When you’ve moved house (and state, and coun­try) as many times as I have, you learn to make friends eas­ily.  John and I have had 15 homes in 22 years of mar­riage, and in every sin­gle one I’ve man­aged to gather enough good peo­ple to make life worth­while, share­able, warm and worth liv­ing.  I’ve been very lucky.

Then I go “home.”  Back home again, in Indi­ana.  And I remem­ber how won­der­fully com­fort­able, easy and FUN it is to be with friends and fam­ily who’ve known me since I wore a size six mea­sured in YEARS, kids who played in my sand­box, knew the names of my most impor­tant stuffed ani­mals, learned to drive with me, whose broth­ers were my teen crushes, peo­ple who worked till mid­night on the school paper with me and sat next to me while I learned to speak French and NOT to do algebra.

As I get older and take my par­ents less for granted, worry about them and miss them, it is sim­ply won­der­ful to be with peo­ple who grew up under my mom and dad’s watch­ful eyes along­side me, who admired them and counted on them as part of the happy Mid­west­ern child­hood we all shared.  Sit­ting on my mother’s beau­ti­ful Indi­ana porch, in her per­fect brown and white liv­ing room, sur­rounded by the fur­ni­ture and objects and gar­den I grew up with, it’s easy to con­vince myself I’m still young, a cher­ished child under my par­ents’ roof.  At “home” in Lon­don, there’s no doubt that I’m the grownup, with my hus­band, in charge of my own house­hold, respon­si­ble for my fam­ily, mak­ing sure we are all taken care of.  But at “home” in Indi­ana, I can relax com­pletely and bask in the illu­sion that noth­ing has changed.

Of course, every­thing has changed.

First upon my arrival in my child­hood town, I went to the lovely, imper­sonal nurs­ing home to visit Dad.  I’ve come to real­ize that part of the new life — with Dad in some remote place we can only imag­ine — is that we must expect the unex­pected.  Two years ago, when he was still liv­ing at home, he was vis­i­bly tense, ner­vous, unsure of him­self and the world around him.  It was the ele­phant in the room, know­ing that the sit­u­a­tion could only get worse, that in a very short time some­thing seri­ous would have to be done for him.

Then last sum­mer when I went to see him, he had spent five months safely in the care of the nurses at the home, a quiet, dig­ni­fied mem­ber of his new com­mu­nity.  He was resigned, qui­etly pleased to spend time with me, although for the most part it was unclear whether he knew me.

Last week, when I arrived unan­nounced as always, I was shocked to see how he had aged in the last year, but reas­sured to see that he was in the com­pany of the nurses who refer to him as “Doc­tor Paul.”  I approached him with the present I had brought — a cof­fee mug with a crown and “What a Great Dad” on it — and took his hand in mine.  We sat down on a sofa by the win­dow and he clutched with all his strength at my hand, lis­ten­ing intently as I told him I was glad to see him, about the fam­ily reunion I had come to attend, that Avery was well, John was well.

He said, “I wish, I wish,” and I stroked his arm and asked, “What do you wish, Dada-one?”  “Dada-one,” he repeated, my child­hood name for him, shak­ing his head slowly back and forth.  “I’m so glad to be here with you,” I said, tears spilling over although I tried not to seem upset.  Tiny tears welled in his eyes too, and we sat like that, hold­ing each other’s hands tightly.  “I’m a vol­un­teer social worker now, Dad,” I said, “spread­ing men­tal health just like you used to do.  Do you remem­ber how you’d laugh when you said ‘spread­ing men­tal health’?  I wish I could talk to you about it all.”  He stared into my eyes and said, “I wish…”

Sev­eral times he leaned toward me and I hugged him around his bony shoul­ders, still hold­ing his hand, think­ing of all the things those hands had done for me, the shoes tied, back held when I rode my bike, pick­ing toma­toes for me, car­ry­ing suit­cases through air­ports.  How dimin­ished he is now, the child to my grownup.

Finally I led him to his room and sat down on the bed, find­ing the iPhoto book of last sum­mer at Red Gate Farm, which I had given him for Christ­mas.  “I’ll be at Red Gate Farm soon,” I said.  “Let’s look at the pic­tures.  Here’s Avery, and Jane, and Molly…”  He stroked the pho­tos, say­ing, “Unbe­liev­able,” and “Ohhh,” sev­eral times.  Then, about halfway through the book, he shut it gen­tly and said quite clearly, “I can’t go back there.”  I did cry then, say­ing, “No, I know you can’t, and I am so, so sorry.”  We hugged again, then I took him to the din­ing room for his sup­per.  As I left him there, thank­ing the nurses for all they have done for him, he called me by his nick­name for my mother, sev­eral times.  “Lovely, lovely,” he said as I gave him one last hug.

