More tomor­row, per­haps, but just to say how ODD it is to have spent today on one side of the Atlantic, beach­comb­ing in mag­i­cal Rock, Corn­wall, with one of my clos­est friends, and to have spend LAST Fri­day in the exact same way, on quite the OTHER side of the Atlantic with ANOTHER of my clos­est friends. What kind of life is that? A very lucky one, for starters. A cou­ple of pho­tographs to set the scene, then I must to sleep, as only two days ago I had just returned from Amer­ica and I am still feel­ing over­whelmed… can’t seem to remem­ber what beloved peo­ple are where, what bed I’m meant to wake up in (and I don’t intend that in the very excit­ing way it sounds!). I keep find­ing myself strug­gling to remem­ber who I left where, what con­ver­sa­tion I had with whom, and we didn’t even do any drugs! It’s just life that’s leav­ing me shat­tered. But in a good way, and I’ll be back in the sad­dle, no doubt, by tomor­row after­noon, espe­cially since Avery just called, in a most grownup way, to ask how our drive was! Leav­ing her in Corn­wall… a wrench. But she’s with Annie, so all is right with the world. My world at least. Have a lovely Bank Hol­i­day week­end, everyone.

One glo­ri­ous after­noon in New Jer­sey, one evening at Heathrow, one night flight, one luggage-heavy taxi-ride later, and we’re back home, safe in London.

Dare I say it, we’re also unpacked, set­tled in, Avery’s ENTIRE closet emp­tied because pre­cisely NOTH­ING fits her after this Year of Intense Growth Out­ward and Upward. I sent her upstairs with her suit­case to “unpack,” only imme­di­ately to hear a pathetic wail, “But my closet is already full, and NOTH­ING fits me!” So upstairs for the sad task of tak­ing away many beloved gar­ments: the plaid Burberry wrap-around skirt her besot­ted father bought for her at Sel­f­ridges sev­eral Christ­mases ago, the gor­geous Rachel Riley white Capri pants that served for just a few sea­sons, the t-shirt I adored that said, “YOU WISH…” on the front and “You could ride like a girl” on the back, with a dar­ling pony illus­tra­tion. Child­hood in cot­ton knit.

Yes­ter­day saw us with our irre­place­able friends in New Jer­sey, mim­ic­k­ing for an after­noon the per­fect Fourth of July nearly two months ago, now. Livia and I set the table out on the screened porch (my dream is to have such a lux­ury, the out­doors with­out bugs), and we tucked into gaz­pa­cho, and sand­wiches of ham, turkey, pumper­nickel bread, let­tuce and home­made Russ­ian dress­ing. Most impor­tant, we finally got the per­fect pho­to­graph of Avery with Jan­ice. This photo makes me cry every time I see it. Avery’s life­time, our entire mar­ried life, spent in friend­ship with this won­der­ful woman! Every­thing, prac­ti­cally, that I know about hostess­ing, about being hos­pitable, wel­com­ing, has come to me from this lady.

How she and Avery adore each other, being extra grand­mother and extra grand­child to one another. “Dar­ling girl, tell me about the horses you have been rid­ing this sum­mer, and how is school?” In her turn, Livia (no fan of small chil­dren, nor am I in gen­eral) casu­ally brings out a stack of books. “Take a look at this one, where Sher­lock Holmes is only ONE of the impor­tant char­ac­ters, and another is a 15-year-old girl,” and Avery was smit­ten at once. Avery is chary with her affec­tions, giv­ing her love to a small num­ber of peo­ple she has learned to trust. And even though so much of their rela­tion­ship has been spent apart, there is a deep well of love among these three ladies, sep­a­rated by per­haps 75 years in age (one does not ask!) that makes me very, very happy.

Livia went AWOL for the after­noon from her job, and we sim­ply sat around and TALKED. The fan in the white kitchen whirred, the leaflets and brochures from their recent cruise came out, in a bla­tant attempt to sell us on accom­pa­ny­ing them next year. We ate cook­ies, drank cof­fee, talked about our sum­mer, the dif­fer­ences between the Eng­lish and Amer­i­can char­ac­ters. A quick glimpse of the feral cat and her three kit­tens that Livia and Jan­ice have been feed­ing on their back porch… Avery crouch­ing, putting out her hand, sure she can “whis­per” them into socia­bil­ity. Given more than a few hours, I’m sure she could. Then all too soon it was time to leave. Hugs all round, exhor­ta­tions to stay in touch, to make plans at Christ­mas­time. “Dar­ling Other Mother,” I say, hug­ging her as closely as I can, believ­ing firmly that one should have as many moth­ers as one can. “And my own Other Daugh­ter,” she laughs, “How we will miss you.” A love com­posed mostly of say­ing good­bye, these days. But bet­ter than nothing…

And so, after a cozy, dark, night­time flight, we are back! Grey skies, sprin­kling rain, yes, it’s home. All the cats milling around look­ing MUCH larger than when we left them in July (a com­bi­na­tion of the con­trast with the tiny sum­mer kit­tens and also the lack of exer­cise I’m sure they’ve expe­ri­enced, with no fam­ily to chase up and down the stairs of the house!). We unpacked quickly to get it over, I hate unpack­ing. Rev­elled in the Quixotic but use­ful machi­na­tions of our clean­ing lady, who likes to orga­nize kitchen pantry items by size, not cat­e­gory, so porcini mush­rooms rub shoul­ders with black beans and Nasi Goreng paste, because they’re all… the same height tins and jars. Same with our clothes: all the black things I own (and they are many) are stacked together: shirts, sweaters, leg­gings, trousers. Because… they’re black. No mat­ter, I’m thrilled to see every­thing in such per­fect order.

After unpack­ing and eat­ing a desul­tory lunch of lentils and tuna (my cup­board and fridge are BARE!), I suc­cumbed to a nap, Avery to a marathon bath, and John to who knows what finan­cial machi­na­tions keep him happy and awake. Then to the super­mar­ket in the spitty Lon­don rain for pro­vi­sions: moz­zarella, chorizo, mush­rooms, pep­pers, red onions, sausages, and ROCKET! Proper ROCKET, with that beloved snappy bite I have missed all sum­mer. Rocket! I made pizza dough, pizza sauce, sliced and chopped, mar­i­nated and roasted chicken wings with a yogurt and pars­ley dip­ping sauce. We all assem­bled our piz­zas, they baked, we ate, and then… started to fall apart. Every­one to bed early, dis­be­liev­ing, as always, that we have left one com­plete life behind to start up another. It will take all of a week or so for it to feel normal.

This adjust­ment will be com­pounded by the fact that tomor­row, we drive Avery to Corn­wall to spend a week with her beloved and much-missed Emily and fam­ily! John and I will spend one night and then head back to Lon­don to do… I know not what, on our own for a few days. Then every­one will come back for the start of school. And nor­mal life… resumes. Just for now, for this evening sur­rounded by grate­ful, purring cats, the dish­washer hum­ming in the back­ground, every­one but we sound asleep: we’re home. Leav­ing behind another home coun­try dimin­ished by the sad death of Edward Kennedy, a true Demo­c­rat. We’ll try to help Avery under­stand that legacy, as com­plex as it was. It’s intrigu­ing how Eng­land is mourn­ing his loss, con­sid­er­ing the mixed-up rela­tion­ship the Eng­lish had with his Irish loy­al­ties. How lucky we are to live with both these cul­tures, and how dif­fi­cult it is to try to under­stand both. We’ll give it our all, as usual, and let you know.

Well, we’re in that unpleas­ant, cranky stage of leav­ing that entails mass­ing huge num­bers of books on the stair­way (“Can some­body carry those upstairs when you go next? AND the pair of shoes next to them, please”), rip­ping labels from pre­vi­ous jour­neys off the suit­cases, mon­i­tor­ing what’s in the dryer, mak­ing beds with fresh sheets to greet us at Christ­mas, try­ing to decide between air con­di­tion­ing while we pack and the dish­washer. Every­one is annoyed. “But I DID tidy my room, only now it’s messy again from hav­ing shifted books and clothes to pack or not pack…” “Are we REALLY out of paper tow­els??” “I know I told you where the car key was!” and “Can you pos­si­bly eat this hard-boiled egg before we leave, or do I have to throw it away?” Throw­ing away food at this point of pre-departure makes me crazy. As a result, our din­ner was bizarre: crab salad with cel­ery, tomato and moz­zarella and an avo­cado, plus corn on the cob and some stale Triscuits…

Part­way through this dubi­ous feast, Judy and Rol­lie appeared to say good­bye, give Avery a CARE pack­age for the flight (some lovely puz­zles and choco­lates, thank you!), and sat with us, watch­ing us eat our weird din­ner, hav­ing had their much more nor­mal repast ear­lier (“we were sure you’d have fin­ished!”). We gos­siped, told sto­ries by can­dle­light, watched Avery not eat (her appetite still not returned after her fever over the week­end). Judy and I decided for SURE where the Christ­mas tree would go (def­i­nitely for sure) now that we’ve changed around the rooms… They took their leave, sig­nal­ing the true end to sum­mer, as much a blow as that from Anne, David and Alice’s depar­ture with Katie yes­ter­day afternoon.

This neigh­bor four­some turned up while I was sit­ting with Avery at her chicken soup lunch yes­ter­day, and said their good­byes, so sad. “Katie will have changed so much by Christ­mas,” I mourned, hug­ging her for real, instead of just hold­ing her as I usu­ally do… Alice lis­tened to the ter­ri­ble “E above mid­dle C” on our incor­ri­gi­ble piano, Anne gave Avery one more hug, and they were gone… I ran across one more time to give Dave “Bread and Jam for Frances,” for Kate, and then Anne ran across one more time to return a dish to me and give a final hug, tak­ing our left­over cof­fee with her! That’s our friend­ship in a nut­shell: shared chil­dren, cof­fee, dishes. We looked across at lit­tle Kate, bal­anc­ing her­self against the screen door across the road, shout­ing, “Bye, bye, bye…” “This is so sad,” Anne moaned. The phrase of the last cou­ple of days, every sum­mer it is repeated.

