten?” and the tall skinny guy turned to me, and in the unmis­tak­able tones of my adopted home­land, said, “Yes! Do you have more than one?”

WHOA.

Before we knew it, he (Phil, as he intro­duced him­self, “from Bris­tol”) had Lizzie in one hand, fast asleep, and Amanda climb­ing his trouser leg. “It’s my girlfriend’s birth­day today, and…” and the short plump guy sat back on his heels and said, “You cheap bas­tard. You didn’t get her any­thing? And now you’re going to give her a FREE KIT­TEN?” We all laughed. “You got it,” Phil said, “and my daugh­ter wants one too.” He was excused from any fur­ther cable-guy duty (lead­ing one to won­der why they send two guys, if one can be excused to acquire a kit­ten or two at a moment’s notice), and came down­stairs to call his ex-wife. “Hey, sweet­heart, is it OK if I give her a kit­ten? I know it’ll live at your house, so I wanted to check…” We all waited with baited breath… while Avery clung unob­tru­sively to Hast­ings. “Well, great. I’ll bring her home, then, and we’ll do the exchange over the week­end. Thanks, love.” And it was done. Avery found her new rid­ing hel­met box, took the hel­met out, put a t-shirt and the Christ­mas rib­bon the kit­tens had made their toy into it, and in went the girls. That was THAT. Quick exchange of email addresses, and off they went.

I can tell you, it was hard for Avery. And she was SO gra­cious. She needed some time to her­self, and with Hast­ings, when the van had pulled away, car­ry­ing those two souls that had become such a part of our lives in the last ten days or so.

Good­ness.

Well, as luck would have it, thank good­ness my friend Shel­ley and her friend Anne pulled up just then in the dri­ve­way, to keep us from wal­low­ing in our sad­ness. What fun to meet them in real life! Shel­ley and I have been fast friends for the last year or so, in a vir­tual way, exchang­ing lots of emails and com­ments on the blog. She is a rare per­son of innate gen­eros­ity and wealth of empa­thy, which is eas­ily felt even through emails and such, but her aura of kind­ness and giv­ing in PER­SON is some­thing else again. You want to lock the door behind her and keep her with you! And Anne, her friend, felt like an old friend right away: a life­long ele­men­tary school teacher, hav­ing found her bliss in teach­ing kinder­garten, you sense an amaz­ing com­bi­na­tion of expe­ri­ence and WON­DER in her: she has seen it all and yet faces each new sit­u­a­tion with fresh­ness and appre­ci­a­tion. What a joy to have them here!

We sat down at the table I’d set out­side, and pre­tended not to see the rum­bling grey clouds over­head and as far as the eye could see. We unfolded our nap­kins, Shel­ley admir­ing the lovely nap­kin rings given to Avery by Farmer Rol­lie and his wife Judy… and still we did not acknowl­edge the rustling of maple leaves over­head, and sense of a great atmos­pheric change com­ing. We helped our­selves to roast-chicken salad with sweet­corn, pine nuts and sliv­ered toasted almonds, cel­ery and lemony may­on­naise, and the yummy arti­choke dip made for me each sum­mer by my dear brother in law, and Brie and baguettes. And then… splash. “I just felt a rain­drop,” I said reluc­tantly, in the way that one acknowl­edges the first spots of small­pox. “Oh, that’ll be just a sprin­kle,” Anne said breezily. “It’ll def­i­nitely be PASS­ING OVER.”

We kept repeat­ing this as we scooped up our lunch, chat­ting about Gladys Taber, the his­tory of the house across the road, my plans to help re-invigorate some of her recipes into a kind of memoir-cookbook… until the most ENOR­MOUS crack of thun­der hap­pened RIGHT over our shoul­ders. Avery tensed. Then she said, “I can con­tribute noth­ing, really, to this con­ver­sa­tion, and I’m really afraid of thun­der and light­ning, so… would any­one mind if I went inside??” We all followed!

