par­ty, par­ty, party!

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.

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

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…