How funny it is, that invis­i­ble line between one day and “the last day.” Two days ago we were hap­pily host­ing our across-the-road-crowd for a gor­geous salmon din­ner, upon our return from Fire Island. We raced in from the Island, unpacked gro­ceries, checked with every­one to see if they were cool with com­ing when Avery had a fever (she would be clois­tered upstairs, but still, with a baby it’s worth ask­ing), and YES. So home I went to sprin­kle an enor­mous side of salmon with olive oil and the irre­place­able Fox Point Sea­son­ing from Penzey’s, quite the best way to cook most things besides brown­ies, in my hum­ble opin­ion. Only at the last minute, John at the grill dis­cov­ered that our sup­ply of propane had run out, pre­cisely one day too early. DRAT.

Except that we made a dis­cov­ery (as so many culi­nary adven­tures turn out). Fox Point with salmon is per­fect in the oven. Here you go.

Baked Salmon with Fox Point Sea­son­ing
(serves six)

1 large side of salmon (about 3 pounds)
2 tbsps olive oil
2 tbsps Fox Point Seasoning

With your clean hands, smear the salmon, skin side down, flesh side up, with olive oil, then sprin­kle with Fox Point. Leave to reach room tem­per­a­ture before you slide the salmon onto a cookie sheet lined with alu­minum foil (super easy cleanup). Bake at 425F (210C) for 25 min­utes. SUBLIME.

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

We served this with cucum­ber salad with sour cream, dill and lime juice, and Alyssa’s cheese-dripping corn on the cob, and sauteed aspara­gus. A FEAST. One final evening with them, start­ing out with din­ner on the ter­race with can­dles, then as the bugs found us, we repaired inside for Ciao Bella Key Lime Gra­ham Cracker gelato, a present from Anne and David, a superb follow-on from salmon. So good, so sim­ple. We sim­ply shouted with laugh­ter over var­i­ous sto­ries from the sum­mer, includ­ing John’s expla­na­tion of why we can no longer close the sun roof on our 10-year-old Pas­sat, now at 97,000 miles. “Mice made homes in the mech­a­nism, which means they stole insu­la­tion from every­where they could find it,” he said, “plus tak­ing all the work­ings out of the radio and the antenna.” “Which means,” Dave said, “that all the radio will play is ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks.’”

The fol­low­ing day found us begin­ning to acknowl­edge that the end of sum­mer had come. John was sift­ing through piles of papers, insur­ance, bills, con­tracts, finan­cial thises and thats. I was sift­ing through kitchen sup­plies: to save or not to save the half-used wild rice, where to store the sugar and flour… Avery was drift­ing around feel­ing almost-not-ill. And we were all get­ting ready for the last evening with Jill, Joel, Jane and Molly. The adults in the group had asked for “those ribs in tomato sauce that you did last year,” so I quickly emailed my friend Olimpia to ask for her recipe. Which I messed with a bit, because I was also in the mood for meat­balls. Gorgeous.

Olimpia’s Spare Ribs and Meat­balls in Tomato Sauce
(serves 10 easily)

2 tbsps olive oil
24 pork spare ribs
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 small white onion, minced
1 cup red wine
1 large can tomato sauce
1 large can peeled plum tomatoes

for meat­balls:
1 1/2 lbs ground pork
3 eggs
2/3 cups bread­crumbs
1 tbsp Ital­ian seasoning

So here’s what I did. Fol­low­ing Olimpia’s instruc­tions, I heated the olive oil in a heavy, very large pot and browned the ribs all over, on all sides. Then I added the gar­lic, onion and red wine and sim­mered, uncov­ered, for 5 min­utes. Then I added all the tomato bits and cov­ered the pot and sim­mered, NO MORE than a sim­mer, for 3 hours.

Then I mixed all the meat­ball ingre­di­ents as you would a dough (take off your rings) until it was nice and mixed, clean and con­sis­tent through­out. Form into medium balls (I think my mix­ture made about 15), and drop one by one into the tomato sauce, filled with ribs. Don’t try to stir yet. Cover the pot and sim­mer for half an hour, at which point the meat­balls will be cooked enough for you to stir the pot. Stir it up gen­tly, mix­ing up the ribs and the meat­balls. The whole thing can sit nicely, cov­ered, indef­i­nitely until dinner.

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

This with some gar­lic bread was din­ner. The Three Js and One M arrived in a gath­er­ing sort of threat­en­ing sky. It didn’t take long for Joel to sug­gest gen­tly, as I set the table out­side, “Don’t you think that was thun­der, Kris­ten?” “DEF­I­NITELY NOT,” I rejoined, in no uncer­tain terms. I con­tin­ued to put out tealights, grated cheese, you name it. Avery was roused from her bed of con­tin­u­ing sort of mini-illness to run a course of jumps with her dar­ling cousin Jane, while Molly sat on my lap and ges­tured toward what­ever she could see. John and Jill repaired to dis­cuss things of finan­cial moment while Joel fed Molly and the sky, I am sorry to say, dark­ened alarm­ingly. “Are you sure you want to eat out­side? I’d really love to see what your din­ing room is like now, we’ve never used it before.” He’s too kind not to phrase it in the form of a ques­tion. “It is NOT going to rain,” I main­tained, while mak­ing salad dressing.

“It’s seri­ously going to rain,” Joel finally said, and I looked up at the sky. Avery and Jane were still jump­ing, under light that was, I had to admit, green. OK, OK, OK. Just in case, I’ll bring in the plates and nap­kins. The skies opened. It sim­ply POURED. “Aren’t you glad we’re inside?”

It WAS cozy. I admit it.

The last evening with our fam­ily. Jane sat on my lap, then leapt down to sit with Avery. We all ate more ribs and meat­balls than we could ever have pre­dicted. Molly learned to crawl, with John as her enthu­si­as­tic coach, but the clean­li­ness of my par­lor floor was not all that could have been wished for. I con­cur with my friend Shelley’s expla­na­tion for the unbe­liev­able level of dust in my house: it comes UP from the floor, not just DOWN from the feet that come in!

Jane repaired to a bath, in the serene atmos­phere of the guest bath­room, while we cleared up din­ner and Avery slumped some­where, try­ing to be nor­mal when she really still felt like a piece of Romaine let­tuce that’s been left out too long in the air. Jill cheer­fully dealt with Jane as she splashed, Joel laughed with Molly in the kitchen. We all felt that we did not want to say good­bye, since it was for four whole months. Jane hugged me tightly, say­ing, “You smell like Red Gate Farm,” which I chose to inter­pret as some­thing like can­dle­light, good food and Her­mes. John said pro­saically, “Prob­a­bly moth­balls and dust.” Prob­a­bly, but I can still dream. Off they went. Until Christ­mas. How we will miss them all, and how Molly will have changed in four months when we see her again.

This sum­mer has been so much about get­ting to know Avery every day as she changes so quickly, shop­ping, chat­ting, exchang­ing book ideas, thoughts on fam­ily and friends, menu ideas. She left Lon­don as still a lit­tle girl, but will be return­ing as a young lady. I have trea­sured so much these weeks of time together! Not the least shar­ing her won­der­fully inven­tive project of fos­ter­ing those kit­tens. News­flash: Lit­tle Dor­rit and Nemo were adopted suc­cess­fully! By the fam­ily who took them “just to babysit” on Thurs­day evening. The phone mes­sage said joy­fully, “This is Katie. We’ve fallen in love with both kit­tens and will keep them both. Thank you so much!” What a huge tri­umph for Avery, to take kit­tens who could hardly be touched a month ago, and turn them into kit­tens that a fam­ily could not resist for 24 hours! Bless her lit­tle kitten-whispering heart.

Today was all about doing “every­thing for the last time till next sum­mer,” an annual rit­ual we’ve all got used to. The last trip to the library, our last ten­nis game (my strange foot thingy resolved itself a bit in time to play), the last “Days of Our Lives” lunch, the last after­noon spent fold­ing laun­dry while watch­ing “Gen­eral Hos­pi­tal,” then a phone call from Becky to catch up, to say good­bye one last time. And I ran to Judy and Rollie’s to drop off the left­over bar­be­cued pork from last night which I was pretty sure would find favor with hun­gry young farm­ers as opposed to the rub­bish heap. As I recounted to Judy how we were try­ing to use up refrig­er­a­tor bits and bobs, she said quickly, “Well, I have some bar­be­cued pork from a friend who just dropped it off, if you need it…” That’s Judy. I almost fell for it. “Well, I hap­pen to know she CAN’T COOK, so don’t eat it,” I advised.

And the last trip to the pool for Avery and me while John ran count­less last errands which required mnemonic devices for him to remem­ber: “Cable, post office, corn, propane…”

We swam to and fro, me in a new cute tank­ini donated by Alyssa! How cool to have a new swim­suit on the last day of sum­mer, and pur­ple and black, no less. Thanks, friend. The sky was blue, the pines were green, the radio blared, the chlo­rine was killing. Avery and I glo­ried in the reper­toire that spells “All that it should be, all that is summer.”

Tomor­row at this time we’ll be in mid­flight to Lon­don, and all the unname­able and unsa­vory details that are Get­ting Back Home, like unpack­ing (awful!), Going Through Mail (never pleas­ant!), See­ing What Went Wrong (like dead plants, or worst case sce­nario, cats who did some­thing bad some­where). The flip side will be our happy reunion with our kit­ties, our neigh­bor­hood, our trip to Corn­wall. More from the other side of The Pond, very soon. Good­bye, summer.

I know, I know, it’s an awful lot of pho­tos, but it was SO BEAU­TI­FUL in so many dif­fer­ent ways that only this mot­ley assort­ment can rep­re­sent to me our 24 hours on New York’s most beau­ti­ful island. And no, I’m not prej­u­diced, I’m merely speak­ing from my vast expe­ri­ence of… OK, just this one New York island, but trust me, it’s nir­vana. Or maybe that’s only if you visit Alyssa there.