Lunch con­tin­ued in the din­ing room, con­ver­sa­tion trip­ping over itself… Shel­ley brought out gifts of books, knit­ted cat­nip toys, gor­geous milk glass, you wouldn’t BELIEVE what she had brought… and the rain crashed and thun­dered and the sky dark­ened till it was like a late Novem­ber after­noon in Lon­don. Which means, about as dark as you can get with­out actu­ally need­ing to light a lamp. Hast­ings made his appear­ance and charmed every­one, climb­ing up everyone’s legs, beg­ging for water­melon and blueberries…

Finally it was time for Shel­ley and Anne to brave the rain which, it was clear, was not stop­ping ANY time soon. Off they went, leav­ing behind that feel­ing I love of girl­friends. Just ladies you really love, and the feel­ing that you could have talked for about seven more hours and eaten another meal, and not made a dent in what you wanted to say. Thank you, Shel­ley, for your friend­ship, and wel­come, Anne, to what I hope will be a long and happy shared time together. We made plans for every sum­mer from now on, at Red Gate Farm.

I had barely had time to clear away when there was a tor­nado warn­ing in our county, so I felt it was my mater­nal duty to… take every­one down to the base­ment. “EEWW!” Avery shrieked. “Spi­ders, spi­ders!” It could not be denied. My house seems to gen­er­ate daddy lon­glegs and what­ever other spi­ders like sugar water gath­ers ants. But we sat in our pun­ish­ing straight­back chairs, star­ing at each other, try­ing to keep Hast­ings from escap­ing to the floor which we are fairly cer­tain con­tains traces of mouse poi­son. Ick. “One minute to go,” Avery intoned. “Fifty five, fifty four…” Finally we came up and NOTH­ING was hap­pen­ing out­side. “OK, maybe I over­re­acted a lit­tle,” I admit­ted. But my Indi­ana tornado-ridden upbring­ing has deep roots!

Well, need­less to say, Avery’s fever went away. It lasted about twice as long as it usu­ally does, and there­fore pre­cisely twice as long as I was com­fort­able with. I had just looked up a pedi­a­tri­cian in town and vowed to take her as soon as she woke up, but in fact she slept incred­i­bly late, and woke up feel­ing FINE. What a relief. A lit­tle stuffy nose, and the next day a lit­tle cough, but no fever. Whew. So to cel­e­brate we ran a thou­sand errands: to KMart for votive can­dles (an absolute sta­ple in my house), bird seed, kitty lit­ter, all the basics, then the library, then Judy’s brother’s farm: Painter Ridge Farm: the best view of a sun­set in Con­necti­cut, with­out a doubt, in Wash­ing­ton. Only Judy wasn’t there! But a lovely lady called Mary helped us, and lis­tened to Avery’s impas­sioned account of the then-three kit­tens we needed to find homes for. Her hus­band, Judy’s brother, came in on the tail end of this expo­si­tion, and Mary said, “Wouldn’t you like a kit­ten?” And he stopped in his tracks, swiped a sweaty, dusty hand across his face and said firmly, “There’s only room for ONE ani­mal on this farm, and that’s ME.” Avery loved that!

On the way home we nearly ran into a mother wild turkey, help­ing her baby across the road. “Stop, stop!” Avery screeched, so I did, and then there was another baby turkey, and another, and five more, and six more… there must have been 14 babies, headed by one adult and rounded up at the end by another adult! Avery said, “I think that must not be a mother and father and fam­ily: that must be turkey DAY CARE.”

We’ve been host­ing a lovely and very friendly skunk lately, who seems happy to clean up any and all din­ner left­overs for us: eat­ing our noo­dles and pep­pers, shred­ded moz­zarella and deli roast beef, corn cobs and stale Saltine crack­ers. It seems to mind not at all see­ing us about! Avery’s inspired to read, yet again, the book writ­ten by Anne-Across-the-Road’s mother Con­stance Colby, “A Skunk in the House,” which she reads every sum­mer. So lovely. And such a relief, total relief to have Avery well. Although I must report a very enter­tain­ing late-night visit by her to my bed­room. Clearly half asleep and also hal­lu­ci­nat­ing slightly with her fever, she approached my bed and said, “Hi Mommy. I just reached out my arms and every­thing was… totally fluffy.” Was it indeed, my dear!?

Well, today I drove her to Anna’s house for one more sleep­over, took a tour of the nearly-unpacked and set­tled house, and drove home, which took bloody for­ever. Between a lash­ing thun­der­storm AGAIN, and ter­ri­ble Friday-evening traf­fic, I was on the road for­ever. But you know what: when the rain cleared but the traf­fic didn’t, the best thing to do was, turn off the AC, roll the win­dows ALL the way down, find a cheesey radio sta­tion play­ing a song I liked, and just SING! I had a ball, hon­estly! I am almost never truly alone (which is fine, most of the time!), but to be alone and not chat­ting with any­one, lis­ten­ing to a book on tape, any­thing at all to keep me from singing… it was glorious!