And then, because life goes on and those of us still out in the wide world must enjoy it, we hosted the Big Porch Party of 2012, at my mother’s house.  Lots — but by no means all — of my dear­est high school friends.  And hus­bands!  And boyfriends!

The heat and humid­ity were all around us, but I wasn’t com­plain­ing!  After a British sum­mer of cold, grey rain, I was very happy to be hot and sweaty for a change.  And to be with old friends.

Oh, the food!  I cooked all day, with Mom keep­ing me com­pany (one of my favorite ways to spend a day).

Chicken meat­balls with sour cream brandy sauce, shrimp with wasabi mayo, roasted beets with bal­samic vine­gar, beanand pep­per and sweet­corn salad, dev­illed eggs, but­ter beans with rose­mary and Parme­san, a whole salmon side, roasted with home­made teriyaki sauce (chauf­feured to me from the North side of town by my lovely friend Amy!), and tomato moz­zarella salad.

What a relief it was to talk about Dad with peo­ple who knew him as I did.  “His wit was so sharp it was scary!”  “You know, he taught me hyp­no­sis one sum­mer…” “I was always scared that he was ana­lyz­ing me!”  And he prob­a­bly was.  How won­der­ful to be able to share sto­ries with the peo­ple of my child­hood.  Some friends are even closer to me now than they were in the old days.  I trea­sure every one.

My mother was gen­tly happy to see every­one, espe­cially her best friend Janet, my Sec­ond Mother while I was a lit­tle girl.  It gives me heart’s ease to know she is still at my mother’s side, through all the changes that have taken place.  And doesn’t this yel­low dress and sweater suit my mother down to the ground?  I want her to wear it every day!

An evening to remember.

We were up bright and early in the morn­ing to head to Evans­ville for the long-awaited fam­ily reunion!  How the Wedek­ing fam­ily — my mother’s side — like to gather.  We all thought Mamoo would have been proud that we got together, even after her death this win­ter.  Some things never change, namely cousins in the pool.

Of course “we” aren’t the kids any­more!  We’re the grownups.  It felt very funny to be there with­out Avery, to have no one for whom I was respon­si­ble — to pro­vide a towel, tow around the pool with a noo­dle, take to the bath­room.  I can’t even remem­ber lit­tle Avery in the pool any­more.  But every­one else had kids for me to bor­row.  How heav­enly to see dear Joel and Molly…

And Jill and Molly!

And my beau­ti­ful Aunt Kay, 95 next year!  Ever youth­ful, a true South­ern belle, she rel­ished hang­ing out with Jane.

I finally got to meet my newest cousin, Katie Jane, daugh­ter of my eldest cousin Steve and his lovely new wife Sarah!

We cleaned up to have din­ner at the deli­cious Bone­fish Grill - crispy shrimp in a creamy, spicy, Nobu-like sauce — my good­ness, Amer­i­can por­tions are HUGE!  Mom and I both brought lots of food back to the hotel fridge.  I spent a bliss­ful fif­teen min­utes or so car­ry­ing lit­tle Katie Jane around the restau­rant, trea­sur­ing the feel of hold­ing a baby!  What a joy to have gained a new cousin in Sarah, and her lovely baby, born on Mamoo’s birthday.

The entire fam­ily took over the tiny lobby of the motel that evening, shout­ing with laugh­ter at old, repeated fam­ily jokes until finally the desk clerk shame­facedly asked us to “keep it down.”  It’s hard to keep our fam­ily down.  Molly is so small that she couldn’t even make the auto­matic lobby doors open, but that didn’t stop her run­ning around like a crazy per­son, join­ing in the big­ger cousins’ time-honored tra­di­tion of hide and seek.

Mom and I shared a room and stayed up until all hours, gos­sip­ing, rem­i­nisc­ing, our mys­tery nov­els open on our stom­achs, our places saved, but not a word got read!  It was much more fun to chat, chat, chat.

Up in the morn­ing to make a pil­grim­age to the ceme­tery where our ances­tors are buried: the Wedek­ing great-grandparents (from my generation’s per­spec­tive) who gave birth to all the gen­er­a­tions of fam­ily gath­er­ing this week­end.  I tried to con­vince my cousin Calla to pass up on the kids’ visit to the water park to join us at the ceme­tery.  Here she is, weigh­ing her options.  “Let’s see… ceme­tery… water park…”  Guess which she chose.

The dap­pled light from between the giant Civil War-era cypresses flick­ered over the fam­ily graves, steam­ing under the South­ern Indi­ana sum­mer sun.