Of course I must digress and con­fess that the day since our depar­ture has been, well, all too event­ful. Poor Avery came home from our morn­ing excur­sion on the beach say­ing, “I’m just not feel­ing my best,” and I could hear its echo from sum­mers past. Not one sum­mer passes with­out her Twenty-Four Hours of Doom, char­ac­ter­ized by a rea­son­less, low or high, sum­mer fever. Thank good­ness the Fates chose our depar­ture day rather than our arrival day for her short-lived malaise. So she has spent the day hud­dled up in the car or on her bed, suf­fer­ing bravely. But I’m get­ting ahead of myself.

We hopped on the ferry at Bay Shore on a hot, hazy Fri­day. After buy­ing our tick­ets, we suc­cumbed to fried moz­zarella and Cajun fries at Nicky’s Clam Bar, and so should you! The fry guy behind the counter said, “I’ll trade you all that stuff for that cake you got there in your bag,” ges­tur­ing to my lemon bars, a present for Alyssa and fam­ily. “I can’t do that, but I’ll pay you,” I said, and then when he gave us our food, I cut off a brownie-sized piece of lemon bar and gave it to him. “You didn’t need to do that! I was just jok­ing!” he blus­tered in embar­rass­ment, so I waved and went on to eat our fried treats. After them, how­ever, I craved a piece of pep­per­mint gum, so back I went to Nicky’s, and bought my gum. “You’re the lady… that was the BEST THING I ever ate!” he exploded. “I’ll buy you that gum! You sure didn’t need to do that! You have the best weekend!”

On the ferry we were sur­rounded by peo­ple much younger, much more tanned, much more care­free than we, but no one else had Avery, and no one else was going to stay with Alyssa, so too bad for them! No sun­block, of course, which turned out to be the watch­word of the day and John and I emerged that evening quite hot-faced. Avery, for some rea­son, is never sun­burned. Ever. Every­one, includ­ing the Mad Dog Leila, met us at the ferry, and we schlepped our scant belong­ings home, remem­ber­ing the small, dear, grassy side­walks, no cars! Bicy­cles every­where, rid­den by the most eclec­tic group of peo­ple you can imag­ine: fake William F. Buck­ley, Jrs., fake Henry Louise Gates, Jrs., real hip­pies, gay cou­ples of both sexes walk­ing every sort of dog under the sun, chil­dren run­ning each other off the path, old peo­ple car­ry­ing small string bags of pro­vi­sions from the mar­ket. To their house, white walls, win­dows every­where, easy fur­ni­ture, an open kitchen, and a Jacuzzi!

I had brought mac­a­roni and cheese and sausages for lunch, so we imme­di­ately tucked in. Annabelle, Avery’s friend since they were 2 1/2, seemed momen­tar­ily shy with us, but I soon real­ized it was the very same brand of teenage (almost) reserve and wait-and-see that Avery and her Lon­don friends show. They share a quiet enjoy­ment in each other’s com­pany, a rela­tion­ship they both describe as “sort of cousins.” Cousins in the non-volitional mode of friend­ship: their moth­ers are best friends/would-be sis­ters, so they are cousins! Plus, hap­pily, they gen­uinely like each other, in the ran­dom, gen­eral way peo­ple do when thrown together for fun, twice a year. Gone is the Elliot ver­sion of friend­ship, which with John man­i­fests itself in being upside down most of the time, alter­nately crack­ing up and threat­en­ing to cry! We all remem­bered the duel of all duels, which involved Elliot being wrapped by John in duct tape and… ended in the t-shirt Elliot was wear­ing hav­ing to be CUT OFF with scis­sors. Men­tal note: never duct tape a child, even dressed.

We trooped down to the beach and installed our­selves with every con­ve­nience: all the beach chairs Steve had valiantly car­ried against the mas­sive winds (“no umbrel­las TODAY!” Elliot announced with little-boy rel­ish at crazy weather), shov­els to dig with, Leila and her leash, snacks and water and tow­els. John imme­di­ately dis­re­garded the notices against swim­ming and took both girls with him. I pan­icked and wet-blanketed until finally John said defin­i­tively, “Don’t be a killjoy,” which put the fear of God in me: I never want to be a killjoy! So I went swim­ming too. The intensely salty water, putting what you get in an oys­ter shell to shame! The sheer fear of being over­whelmed by a wave, remem­ber­ing to duck if you just wanted to wait it our rather than RIDE it out! The float­ing, mag­i­cal feel­ing of buoy­ancy and wild­ness. I take so few risks in my life these days that the feel­ing I might be swept away in clear view of my hus­band and child was quite exhilarating!

A long walk the length of the beach, watch­ing a kiteglider per­form amaz­ing feats. So I decided to per­form my own amaz­ing feats, join­ing the girls in cart­wheels. I should have stopped there, but no, Annabelle and Avery, with ves­ti­gial mem­o­ries of their child­hood with me in the park in New York, chanted, “Front walkover, front walkover!” Well, the first one landed me on my bum, the sec­ond one scarcely bet­ter and the third: injured some use­ful ten­don in the bot­tom of my foot! Limp­ing still, how embarrassing.

We all took turns in the addic­tive out­door shower! The next fea­ture of Red Gate Farm, John promises. Where to put it, next sum­mer? There is some­thing about show­er­ing under the real live sky that is quite poetic and won­der­ful, ris­ing far above mere sham­poo and con­di­tioner. Gor­geous. Then to town, Alyssa, John and me on foot, the girls and Elliot tak­ing an inde­pen­dent route on their bikes. “I’m not sure I remem­ber how to do this!” Avery qua­vered, waver­ing slightly on her bor­rowed bike. “Sure you can,” John said non­cha­lantly, “it’s like… rid­ing a bike.”

Slight delay (in which I had them all kid­napped, Alyssa say­ing briskly to me, “There are no kid­nap­pers on Fire Island,”) dur­ing which it tran­spired Elliot had fallen off his bike. Annabelle came run­ning up to us, pant­ing out the story. “He fell in front of the mar­ket, and a nice lady came out and asked if she could help, and we intro­duced our­selves, and she asked Avery if she was stay­ing here, and Avery said no, just a night before she went back to Lon­don, and then the lady said, ‘Is your mother Kris­ten? Tell her I said hi, from the PS 234 Book Fair.’”

Doesn’t that take the cake? Of course she is an old friend who worked with me on the Book Fair and then took over the chair­ship when we moved. Just proves my long-held belief in not mis­be­hav­ing because if you do, the lady at the mar­ket giv­ing a band-aid to your friend’s son will see you doing it. Or close enough.

Cri­sis averted, we cruised the town of Seav­iew, buy­ing plenty of candy, scop­ing out all the sweat­shirts we’d buy if needed another sweat­shirt even SLIGHTLY more than we need a hole in the head. Gaz­ing at all the bars, the “LIVE MUSIC TO-NITE” signs, the testosterone-poisoned young men and smok­ing young ladies, toss­ing their hair… “Did you ever have a bar sum­mer?” I asked Alyssa, and we real­ized that we as adults missed that par­tic­u­lar joy, hav­ing been mated up with our to-be hus­bands very, very young. And never looked back. Well, almost never.

Home in a leisurely fash­ion, try­ing to read the clouds as they scud­ded over the dunes, the town, the ocean. Would it rain? Would Hur­ri­cane Bill show his face? The girls jumped into the hot tub, albeit only warm, and Elliot raced around with the hose, threat­en­ing them. The dog barked wildly, we poured cock­tails and ate my new favorite treat, Had­don House Tomo­lives, although where I’ll ever find them again, I don’t know: they’re pick­led tiny toma­toes! We feasted on bar­be­cued salami, cut in nice thick slices, hot and spicy, and then chicken and flank steak faji­tas with grilled pep­pers and onions: HEAVEN! A brief attempt to eat out­side, and then when we real­ized our chil­dren were don­ning sweaters in the blaz­ing heat to avoid the mos­qui­toes! we moved inside.

The culi­nary rev­e­la­tion of the weekend?

Alyssa’s Parme­san Corn
(2 ears per per­son, this recipe serves 4 easily)

8 ears sweet­corn, bro­ken in half
1/2 cup parme­san, grated
1/2 cup (1 stick) but­ter, melted
pinch sea salt

Drop the corn in boil­ing water and cook for 4 min­utes, then drain and toss with the cheese, but­ter and salt. Per­fec­tion, glut­tony and indulgence.

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

What does it take to be a truly tal­ented host­ess? I can describe Alyssa. She makes it seem as if her great­est joy would be some­thing she could do for you, and it would be effort­less. Tow­els, food, cold drinks, books you didn’t even know you wanted to read, all appear in your hands, while she dis­penses her typ­i­cal New Yorker wis­dom on all cur­rent events, food fads, upcom­ing weather, find­ing time to tell you what already knew: namely how remark­able, nay UNIQUE your child is, out­strip­ping even her wildest expec­ta­tions as to how remark­able your child would turn out. When she went off to the mar­ket on an emer­gency bike ride for a tomato, she called to Avery, “Want to come?” and my heart sim­ply melted with joy at hear­ing their non-stop chat­ter as they rode away. Not every­one can treat a child with such unself­con­scious warmth. It’s all done with com­plete relax­ation and love and ease. A true tal­ent. It’s why I love her.

We stayed up to look at pic­tures of mutual friends grown far too tall, on Alyssa’s com­puter, the girls and Elliot crow­ing in dis­be­lief. “THAT’S DUN­CAN??” They all tucked into Alyssa’s peanut but­ter brown­ies and ice cream and I acknowl­edged how sun­burned I had got, and John suc­cumbed to sleep. Would you believe that our stay put Alyssa on the couch for the night and she didn’t MIND? That’s friend­ship. The girls shared a room, cozy like old-days sleep­overs. To think that when she was three years old, Avery was hap­pily spend­ing half her week­end nights in Annabelle’s bed­room, while Annabelle was just as com­fort­able in Avery’s house. Just dear, dear memories.

In the morn­ing, I was the last up but Annabelle, and John reported his early-morning hanging-out with Alyssa. Luck­ily I am a very secure per­son or else I’d be mas­sively jeal­ous at his paeans of praise… but come to think of it, it’s only a mat­ter of who praises her the most, him or me! How lovely to be with her. Out to the beach which we could in fact HEAR far before we could SEE it. The waves much, much higher than Fri­day, pro­hib­i­tively so in fact, I can­not imag­ine swim­ming. But I got some won­der­ful sandy pho­tographs, although my mem­ory of this par­tic­u­larly glam­orous shot of Avery is a bit spoiled by her telling me now, “I was start­ing to feel odd then…” The storm was com­ing in from the west, oddly, since we were expect­ing the hur­ri­cane from the East.