I was starv­ing when I pulled into South­bury, so I stopped at the gro­cery and shopped for the, pos­si­bly, BEST din­ner of the sum­mer. Why do I cre­ate these things when there’s no one but me to enjoy them? I think there’s some­thing to total impro­vi­sa­tion, total spon­tane­ity, and cook­ing for just ONE that makes a great thing pos­si­ble, now and then. And you mustn’t ever be hin­dered by any of the fol­low­ing thoughts: “It’s not worth it just for me,” or “It’ll be eas­ier just to pick up some Chi­nese take­out, which Avery doesn’t like any­way,” or “It’ll be cheaper to…” NO! You are worth it, all on your own! And there is noth­ing in the world wrong with spend­ing $15 on a din­ner you cook JUST FOR YOU.

Carmelized Shrimp and Scal­lops with Sauteed Pretty Veg­eta­bles
(serves ONE!)

4 large raw shrimp, tails on
4 large scal­lops
2 cloves gar­lic, minced
sprin­kle Pen­zeys “Fox Point Sea­son­ing“
2 tbsps olive oil (hot pep­per fla­vored if you like! I did)
juice of 1 lemon
sev­eral grinds fresh black pep­per
1 red pep­per
8 stalks aspara­gus
2 green onions, sliced on the bias
1 tsp but­ter
splash white wine
2 ears corn on the cob

Seri­ously: you can pre­pare this din­ner in about 20 min­utes, at least 10 of which is spent with you cradling a tiny kit­ten while swing­ing on a rope swing, let­ting the mari­nade do all the work.

So lay the shrimp and scal­lops in a sin­gle layer in a shal­low dish. Cut up red pep­per and break aspara­gus stalks in half. Lay them in another shal­low dish with green onions. Sprin­kle each dish with an equal amount of gar­lic, sea­son­ing, olive oil, lemon juice and black pep­per. Just leave it all! Play with that kit­ten. He needs you.

Shuck the corn and boil water in a pot for it.

Heat a non-stick skil­let really high. Throw in the veg­eta­bles and cook over high-ish heat till to the done­ness you like. Remove to their orig­i­nal dish. Heat the skil­let again, add the but­ter and care­fully slide the shrimp and scal­lops in, in a sin­gle layer. Cook high for 2 min­utes, then turn each shrimp and scal­lop and cook another minute or to (depend­ing on how large they are). By now, the seafood should be nicely cooked. Throw in the wine and swish the seafood around. This will cre­ate a dark caramelly sauce that is DELI­CIOUS. At the last minute, throw the corn in the boil­ing water. Put the veg­eta­bles back in the skil­let and toss with the seafood, then remove to a warm dish. Enjoy with the corn on the side!

*******************

I found that the scal­lops had to be eaten ALL ON THEIR OWN. Fol­lowed by a red pep­per or aspara­gus bite maybe, but… the del­i­cacy of the scal­lops deserves its own atten­tion! So much fun to peel the shrimp, mak­ing a mess, but­ter the corn, mak­ing a mess. By this time, let me tell you, your fork has been aban­doned and you’re eat­ing the aspara­gus and pep­pers with your fin­gers, too!

It was a lovely din­ner. I’m try­ing to enjoy my evening alone and NOT obsess over how much I want to be with my hus­band and child! Tomor­row evening. What fun that will be.

In the mean­time, I’d bet­ter go find that Hast­ings, asleep on Avery’s bed, miss­ing her no doubt. Two down, one to go! Want a lit­tle tabby kitten?

Ah, gas trou­bles and fence trou­bles and ter­mite trou­bles can move aside for… a sick Avery today. The poor dear woke up very early this morn­ing with what I can only hope is her typ­i­cal high, 24-hour fever, no other symp­toms to take much notice of, just the fever, and feel­ing logey and pathetic. Who cares about any­thing else that isn’t quite per­fect; all we need is for Avery to feel well and be at her best. The tram­po­line was silent for the first time since our arrival, like­wise the swing that didn’t swing, no request for a sprin­kler, no desire to take a kit­ten out­doors and make her jump… just a silent day watch­ing “Robin Hood: Series 2.”