A real New York bagel brunch com­plete with smoked salmon, scal­lion cream cheese, toma­toes, red onions, a melon, you name it. Cucum­ber vine­gar salad, all the New York favorites. Then the haul back to the ferry… and reluc­tant good­byes all around. Elliot bravely said good­bye to all his fam­ily and pre­pared to board the ferry with us: caught just in time! How I hate the watch­word of this and all sum­mers: “Good­bye!” I won­dered idly what it would be like to have a life where every­one I loved was in one place, where no one ever moved away, where I never in fact moved away… how impos­si­ble it is to imag­ine, when so much of our emo­tional energy is spent greet­ing, appre­ci­at­ing, say­ing good­bye, reac­cli­mat­ing, adjust­ing, antic­i­pat­ing. I bet if I didn’t do all that, I could really accom­plish some­thing. But it’s my life.

To Bay Shore and the Ital­ian Pork Store! I’m not kid­ding, it’s Frank and Maria’s pride and joy, and I acquired the most lovely pork ribs and pork mince there, in advance of our din­ner with Jill and Joel (more good­byes). If you’re in Bay Shore, go there. Mostly, it’s the name that made me happy. Tell it like it is!

Home in a tor­ren­tial rain­storm, via the mag­i­cal Throg’s Neck Bridge with its far-away views of our much-missed Man­hat­tan, with Avery doz­ing uncom­fort­ably most of the way, a slight fever mak­ing her mis­er­able. We were SO happy to pull up in the dri­ve­way at Red Gate Farm, and… get ready for the next din­ner crowd! But that’s another story. Thank you, Alyssa and fam­ily, for a sub­lime, unfor­get­table 24 hours. We’ll miss you, as always.

Well, it’s a first in my expe­ri­ence of our lit­tle unevent­ful Con­necti­cut road (dirt in most places, the way we like it, to keep traf­fic down). I was out wash­ing the car, some­thing I have a strange love for, a throw­back to fun with my dad, no doubt, when Avery decided it was time to go across the road to feed Anne and David’s cats, her wel­come job when they are away for a few days. As I was scrub­bing away the filth of not only an entire sum­mer but an entire win­ter AND spring in the barn under count­less birds’ nests, across the road she came again, say­ing, “They appear to have an alarm and I’m not sure what to do with it.” John jumped down from the ter­race and said he’d run across to help her. It was but the work of a moment for him to reap­pear, ask­ing me, “Do you have Anne’s num­ber in the city? I’ve set off the alarm…”

Min­utes later, after leav­ing a mes­sage for Anne who unac­count­ably was away from her phone in the way peo­ple you hope to find often are, the fuzz arrived. Yes, two of how many can South­bury pos­si­bly have? appeared in our road, pass­ing up both houses at first as a result of their happy lack of acquain­tance with us. I paused with a cold soapy car mitt in hand, with the cer­tain knowl­edge that they would turn around and be back with us in how­ever long it takes to shake a cat’s tail. Sure enough, back they came, into Anne’s dri­ve­way, and up saun­tered John, friendly smile in place, with Avery lag­ging behind, notice­ably less com­fort­able with the author­i­ties as befits a near-teenager.

“All I had to do was show my driver’s license and prove that we live across the road, and explain about feed­ing the kit­ties…” John said, with the same glee he used to show when he got out of a speed­ing ticket by hav­ing a small girl in a fancy rid­ing cos­tume in the back seat. “But offi­cer, we’re on our way to a horse show and we’re late…”

More excite­ment than we’re used to, although, sadly, the Offi­cers of the Law eschewed their sirens and lights, darn it. We spent the rest of the day doing bor­ing things like con­tin­u­ing to wash and vac­uum the car (find­ing such trea­sures as the lost Pool Pass, although since we’re there every day, the life­guards don’t even care any­more), the sun­screen that I’ve neglected all sum­mer, argu­ing to myself that if we’re out only an hour it’s OK, if we’re out past 4 o’clock it’s OK, you name it, I’ve got an excuse for fail­ing to apply sun­screen. I also found any num­ber of Amer­i­can coins that had Avery found them sooner would have funded an end­less num­ber of pool treats. A dread­fully sweaty day to accom­plish this task, but it was worth it to have a gor­geously clean car. Off to ten­nis, where we were flanked on the adjoin­ing court by a hideously young and fit pair of high school boys, mak­ing us all the more aware of our middle-aged efforts! The worst? Once their game broke up, one of the boys STAYED and watched us! Prob­a­bly he took pic­tures with his phone and entered us into some old people’s ten­nis tour­na­ment and we’ll get a notice in the mail. Never mind, our hearts will thank us.

A quick dip in the pool, and home for lunch. My new favorite thing? An inspi­ra­tion from my inspir­ing hus­band, who look­ing at a bag of Fritos that we longed to dip in lux­u­ri­ous sour cream, said, “What would hap­pen if you whizzed up your bean salad in the Cuisi­nart and made bean dip of it? Couldn’t we dip Fritos in that?” And there you have it. The best bean salad, when you get tired of it, becomes quite the best rea­son for you to excuse buy­ing that bag of chips. And a huge amount of your daily sug­gested veg, as well.

The Best Bean Salad
(serves? at least four for lunch and then dip)

1 soup-size can each black beans and hari­cots (small white beans), rinsed and drained
2 ears raw corn, ker­nels cut off (cut them into the salad bowl so they don’t fly away)
hand­ful sugar snap peas, sliced into quar­ters
1 red, orange or yel­low pep­per, diced
1 bunch scal­lions, sliced white and green parts
hand­ful chives, chopped
2 cloves gar­lic, minced WITH juice of 1 lemon and 1 tsp salt
zest of 1 lemon
fresh black pep­per to taste
sprin­kle crushed red pep­per flakes
1/2 cup olive oil

Sim­ply mix every­thing. The rea­son I advise you to mince your gar­lic WITH the lemon juice and salt is that the process pul­ver­izes the gar­lic to a mush, which is much nicer than a mince. Trust me. Mix WELL.

Now, when you have had your salad for lunch, put the rest in your Cuisi­nart and add a cou­ple of table­spoons of olive oil, then pulse until pureed. Add as much olive oil as you need to get the tex­ture you like. DIVINE. Serve with raw car­rot and cel­ery sticks, wedges of red cab­bage, sticks of jicama, kohlrabi and turnip. PERFECT!

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

As you can see here, any­way, I wanted you to enjoy the last view of Red Gate Farm at Sunday’s party for my mother, now safely (I hope!) back in Indi­ana. My par­ents stopped kindly in our lit­tle town on their way home yes­ter­day to see Avery on Red Baron, jump­ing those high jumps, then they headed home. What a glo­ri­ous visit we all had, and we tried hard to cram in enough mem­o­ries to last six months, till we get together again, we hope, at Christmastime.

Avery and I spent this hot, humid after­noon slav­ing over a hot stove mak­ing, I’m not kid­ding, desserts! Avery has become deservedly famous for her blue­berry tart, and so this after­noon in advance of our din­ner at our farmer friends Rol­lie and Judy’s house, she made another. And I made another batch of lemon bars to take to Fire Island tomor­row to visit my adored friend Alyssa and her fam­ily, includ­ing Annabelle, Avery’s friend since age about 2 1/2, home now from her long sojourn at sum­mer camp! No sooner had we fin­ished our spa-like exer­cise in humid­ity and sweat­ing that is bak­ing on the hottest day of the year than the next adven­ture arrived: giv­ing the fos­ter kit­ties to their prospec­tive new family!

Yes, Avery suc­ceeded in find­ing a poten­tial new home for the babies. She asked at the sta­ble when she was rid­ing yes­ter­day, and sure enough, the dar­ling girl who helps her bathe the Red Baron was inter­ested! “Just let me call my mom, who says she thinks she’s aller­gic, but she’s a total softy; she let us bring a dog home for about a day once, and seven years later he’s still with us!” Sure enough, the long-suffering mother agreed to babysit the lit­tle kit­ties for us while we’re in Fire Island, and who knows after that what might hap­pen: if they fall in love, we’ve found homes for them. So they arrived in the swel­ter­ing early evening, came into the house and the room we’d set aside for their belong­ings (which I’d clev­erly vac­u­umed and scrubbed so they wouldn’t imme­di­ately see the messy evi­dence of the kids’ pres­ence), and hap­pily took away the lit­ter box, lit­ter, food and the kit­ties them­selves. Avery and I had each spent a lov­ing half hour or so right before the han­dover, cud­dling and encour­ag­ing them to be lov­able, calm and adoptable.

“Let’s call it babysit­ting for right now,” said Karen, the mother, while Katie the barn girl and her brother Andrew qui­etly fell in love. “And we’ll take it from there.” Fin­gers mas­sively crossed that, as much as we love them, we don’t get them back.

Off in an instant after that (well, five min­utes spent in front of a fan, chang­ing clothes and reap­ply­ing antiper­spi­rant, plus mak­ing cheese sauce for mac­a­roni to take to Alyssa’s fam­ily) to Rol­lie and Judy’s for din­ner. We rose above the heat to sit out­side in the evening air, feel­ing the tem­per­a­ture drop as we enjoyed cru­dites and dip, watch­ing trucks come in and out of the dri­ve­way con­tain­ing their three stal­wart boys and friends, lis­ten­ing to the new milk­ing cows moo­ing in the dis­tance, Max the lab and Mr. B the enor­mous vanilla-colored tom­cat weav­ing in and out of our legs. I always love the atmos­phere at Rol­lie and Judy’s: crazy activ­ity, sun-browned boys (now men, really) rush­ing in con­trolled chaos from job to job on the farm, Rol­lie enlist­ing John’s help as traf­fic cop as a new trailer gets deliv­ered to Young Rollie’s farm down the road.

And Judy pre­sides over all with calm, joy­ous appre­ci­a­tion of all her boys and her vis­i­tors. Calm is the word! With three boys who appeared in fewer than five years, she’d have to be. And she fed us, oh how she fed us. Glo­ri­ous bar­be­cued shred­ded (sliced? some of each) beef, ten­der in an incred­i­bly rich sauce that I will try to glean from Judy. Per­fectly crisp corn on the cob, potato salad. Avery’s blue­berry tart for dessert, applause all around. I must say, I’m so pleased at how she rises to being the only child, with so many adults. To ques­tions about her school, her friends, rid­ing, she answers gra­ciously with funny sto­ries and just the right amount of detail. A most sat­is­fac­tory girl. And she can BAKE.

We stag­gered home after such sump­tu­ous food and packed up for our adven­ture tomor­row. It’s been YEARS since we made it to Alyssa’s on Fire Island. Two years ago we were stopped by a hur­ri­cane! And last year I sim­ply can­not remem­ber what kept us away. But it’s against my reli­gion to let more than six months go by with­out Avery and Annabelle see­ing each other, and it’s too long this year. We’ll report. If we’re not in the slam­mer by then, I mean.

My word, as my Ken­tucky Aunt Mary Wayne would say, my word! It was 91 degrees in the shade for my mother’s birth­day party yes­ter­day. Lord have mercy, she would also say, we were warm. John, slav­ing over the grill, I slav­ing over the oven, felt it the worst, I fear, but in any case no amount of sweat and red faces could spoil our fun. It was a won­der­ful, heart-warming day.

No time for ten­nis, from the word go, all day, every moment was accounted for in one delight or another. My mother and I fall into a pat­tern whereby she sits in as much com­fort as she can, cru­elly plagued by arthri­tis as she is, in the kitchen rock­ing chair and enter­tains me with sto­ries of fam­ily and friends. I chop, boil, mix, sort, count nap­kins, and she reads aloud from “Soap Opera Digest,” where­upon we ask each other, “Now surely Bo and Hope can­not have one more child killed. She’ll just be kid­napped, do you think?” and my long-suffering hus­band calls over, “I hope you’re not talk­ing about real peo­ple that I’m sup­posed to care about.” My father ambles through the kitchen, lis­ten­ing with one ear while also sam­pling the potato salad, the slaw, the cof­fee cake. They both watch while I turn a pile of scal­lops into gor­geous lit­tle parcels wrapped each in two basil leaves, then wrapped in a piece of bacon, then slid onto a skewer. Three per skewer, a good serv­ing size (don’t tell that to Joel, who was con­vinced they would be very BAD left­overs and so kindly ate two skewers-ful).

Dad went cheer­fully with me and John to buy ice, and to fill the car with yel­low bal­loons, a cer­tain num­ber of which burst in the heat of the day, and then we all, Avery included, strolled around Red Gate Farm tying them to the fence, to the aza­lea bush, to the rusty but sweet wrought-iron bench that sits demurely in front of the house, to the bench under the hydrangea tree which oblig­ingly bloomed its greeny-white blos­soms just in time for the party. The farm glowed with yel­low ribbons.

And for those not want­ing to eat scal­lops, I pre­pared a plate of bison burg­ers, of all things! My mother in law arrived for her visit last month filled with sto­ries of the bison she had eaten on a hol­i­day in Mon­tana, and I thought, “Lead me to it!” Sadly I did not sam­ple the burg­ers myself, but Avery and my sis­ter and father raved about them. Avery claims there is a beefy fla­vor, but under­neath that is another, deeper fla­vor that is truly delight­ful. It’s worth a try. Per­haps later this week I can try them myself. With a piquant Pro­volone from the deli, red onion slices and a mix­ture of mayo, mus­tard and black pep­per, they looked divine and smelled better.

The sun shone. Avery and Jane set up their course of jumps, and tram­po­lined. The boys drank beer as John grilled, my sis­ter fed the baby, Anne came briefly with an enor­mous jug, as you see, of flow­ers for my mother! “Some­body told me you liked yel­low… and Kate is refus­ing to nap, so we’ll be by when we can!” Poor Kate is cut­ting molars, and Avery described her expe­ri­ences of twelve-year molars last year which even then were uncom­fort­able, so the poor baby expe­ri­ence can only be guessed at.

We ate, my good­ness, how we ate. Quite the per­fect slaw, I think, of Savoy and red cab­bages, jicama and juli­enned car­rots with a dress­ing full of mus­tard and poppy seeds, kindly brought to me by Joel, from the stash I brought to him! And why should potato salad be so heavy and may­on­naisey? It doesn’t have to be. Here’s mine.

Light Potato Salad
(serves 10)

5 lbs Yukon Gold pota­toes, steamed till ten­der, cut in bite-size cubes
4 stalks cel­ery, minced
2 bunches scal­lions (spring onions), minced white AND green parts

dress­ing:
1/3 cup olive oil
juice and zest of 1 lemon
2 tbsps maple vine­gar
1 tsp cel­ery salt
1 tbsp may­on­naise
3 tbsps Dijon mus­tard
loads of fresh-ground black pep­per
sea salt

Shake up all dress­ing ingre­di­ents except black pep­per and toss with pota­toes, cel­ery and scal­lions. Grind the pep­per over the salad and salt to taste.

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

This salad is light, tasty, sum­mery, and per­fect with burg­ers, ribs, chicken wings, you name it. And you can enjoy it with­out strug­gling through that gloppy, over-dressed fatigue that accom­pa­nies so many potato sal­ads from delis. And no guilt.

Once we got to the cake, with its now-traditional leg­end “Happy Birth­day, Mona,” the girls gath­ered around their grand­mother for a photo op, and it was like paparazzi, the par­ents with cam­eras! My mother, who has the most beau­ti­ful skin on the planet, sim­ply glowed with the unde­ni­able warmth, and also another warmth gen­er­ated by being sur­rounded by beau­ti­ful girls, the next gen­er­a­tion, smil­ing their love for her. Just a gor­geous day.

A quick cleanup, Molly down for her nap, my mother hap­pily watch­ing a Nascar race, John doing some com­pli­cated finan­cial things, and the rest of us headed off to the swim­ming pool for a cool-down. That pool makes me laugh: it’s so shabby, so old-fashioned, ring­ing with “Marco… Polo…” and an end­less parade of unoc­cu­pied, gor­geous, washboard-stomach life­guards of both sexes… we swam, Jane jumped off the side with her newly-acquired skills while her par­ents cheered, Avery dived, also a new skill this sum­mer. Idyllic.

Back home, my sis­ter and her fam­ily packed up to make for home and estab­lish some sense of a much-needed rou­tine evening! Enough party for a four-and-a-half year old with energy to spare… and we, we set­tled in for a nice cock­tail hour on the ter­race, warm and humid to be sure, but irre­sistible in the early-evening beauty. Then pier­rade for us all, a pro­tein injec­tion in case we needed it. I think my dad was very skep­ti­cal about the whole process of grilling his own lit­tle bites of sir­loin and duck, but he quickly was con­vinced by the sheer deli­cious­ness of it, and my mother’s requested sauteed mixed pep­pers were the per­fect combination.

And for dessert? I’ve been try­ing to find an old recipe that my mother and I used to make for her ladies-who-study after­noon meet­ings, and for old Mother’s Days gone by, lemon bars. What I ended up mak­ing was not the same at all, but it was nice. Still, we’d like to res­ur­rect the old ver­sion which had as its fill­ing, we recall, a mix­ture of lemon frost­ing mix and cream cheese. The ver­sion I made for the party evening came from mix­ing up sev­eral recipes that all sounded tempt­ingly famil­iar, and yielded a much less rich thing than what we remem­ber, but still pro­vides a chewy, but­tery crust that some­how merges with its lemony fla­vor­ing. Give it a try. I think Avery will blog it too.

Lemon Bars
(makes 24 bars)

1 box lemon cake mix
1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) but­ter, melted
1 cup unre­fined sugar
zest and juice of 2 lemons
1/2 tsp bak­ing pow­der
1/4 tsp salt
2 eggs

Mix lemon cake mix and melted but­ter and press into a 9-inch square pan that you’ve sprayed with cook­ing spray. Bake for 20 min­utes at 350F.

With an elec­tric mixer or (as I had to) just whip­ping really hard with a whisk, mix all remain­ing ingre­di­ents. When the crust comes out of the oven, when it’s still hot, pour this mix­ture over the crust and then bake again for 25 min­utes. Chewy, tart, but­tery delight. Even I liked it.

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

John valiantly made it awake until 10 or so that night, and then retreated to bed. Anne had said ear­lier in the day, “It’s always so cozy to look across the road at 5 in the morn­ing, see a light on, and think, ‘John’s up!’” His early night left my par­ents and Avery and me to play Aggra­va­tion, and then Avery said, “I won­der what’s in those old suit­cases,” point­ing to a stack of antique leather suit­cases that serves as a lit­tle dec­o­ra­tion in the par­lor, although we’ve been known to travel with them, in our old Lon­don days when we were young enough to care if we trav­elled styl­ishly. “Well, I can tell you that the bot­tom two are empty, but the top one is full of old pho­tographs,” I said, so we opened it up. The glamor! The style! Young, skinny, self-indulgent John and me from 20 years ago, in Moscow giv­ing chew­ing gum to lit­tle Russ­ian chil­dren, me in doc­toral robes get­ting my PhD, gazed over by my beloved tutor and advi­sor, on whom I had a com­pletely uncon­trol­lable crush (fuelled by the fact that he had mar­ried no fewer than FOUR of his grad­u­ate stu­dents!), on happy walks in the Cotswolds with John’s par­ents, in the streets of New York wait­ing to see Ralph Fiennes in “Ham­let”… with my par­ents at Buck­land Manor in Oxford­shire, all of us so young.