I rushed out to get a chicken and some car­rots, and made chicken soup. In an ideal world I’d chill it overnight to skim the fat, but you know what? If you’re des­per­ate, it works like this:

Chicken Soup in a Hurry
(serves sev­eral help­ings to a hun­gry but ill lit­tle girl)

1 whole chicken (small­ish)
3 car­rots, sliced
3 stalks cel­ery, sliced
3 parsnips, sliced
1 onion, quar­tered
1 hand­ful dill
salt, pep­per, bay leaves
large hand­ful noodles

Place the chicken and every­thing else in a large stock­pot and cover with cold water. Boil low for 2 hours. Strain every­thing through a colan­der over a smaller stock­pot and pull off the good bits of chicken from the bones, and place them in the stock. Put stock back on stove and throw in noo­dles. Sim­mer for ten min­utes, and when you see the stock bub­ble around the out­side of the pot and leave a still pool in the cen­ter of the pot, scoop out every­thing in that cen­ter: that’s the fat.

By the end of ten min­utes the soup will be ready for an imme­di­ate serv­ing to the patient. But after she has her first bowl, add more cel­ery and car­rots and sim­mer until nicely cooked. The patient can have lit­tle serv­ings through­out the rest of the day and night.

*********************

As wor­ri­some as a fever is, I feel she’s prob­a­bly fine. Between help­ings of soup, and glasses of ice, and the occa­sional banana slice, she made it through the day with naps and a LONG bath at night. I had for­got­ten how much fun it was to read aloud “Nancy Drew,” espe­cially “The Sign of the Twisted Can­dles,” so that was good. Halfway through I swore I heard a “tap, tap, tap,” and fig­ured it was my imag­i­na­tion, liv­ing through the Twisted Can­dles. But it was Anne, tap­ping at the back door to give back my bowl from the curry left­overs. We sat down at the pic­nic table out­side on the ter­race and I described Avery’s symp­toms, and she agreed that it sounded like noth­ing much, but hap­pily offered up, “I know every doc­tor in town, so just let me know if you want a visit to some­body tomor­row.” I fig­ure if Avery’s feel­ing tip-top (ish) by the morn­ing, we can let it go. But just the same, I walked over to Anne’s house and got the bit of mango ice cream she thought might help the patient, and looked on at lit­tle Katie asleep in the swing. What incred­i­ble good for­tune to have a neigh­bor who crosses the road and lis­tens to a bit of a worry, and offers up ice cream. “If Avery’s able, could she feed and look after the cats on Wednes­day and Thurs­day? It’s the baby’s injections…”

How lucky I felt, cross­ing the dusty road, to come back to our sun-dappled ter­race, com­mu­nity of squir­rels and chip­munks, peace­ful bird­feed­ers, Avery in her bath through the shade in the bath­room. Blue, blue skies and scud­ding clouds. The peace of Red Gate Farm!

Home­made pizza for din­ner, and she ate! The very best pizza sauce EVER is left­over sauce from last night’s:

Riga­toni alla Vodka
(serves 4)

2 tbsps olive oil
4 cloves gar­lic, sliced
1/2 Vidalia onion, or other mild white onion, sliced
3 tbsps vodka
1 tbsp Ital­ian sea­son­ing
1 large can or 2 soup cans whole toma­toes, squeezed in hand into saucepan
1/2 cup light cream
2 tbsps grated pecorino cheese

Heat olive oil and saute gar­lic and onion until soft. Pour on vodka and let bub­ble high. Add sea­son­ing and toma­toes and cook down, stir­ring fre­quently and break­ing up toma­toes, until well cooked, at least 45 min­utes. At the end, puree with hand­held blender and add cream and cheese, stir­ring well.

Use first for pasta sauce and then for pizza the next night!

****************

So in the mid­dle of every­thing else we’ve had sev­eral more vis­its from the stove guy and the gas tank guy, each of whom holds the other in the extremis of dis­re­gard. “He uses that bub­bling stuff to find a leak? That’s ancient his­tory. We’ve got this dig­i­tal reader…” just like lit­tle boys with the bet­ter BB gun or com­puter game! “They won’t be pre­pared for this even­tu­al­ity,” one says, and the other adds the next day, “This sort of turn of events will not be famil­iar to THAT sort of technician…”

For heaven’s sake!