Avery loved it! It’s so funny, and sad in a way, although I just should be happy that we’ve had such a happy past. But how quickly it all went by. Such a short time to be glam­orous and young, and I must say this sum­mer, I can feel the torch pass­ing to Avery’s gen­er­a­tion. She’s about to be the one with excit­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties, meet­ing the peo­ple who will be her adult world, trav­el­ing, tak­ing risks. John and I amuse our­selves at our ten­nis games by ask­ing, “What would you be will­ing to have Avery do when she’s 16? Can she bring her boyfriend to Red Gate Farm for the sum­mer? Can she travel with him to Europe? Can she go with a group that’s chap­er­oned but not to study, just to travel?” I find myself MUCH more lib­eral about her plans than I would have expected, and John not so much! The pro­tec­tive father comes out in high relief. It is good to have a past to look back on with­out much to regret, no adven­tures that turned sour, no rela­tion­ships that ended in tears, really. I know we can’t expect to have the easy ride as par­ents that our par­ents did! We were so tame. And yet… we had fun.

So Happy Birth­day, Mona, for another year. How lucky we feel to have had the day in the sun­shine, to be together and play, and appre­ci­ate each other.

As my dad said this evening, watch­ing the girls play­ing together, the dads build­ing a course of horsey jumps with Avery’s beloved set of jumps, my mother and I sit­ting with my sis­ter as she fed the baby, “Too bad you don’t live just a half a mile away.” Truer words were never spo­ken, a truth I try very hard not to think about 11 months of the year. Life is so absorb­ing as it is, in Lon­don, that it isn’t too dif­fi­cult to feel that it’s all just fine, work­ing splen­didly thank you. Until our fam­ily is all together (minus my brother who stayed home to mind the house and cats), I don’t think too much about What Might Have Been, what life might be like if we all lived within shout­ing dis­tance of each other and had the time to spend week­ends together, do home repair projects together, to have our par­ents mind our child, to have the lux­ury of get­ting sick of each other, annoyed by each other. As it is, we just hold it close these few weeks (just days with my mother and father), and enjoy.

Today was such fun! All three of us cleaned house with a vengeance, erad­i­cat­ing spi­ders in their webs (they pro­lif­er­ate unbe­liev­ably in the sum­mer months!), dust bun­nies under beds, I washed kitchen rugs AND the floor, we made the guest room bed, gro­cery shopped till we dropped for the day today and the big birth­day party tomor­row. Finally the house was com­pletely pre­sentable, one more load of laun­dry in the machine.

John and I suf­fered, there’s no other word for it, through a swel­ter­ing, stink­ing game of ten­nis mid-morning, while Avery swam. I do not do well HOT. I kept strain­ing to hear the sounds of chil­dren jump­ing into clear, cold water, and felt all the hot­ter and more mar­tyred to the game. But we per­se­vered in the humid­ity and got in about 40 min­utes before I finally said UNCLE and drank my last enor­mous gulp of icy water, and we headed to the pool. Glo­ri­ous, face-cooling laps, refresh­ing beyond belief to drift through the water, lis­ten­ing to children’s shouts, lifeguard’s occa­sional lack­adaisi­cal whis­tles and all-too-repetitive “Don’t run!”, the Top 40 Clap­trap radio blar­ing its wares over the still sum­mer air. We roused our­selves to shower, go home and get dressed for the arrival of my par­ents. I lis­tened to one of my favorite sum­mer books on tape, “Miss­ing Susan,” about a mys­tery tour of Eng­land with one of the tourists an intended mur­der vic­tim, snort­ing with laugh­ter as I fed Avery some left­over pasta with a truly stu­pen­dous toma­toey vodka sauce and started on dev­illed eggs for my mother, who would kill for them. And then there they were!

“What on earth are you doing com­ing in the front door?” I asked in bewil­der­ment, since nobody but Ter­minix ever enters the house in that fash­ion. “Your mother wanted to enter the house,” my father began, and my mother fin­ished, “Through the proper entrance, and to see how you’ve changed these rooms!”

The changed music room and din­ing room found favor, as did the res­ur­rected book­shelves, spe­cial orna­ments, all the old objects find­ing new life. I always sim­ply bow to the fact that my mother is a supremely gifted inte­rior designer and I myself, as I con­fessed to her, just put things where they go and gen­er­ally never think about them again. It’s funny: her gifts in home decor found no pur­chase with me, where she can­not be both­ered to think a thing about what to eat. But I greatly enjoyed grow­ing up in a beau­ti­ful home and she loves to eat my food, so some­how we both fell into appre­ci­at­ing each other’s tal­ents with­out hav­ing the slight­est incli­na­tion to pick up the other’s inter­ests. It’s a rare mother, I think, who can see her child grow­ing up with­out shar­ing her own pas­sions, devel­op­ing her own, and go on to love vis­it­ing that child in her design-challenged home and love being fed by her. We really enjoy each other, that’s the sim­ple truth.

My father came armed with solid-gold toma­toes from his own gar­den, which my sis­ter and I are meant to share. Exactly how will that work, I won­der? We all gazed upon them today and I promptly made my tomato-mozzarella salad out of dull toma­toes from the super­mar­ket, post­pon­ing the inevitable squab­ble. My mother brought me a water­color of my child­hood home, where they still live! And an old shadow-box made of a printer’s tray that I, in high school, had filled with trin­kets and memen­toes from that senior year: so many things I had for­got­ten about com­pletely! My city cham­pion div­ing medal! And medals from singing com­pe­ti­tions, and essay con­tests, a key to the city from the mayor of my home­town… And a piece of drift­wood from Omaha Beach, amaz­ingly, with the flag of Nor­mandy behind it, and my board­ing pass to France when I was 17.

Avery was enthralled with this hith­erto undreamed-of evi­dence of my ado­les­cence, and I was vis­ited with a beloved mem­ory from my child­hood, sit­ting on my bed­room rug with MY mother, look­ing at her high-school diary, hear­ing sto­ries of her boyfriends, her quar­rels with my grand­mother who always seemed far too serene to go in for such scenes. When I looked at Avery, in all her teenage grace, tuck­ing her hair behind her ear, exclaim­ing with dis­be­lief and admi­ra­tion at the tokens of my child­hood achieve­ments, I felt a com­plete sur­real dis­lo­ca­tion of roles, and times. How we replace our moth­ers! How lucky we are to have daugh­ters to sit down with and look at all this tire­some and yet beloved mem­o­ra­bilia! How on earth did we pro­duce these won­der­ful girls, Avery this sum­mer seem­ing sud­denly to be such a com­pan­ion and friend.

John retreated upstairs to take a nap in the humid sum­mer air, even with AC. I taught my mother a skill she never in her LIFE will use: how to remove the back­bone from an enor­mous Amer­i­can chicken, and smoth­ered it in bar­be­cue sauce. Two of them, in fact, and she was com­pletely grossed out, fur­ther rein­forc­ing her view that food should come in a form not rec­og­niz­able as an ani­mal, I’m afraid. I made a sugar-cream pie (“Chess Pie,” I think, to my dear South­ern friend Becky), and you can, too.

Sugar-Cream Pie
(serves 8, or my mother when she’s in the mood)

1 store-bought pie crust, or you can make your own
5 table­spoons flour
1 cup unre­fined sugar
2 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
whole nutmeg

Sprin­kle flour and sugar into the unbaked pas­try crust, then add cream and mix WITH YOUR FIN­GERS. I know this sounds dis­gust­ing and it is. A bit. But every recipe I read included this arcane instruc­tion to mix with fin­gers, so I did. Just keep stir­ring gen­tly, pick­ing up the sugar from the bot­tom, squish­ing the flour bits into the cream, until it’s all mixed. Then gen­tly add vanilla and grate nut­meg, just a sprin­kling, over the top.

Bake at 450F for 10 min­utes, then turn oven down to 350 and bake for another hour. Take the pre­cau­tion of lin­ing the oven floor with foil, because I didn’t and the repul­sive job of clean­ing my oven which I’d done the DAY BEFORE will now have to be redone, because sug­ary cream leaked over the edge of the pie. Drat.

Cool com­pletely before serving.

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

This pie was received with the enthu­si­as­tic acco­lades of John and my mother, the reserved “it’s nice” of other peo­ple, and I myself decided, with Abra­ham Lin­coln, that “it’s the sort of thing you’ll like, if you like that sort of thing.” Very sweet and creamy, sim­ple and old-fashioned. Avery can decide whether or not she wants to blog it her­self, after we make the two fur­ther desserts for tomorrow’s birth­day party.

My sis­ter and her fam­ily arrived, in the warm August after­noon, to Jane’s scream, “Nonna!” and my father’s amused scrutiny of Molly, who can match him gaze for gaze. The girls retrieved Avery’s horsey jumps from the barn, I con­cocted a salad of spinach and arugula with steamed pota­toes and red onions and a mus­tardy vinai­grette, and then Joel walked out of the kitchen say­ing calmly, “There’s smoke in there, a LOT of smoke,” and sure enough, my oven was emit­ting angry relent­less waves of smoke from the sugar on its floor, utterly for­get­ting that its cur­rent job was to cook the bar­be­cued spatch­cocked chicken. Ah well, John leapt to the res­cue with the grill, and the chicken was gor­geous in the end, half-baked, half-grilled. Be spon­ta­neous, I always say.

We ate, the girls horsey-jumped, my mother gave them adorable gifts in the form of a stuffed alpaca owl for Molly, a stuffed deer baby for Jane, and sil­ver horse charms and a charm neck­lace for Avery!

Tomor­row will bring Anne, David and Kate from across the road, and all the fam­ily again for the annual birth­day party. I can’t wait. But I’ll leave you with one ques­tion: why is my blog so easy to write and my cookbook/memoir so impos­si­ble? What on EARTH am I miss­ing that I can’t seem to bridge this unbridgable gap? How can I solve this conun­drum? Answer me that and I’ll cater your daughter’s wed­ding. Or what­ever. It’s killing me.

It’s true: one of our fos­ter kit­tens has been adopted. The shel­ter in Dan­bury called us up and said they had poten­tial clients for “two black kit­tens,” so we packed up all three (sev­eral sweaty for­ays under beds, backs of hands scratched) in the car­rier and headed off. I found it quite stress­ful, try­ing to sell kit­tens! Avery was a total star, enu­mer­at­ing their good qual­i­ties, try­ing to pre­tend they weren’t hid­ing under cages and sofas, calm­ing each one down so they could be held by the would-be new fam­i­lies. An hour later, Amelia had been cho­sen by a lovely cou­ple who in a slightly Too Much Infor­ma­tion moment con­fided their infer­til­ity prob­lems and every other inti­mate detail of their lives. “My first wife left me,” the fel­low con­fided, rock­ing on his heels, “and she said we’d have to split up the cats, she’d take one, I’d keep one. Oh, NO, I said, you want to leave, you leave. But the cats stay. Then they died. So now my new wife [head ges­ture to very demure lady stand­ing next to him, hands folded] is hav­ing female prob­lems, and I said, with every­thing that’s going on with maybe a baby, it’s no time for a kit­ten. But then the baby didn’t work out. So I said, OK, let’s get a kit­ten. And now he’s dri­ving us crazy, just as we get home from work all tired out, he’s ready to play. ALL NIGHT. So he needs a friend.” Oh, sad. But sweet. So away went Amelia in their very posh car­rier. And Dor­rit and Nemo came back home with us. We can only hope we’ll find homes for them before we have to head back to London.

We’re in des­per­ate denial that our time here is dwin­dling. Avery’s read­ing straight through the South­bury library, I’m read­ing through my shelves here, and let me just share with you what’s got John’s lit­er­ary hear­beat pound­ing: “Deriv­a­tives and Equity Port­fo­lio Man­age­ment.” I swear I am not mak­ing that up. And you know the best part? He says it’s a SEQUEL to a book he read in Lon­don. A SEQUEL.

Avery has made the most amaz­ing dis­cov­ery: Wil­low Creek Farms, a nearby eques­trian con­cern with quite a mag­i­cal horse and trainer in The Red Baron, and Amie. It’s the famil­iar sta­ble world filled with shy girls lead­ing ponies, fork­ing hay, set­ting up jumps. The Red Baron is enor­mous! The jumps even more so! I try to be calm as she races around the sta­ble in a com­pli­cated series of over­com­ing obsta­cles. She will not get hurt! I’m sure of it. And Amie seems to love her, which is mutual, so everyone’s happy. The set­ting is idyl­lic: typ­i­cal rolling Con­necti­cut hills, blue blue skies, all har­mony and peace.

I have a philo­soph­i­cal ques­tion for you: do you ever suc­cess­fully really enjoy things, or do you just do them fran­ti­cally to save them to enjoy later when life calms down? Like the philoso­pher (I for­get who) who says that hap­pi­ness isn’t some­thing we expe­ri­ence, it’s some­thing we remem­ber. I do feel I spend each sum­mer pack­ing the hours full of peo­ple and things and food and events that serve more than any­thing else as mem­o­ries, not the actual expe­ri­ence. Maybe it’s inevitable, when we are here for such a short time.

Even more sig­nif­i­cant than these mus­ings is the fol­low­ing: I admit it: I really miss Eng­lish sausage. There. I’ve said it.

So the days are wind­ing them­selves down, kit­tens find a place to sleep in the least com­fort­able spot in the entire house: on a win­dowsill perched above my stair­case. Both kit­tens sleep there now at night, since Avery has reluc­tantly closed her door to them, find­ing it impos­si­ble to sleep with them bit­ing her nose, bury­ing their faces in her ears, tuck­ing them­selves under the cov­ers to find her alpaca teddy bear to snug­gle with. For some rea­son they don’t try it on with John and me. Nemo made an appear­ance this after­noon to sit on the tram­po­line while Kate bounced and tried on my shoes (I am not exag­ger­at­ing, she is sim­ply obsessed with shoes), and he was com­pletely adorable, limp and sweaty in the late after­noon sun, fold­ing his paws, show­ing off the white chin that’s so sym­met­ri­cally and per­fectly placed under his mouth!

I look around my house and see burned-out light­bulbs that I can’t reach, spi­der webs ditto, a place in the shower that should be bleached, dried out and caulked, and I think: next sum­mer? I’d rather relax and gaze at the pink and green rose-patterned vin­tage lamp­shade on my bed­side table (a rick­ety affair of four chipped legs with a vanilla-colored painted top), look­ing across the room at the brass-handled four-drawer wooden affair with scat­tered faded flow­ers painted across it, and the three-drawer Indi­ana piece from my grad­u­ate stu­dent shop­ping trip in Vin­cennes, Indi­ana… if I squint gen­er­ously all I see are the mem­o­ries these objects evoke, and not the dust bun­nies that blow forth when a kit­ten crawls under them and dis­turbs the years of fluff.

Excite­ment is build­ing for my mother’s birth­day party on Sun­day: odd pack­ages are being wrapped, and for obvi­ous rea­sons I can­not tell you what is in them, but the funny assort­ment of things rep­re­sent who she is! I can­not wait to see them tomor­row when they arrive some­time in the mid after­noon. Avery and I will spend the day bak­ing desserts for her party, and my dad will pull up in the dri­ve­way with a car filled with his pre­cious toma­toes for Jill (per­haps she’ll share), with sto­ries of their two-day cross-country jour­ney. Jill and her fam­ily will arrive for din­ner, with Jane no doubt bounc­ing off the walls with excite­ment, Molly gaz­ing at all the hilar­ity with her usual brow-furrowed concentration.

I’ll leave you with a spec­tac­u­lar and spec­tac­u­larly sim­ple lob­ster recipe. You can afford it this sum­mer, with lob­ster prices the low­est in more than 20 years (but spare a thought for the poor lob­ster­men). It’s sum­mer on a plate.

Grilled Lob­ster with Pesto But­ter
(serves 4, one lob­ster per person)

4 lob­sters, 1 1/2 pounds each
1/2 cup pesto
1/2 cup but­ter, melted

Drop lob­sters head­first into a pot with 2 inches of boil­ing water. Clap lid on pot and steam the lob­sters for 12 min­utes. Cool lob­sters until they can be han­dled, then cut them in half length­wise and remove claws. Lib­er­ate meat from claws and set aside.

Mix the pesto and melted but­ter. Brush each lob­ster half, flesh side, with the pesto mix­ture and grill over a high heat for 4 min­utes. Serve with fresh pesto mix­ture brushed on, and with claw meat on the side.

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

This dish is rich, but­tery, mas­sively fla­vor­ful and redo­lent of August. You’ll love it. And if you come for din­ner, I’ll throw in a kit­ten. Or two.

So funny it was yes­ter­day, late after­noon: the tram­po­line was sim­ply filled with girls! I felt quite sen­ti­men­tal, in an odd way con­sid­er­ing I never met any of the old ladies who inhab­ited these two houses in our lit­tle stretch of road, to think of their spir­its look­ing in on us in some way and see­ing so much young life around the place. There was Avery, look­ing gor­geous and quite removed from the action, but still kind and sweet to the younger sprouts, then there were my nieces Jane and Molly, 4 1/2 and 9 months old (today!), then there was Baby Kate from across the road and her house­guest Gaia, age 3 1/2. The mag­netic lure of the tram­po­line! Molly took refuge on John’s lap, to be pro­tected from the flail­ing arms and legs of big­ger but still rather incon­sis­tently mov­ing girls. Kate sat with a bit more inde­pen­dence, but Gaia and Jane were mov­ing tar­gets, shout­ing, leap­ing, trip­ping over each other, san­dals and Crocs every­where. This pleased Kate to no end, who if her first long sen­tence isn’t “Give me those Manolo Blah­niks” I’ll eat my ancient Welling­tons. She sim­ply can­not resist shoes, anyone’s shoes.

And can you resist these lit­tle kitty faces? The girls are set­tling down, not as seam­lessly as one might per­haps wish (should kit­tens poo in the bath­tub? rhetor­i­cal ques­tion), and their brother is a com­plete nut­case and delight. Avery is devoted to the task of set­tling them and gen­tling them, and in their ser­vice has accom­plished many things I would never have dreamed pos­si­ble, includ­ing learn­ing to open a pull-top can, will won­ders never cease.

I’ve just set­tled down from my accus­tomed night­time wan­der­ings: straight­en­ing flow­ers still thriv­ing from Olimpia’s visit, check­ing can­dles in win­dows I always leave when Anne and David (espe­cially David) are across the road because they like the sign that all is well and cozy at Red Gate. I walked around down­stairs, rais­ing the shades in the bath­room from Avery’s hours-long spa bath ear­lier in the week, putting down a dish of dry food for the kit­tens, fold­ing one more load of laun­dry, dry­ing up the odd tray and water pitcher and what­not on the drain­ing board, turn­ing off the dish­washer so the AC can remove some of this humid­ity with­out shut­ting off all the power…

Late Fri­day after­noon brought us Judy’s quick visit, laugh­ing as she stepped over my floor-washing. “You can come to my house when you’re fin­ished here,” she said, and I was happy to be found indus­tri­ous and pur­pose­ful, instead of sit­ting around read­ing Soap Opera Digest as I might well have been found. She asked if I’d found a piano, since one of her friends thought she might be get­ting rid of hers, “Her daughter’s got a much bet­ter piano now, she’s a good lit­tle musi­cian…”, then reported on Rollie’s fin­ger, finally recov­er­ing from being thrashed by the milk­ing cows. She com­plained, as all the farm­ers are, about the slow hay­ing with wet weather. I must aver, how­ever, that to my mem­ory, the Con­necti­cut farmer’s reportage of weather is much like the Eng­lish person’s: elic­it­ing amaze­ment no mat­ter what the out­come! Wet! Hot! Dry! It’s all remark­able, and each sum­mer the reac­tion is the same, “Well, what can you expect with the crazy WEATHER we’ve been hav­ing this summer?!”

We’ve kept busy with all our home repair and clean­ing projects, while wait­ing fruit­less for the painter to call or come by. Another sum­mer will go by and this house will not be painted. For this we are truly sorry, but what can we do? I would have thought that in this eco­nomic cli­mate a per­son who painted for a liv­ing would really like a job paint­ing for a liv­ing, but appar­ently there are forces at work here that I do not under­stand. In the mean­time, I fol­low the adorable sight of John and Avery fill­ing the bird feed­ers, or John fill­ing them as Avery fol­lows him around with a ram­bling account of her dream last night, an involved one hav­ing to do with skat­ing cos­tumes avail­able in online stores that then turn into REAL stores, or have mag­i­cal URLs that can be accessed within the dream and then come true in real life. Actu­ally, the skat­ing dress is that unat­tain­able dream that will doubt­less fol­low Avery through the next 30 years of her life, like our find­ing a house painter.