Finally the stove worked. And at lunchtime, on Anna’s last day: two dif­fer­ent Gary and Ground­hogs to eat melon and enter­tain us! After lunch the per­fect trip to the pro­duce stand for corn, basil, plums! “I love the smell of basil,” Anna offers shyly, “and a lit­tle bit on my pasta if the pieces aren’t too big.” Then we were off to the pool for a per­fect after­noon of blue skies, shout­ing voices, happy laps. The group of ladies who is always at the pool were quite close to our tow­els, and one called, “You have a new library book today?” but I wasn’t sure she was talk­ing to me, and soon she called out the same again. “A new book?” so I chat­ted with them a bit. I’m try­ing to ana­lyze why their ques­tions put me off. They were anx­ious, hav­ing met John last year at the pool, to ques­tion me about our lives in Eng­land, Avery’s school­ing, why we want to live there. Nor­mally I quite like talk­ing about Lon­don and what­not. But there was some­thing that made me not want to dis­cuss it all. I felt very pro­tec­tive of our lives there, and not inclined to describe everything!

I think it was because the under­tone was so mys­ti­fied and almost hos­tile. “I’ve never felt like leav­ing the good old US of A”, and “Where did you live before you moved there?” and upon hear­ing New York said, “Well, I sup­pose it’s not so dif­fer­ent, them, but liv­ing in South­bury we’re com­fort­able.” And when I said I was orig­i­nally from Indi­ana, the one lady said, “I thought you had a sort of an accent.” I felt like a crea­ture in a zoo!

We do live in two very dif­fer­ent worlds, and I have to say I love them both. I love the crowded, super-competitive, fancy-ingredient, famous-people-sighting, busy life in Lon­don. I miss the voices, and the cul­ture and different-ness. But when we’re here I love the ease of get­ting around, the famil­iar­ity, the friend­li­ness and quiet, the pace that’s so much more relax­ing. And of course if we went back to New York City itself we’d be in yet another cul­ture I love, and miss, but try not to think about too much. As I told the ladies at the pool, far from being glad to leave either place for the other, I feel really lucky that we have BOTH.

So along came the end of Anna’s stay, and we took her back to Green­wich, through a most unpleas­ant rain­storm along the unfa­mil­iar Mer­ritt park­way: I was quite amazed that I was able to get us there, and back! Sad to leave Anna with her fam­ily. The night before we had vis­ited Anne, David and Baby Katie, leav­ing a lus­cious tomato and moz­zarella salad with basil rib­bons and olive oil, and chat­ting about Avery and Anna’s friend­ship. “We didn’t like each other AT ALL!” the girls chor­tled, rem­i­nisc­ing about those early days before they were joined at the hips. “Our moth­ers MADE us be friends!” Anne, feed­ing Katie and lis­ten­ing raptly as only she can, said, “That’s quite like the first friend I made at kinder­garten. I was put with her to play with blocks, and I remem­ber she had the most frag­ile WRISTS, and I was so afraid I would hurt her, and was so care­ful… we were friends for­ever after that…” That is what I love about Anne. Even wholly occu­pied with her new baby, she can host two lit­tle girls in her liv­ing room, lis­ten to their tales, and reach back into a story from her heart about her own child­hood. She is com­pletely real, com­pletely sin­cere. David ended up “air­plan­ing” Katie, mar­vel­ling at her growth since we arrived three weeks ago… what would we do with­out them, across the road?

Avery chuck­led one after­noon and said to me, in such a grownup voice, “I for­got an excel­lent Con­necti­cut mer­chant story, Mommy. You’ll love this. I went into the bak­ery, as you said, and asked for a dozen dough­nut holes. A really nice lady said, ‘Oh, honey, I’m sorry, this is all I have,’ and handed me a lit­tle bag. And in it were… a dozen dough­nut holes!” You have to live here to laugh.

Yes­ter­day we headed up to Jill, Joel and Jane’s house to cel­e­brate, as it turned out, Jane’s three-half birth­day, with an excel­lent brunch near their house, in the lovely flower gar­den park across the road. Such a gor­geous day… feel­ing lucky for everything.

Well, dark­ness has fallen and I am wish­ing for just one thing: a peace­ful night for Avery, an abate­ment of her fever, a restora­tive sleep. There’s noth­ing like a sick child to make a per­son stop com­plain­ing about other things…