Oh, and we have vis­ited the worst, most awful horsey tag sale! How annoy­ing to fol­low neon signs all over the neigh­bor­hood, announc­ing a HUGE HUGE TAG SALE, only to find that the items for sale were… horse blan­kets, bits, bri­dles, old dusty boots, and, branch­ing out a bit, filthy dirty aban­doned rab­bit hutches, sets of chipped china mugs with graz­ing horses on them, used nail pol­ish (I’m sorry to say Avery fell for a bot­tle in the shape of a kit­ten), and most amus­ing, two boxes semi-full of chalk, clearly labelled with the orig­i­nal price tags from KMart, 39 cents each, offered for the bar­gain price of… two for a dollar.

Yes­ter­day, though, was one of those days of sum­mer that comes along all too rarely: a whole day with my sister’s fam­ily to visit, although alas no actual sis­ter as she was trav­el­ing. We got, how­ever, her hus­band Joel and their two lit­tle girls, Jane and Molly, they of the tram­polin­ing fes­ti­val. Here for some play in the sun, Jane run­ning around after Avery and Molly ensconced on a red and green quilt spread out on the ter­race, sur­rounded by puffy pil­lows designed to keep her safe. Of course, she was able to aim one spec­tac­u­lar fall directly in the gap between these pil­lows and face-planted, with an enor­mous belated scream and spurt­ing tears, into the stones. Ah, just a blip on an oth­er­wise per­fect day, and from the per­spec­tive of par­ents of a much older and more com­pli­cated child, how lovely to have tears so eas­ily comforted!

We set­tled down at the pic­nic table with a feast. The first course: why on earth has it taken me so long this sum­mer to make what is quite obvi­ously the best pos­si­ble cold soup? A long-time fam­ily clas­sic, and one def­i­nitely worth your while to make, the day before, and chill overnight.

Vichys­soise
(serves )

3 tbsps but­ter
2 bunches (about four cups of chopped good white and light green bits) leeks
1 large white onion, cut in eighths
6 medium pota­toes, peeled and cut in bite-size chunks
1 48-ounce can com­mer­cial chicken broth, like Col­lege Inn
dash white pep­per
1 cup light cream
1 cup skim milk (or two cups really good whole milk and skip the cream)
chopped chives to garnish

Melt the but­ter in a heavy stock­pot and throw in the leeks, onions and pota­toes. Stir until leeks are translu­cent, then cover in chicken broth and sim­mer for about 45 min­utes until pota­toes are ten­der. Liq­uidize with a hand blender and mix in cream and milk, then pass through a sieve into another stock­pot into a large bowl. Refrig­er­ate the soup overnight and then gar­nish with chives to serve. Perfection.

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

I have innu­mer­able happy mem­o­ries of this soup, given to me first by my dar­ling New Jer­sey friends who hosted us for the Fourth of July. It’s sim­ply per­fect: creamy, cold, beau­ti­ful with its flecks of green chives, sim­ple yet com­plex. It’s been the soup of choice for dozens of my gallery open­ing par­ties, Avery’s enor­mous birth­day cel­e­bra­tions in New York, pic­nics, all sum­mer out­ings. Old-fashioned, and yet irre­sistible. I’ve worked for months, even years, on a chap­ter for my even­tual book, describ­ing this soup and its impor­tance in our fam­ily his­tory, and it’s sur­pris­ingly hard to pro­duce. You’d be amazed how easy it is to turn out thou­sands of words about some­thing spon­ta­neous that doesn’t really sig­nify, where on the other hand to express some­thing really cen­tral to one’s life is nearly impos­si­ble. Sigh.

Well, we fol­lowed our soup with grilled Cor­nish game hens — to my mind, the unsung heroes of Amer­i­can poul­try (did you know there was such a cat­e­gory?). Don’t even THINK about spend­ing money on com­mer­cial bar­be­cue sauce. You open up your fridge and make your own ver­sion of:

Refrig­er­a­tor Door Bar­be­cue Sauce
(makes enough for one round on the bar­be­cue of what­ever meat you have going)

1/3 cup each: honey, maple syrup, left­over tomato sauce, hoi­son (plum) sauce
cou­ple shakes: maple vine­gar, Worces­ter­shire sauce, lemon juice

Stir or shake all this up, rinse out the empty jars you’ve lib­er­ated from your refrig­er­a­tor door, recy­cle them and count this a lucky, fru­gal, envi­ron­men­tally sound and deli­cious condiment.

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

This bar­be­cue sauce won RAVE reviews. You sim­ply remove the back­bones of your Cor­nish game hens, flat­ten them out, and cover them with sauce, then grill them for about 20 min­utes per side at 400. This sauce was even bet­ter tonight as cold left­overs, so give it a try. But the star of the lunch? Avery’s blue­berry tart. A triumph!

Then we were off to the pool, the two big girls and I, swim bag stuffed to the gills with things to read, extra tow­els, sun­screen, con­di­tioner for my after-swim shower, you name it. John and Joel stayed home to put Molly down for her nap (did it really require two strong men? I didn’t ask), and I was more than happy to swim with Avery and Jane, who decided sud­denly that it was time to jump off the side of the pool all by her­self, for the first time. How excit­ing! She is intre­pid in the water, bob­bing along in her upside-down gog­gles, shriek­ing with excite­ment. When­ever she gets an answer to a ques­tion that she doesn’t expect she says indig­nantly, “WHAT?” like she wants her money back. “Why are you sit­ting out in the sun instead of com­ing in the water, Aunt Kris­ten?” “Because I’m chilly, Jane.” “WHAT?” Her father turned up, full of amaze­ment at her new skills, and con­cerned at the amount of pool water she was bring­ing home, poten­tially, in her belly. When she did some­thing against his wishes, and he frowned slightly, she asked, “Why are you not amused, Daddy?”

Drama when on leav­ing the pool, a scrape was dis­cov­ered on the bot­tom of her big toe. Off to the life­guards who we asked for Neosporin and a bandaid. Joel and I watched in hor­ri­fied silence as a life­guard donned latex gloves and then approached Jane with an unmis­tak­able pad soaked in ALCO­HOL! Before we could stop her, she applied it to the scrape: what an idiot! Poor Jane erupted into under­stand­able screams of pain and fear, and then thought the bandaid was per­me­ated with the stuff and would not allow it to be applied! I want to be there when that block­head life­guard has a four-year-old of her own who coughs slightly and the mother then decides that the best rem­edy is to intu­bate her, just in case. Poor Jane. Finally home, though, and the lure of the tram­po­line, and all the vis­i­tors from across the road.

Is there any­thing more fun and fes­tive to make for din­ner for a lot of peo­ple than home­made pizza? That’s a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion, and it was but the work of two min­utes to stir up a bit of herby dough and stick it in the oven, let­ting it rise for an hour and a half while John and I sliced up toma­toes, pep­per­oni, red onions, moz­zarella, cooked sausages and sliced those up too, opened jars of tomato sauce and ricotta cheese and a bag of parme­san and a hand­ful of arugula and a dish of home­made pesto. Here’s what I need for my birth­day or some­thing, though: a big piece of mar­ble or gran­ite for my kitchen table which would be per­fect for rolling out pizza dough if it didn’t have two leaves, which means the flour drifted down to the floor below through the seams, in a gen­tle sort of sum­mer snow­storm. Well, and it’s also com­pletely uneven, or the floor under­neath is, so the table rocks as I roll out the dough. Actu­ally, as well, I don’t have a rolling pin, so Jane was most amused to see me rolling with a wine bot­tle. OK, I’m mak­ing it sound as if my pizza-making facil­i­ties are com­pletely inad­e­quate, and they are, but I can tell you that even with two pizza trays, one cookie sheet and one tart pan, din­ner turned out pretty spec­tac­u­lar. It’s so much more fun than deliv­ery or pickup, every­one can choose her own top­pings, and it’s just… fun.

Much, MUCH more fun than today. One word: GUT­TERS. We knew it was com­ing, we knew it was nec­es­sary. Today rain was fore­cast all the live­long day, so we rushed to get in our ten­nis game early, and then raced to the gro­cery store for what­ever we might need dur­ing the del­uge, and then pro­ceeded home at a far more petty pace to face up to the gut­ters. And they were worth dreading.

For one thing, John has a pretty painful fear of heights. Even under the best of cir­cum­stances, what­ever those might be, he’s just not happy up high. Well, home repair at our house is never under the best of cir­cum­stances. The barns yield up rick­ety hundred-year-old wooden hand-hewn lad­ders, which John then insists will be made per­fectly level on the ground with a BRICK under one leg. And he hauls up ancient buck­ets that were once filled with bird seed, to catch the debris. So I fol­lowed him around, climb­ing up onto the roof myself to shimmy across and gain access to out-of-the-way places, and promptly slid down halfway, leav­ing all my shin skin on the roof tiles. Cranky! John had me hold the lad­der, where­upon he acci­den­tally threw whole hand­fuls of the gut­ter mess onto my face, hair and the like. Finally, in a grow­ing panic and fit of anger, I said, “ENOUGH!” and we stopped short of the final side of the house, which is under­laid with soft moss that I sim­ply could not see sup­port­ing the “lad­der.” Plus John, on an exploratory climb, reported he could not pen­e­trate the leaves and maple heli­copters even with a stick. Hmm. A prob­lem for another day. He insisted on kiss­ing me to dis­pel my bad humor and then said, “It had bet­ter f**ing rain.”

So a bit of trou­ble in par­adise. That’s the trou­ble with nature, one of my favorite writ­ers once said. “It’s so nat­ural.” Poi­son ivy, spi­ders, dirty moldy leaves falling in your hair. You don’t find that in Lon­don. Can it be that we’ve turned the cor­ner of our sum­mer emo­tions and find our­selves antic­i­pat­ing the charm in the life we’ve left behind? It’s been known to hap­pen. But then I look at this gor­geous photo of the Farm, taken by Shel­ley, and I’m smit­ten again.