Uncle Kenny, the fam­ily his­to­rian and expert on Civil War lore, told of the Depression-era tra­di­tions observed by my great-grandmother and my great Aunt Elma.  “They would appear every Dec­o­ra­tion Day — you know, every May 30 — to remem­ber the sol­diers buried here.  Your great-grandmother would recite the Get­tys­burg Address and your Aunt Elma Gen­eral Logan’s address, declar­ing May 30 to be Memo­r­ial Day, from 1868 onward.  Your Aunt Elma car­ried a giant Amer­i­can flag with the pole in her navel.  ‘That’s because you have an “innie,” Grandma would say.  ‘Well, it is NOW!’” was Elma’s reply.”

We passed the ances­tral home — hardly a com­pound, but a sweet lit­tle house designed by my great-grandfather.

Uncle Kenny drove us to the top of the hill where he used to park with Aunt Mary Wayne as boyfriend and girl­friend.  “I told her we were up here to watch the sub­ma­rine races on the river, and she never could under­stand why she couldn’t see any­thing hap­pen­ing,” he said, shak­ing with laughter.

The heav­ens opened while we had our pre­cious lunch at Steak ‘n Shake, one of my treats when I go home.  And the air was even thicker, more heav­ily humid than before!  The long-suffering hotel man­age­ment had rel­e­gated us to some sort of awful faux-leather-chaired board room, so we all gath­ered there with our var­i­ous lap­tops and iPads, and passed them around, show­ing fam­ily pho­tos to dear Aunt Kay who had her first expe­ri­ence swip­ing her hand across a com­puter screen!

Din­ner that night at Biaggi’s, a lovely Ital­ian place where we feasted — all 38 of us at one long, rau­cous table! — on lobster/mascarpone/portobello pizza, roasted salmon salad, you name it.  Jane gen­er­ously donated a meat­ball from her spaghetti!  How won­der­ful it was to cra­dle her on my lap and chat, catch­ing up on months’ worth of expe­ri­ences and sto­ries.  How she has grown, changed, matured since Christ­mas!  Seven and a half, hard to believe.

Repair­ing to the board­room again with wine and brandy, the fam­ily sto­ries were aired yet again.  To think next year will be the 30th anniver­sary of our reunion tra­di­tion!  And we tell all the same sto­ries every time.  “Remem­ber the old one Mamoo used to tell, try­ing to get great-Grandma Wedek­ing to laugh?  That woman had no sense of humor,” Uncle Kenny reminded us.  ‘Mamoo would say, ‘Have you heard the one about the can­ni­bal who passed his friend in the woods?’ And great-Grandma would say, ‘No, what about him?’  And Mamoo would say, des­per­ately, ‘But that’s it.  The can­ni­bal who PASSED HIS FRIEND in the woods.  Get it?’  Finally great-Grandma would frown and say, ‘Well, he had no busi­ness eat­ing his friend in the first place.  This party is get­ting a lit­tle ROUGH.”  And Mama Jessie, Mamoo’s mother, would shake her head and say, “That’s it, I give up!”

That evening, Jill joined Mom and me for our sleep­over chat, trad­ing sto­ries about our daugh­ters.  Fam­ily.  There is noth­ing like being together.

In the morn­ing there was one more pool adven­ture.  Molly’s cartoon-voice flowed over the party.  “Ladies and Gen­tle­men, boys and girls, wel­come to a splashy show with the amaz­ing… Molly Grove!”  “Get out of the way, Mommy!” she pleaded.  “I can’t!” Jill protested, “You’re hold­ing my hands!”

Finally it was time to line up the lit­tle cousins for the rit­ual stairstep photo, miss­ing only Avery and the second-eldest cousin, Ander­son.  Per­haps next summer.

And it was good­bye, for another year.

My brother drove us back to Indi­anapo­lis (pass­ing fields of water­mel­ons being har­vested and loaded into big yel­low school­buses, mod­i­fied for their new job!  I wish I got a photo of them), find­ing a farm­stand with per­fect Indi­ana toma­toes on the way home.

One more evening of gos­sip­ing with Mom, cook­ing Mama Nel’s chicken (so savoury and hot) for a final din­ner together.  Andy pre­pared toma­toes Dad’s way — blanched, peeled and chilled.  I got to pick up Maisie, amaz­ing!  I think she’ll miss me.

Finally after six days in Indi­ana, I hugged and kissed every­one and headed back to Red Gate Farm for an amaz­ing day of thun­der­storms and a 25-degree drop in temperatures.

The thun­der, the light­ning!  So cozy to spend the after­noon indoors, watch­ing the storm, prepar­ing the best chilli ever.  I can’t tell you how messy it was to eat, wrapped up in a let­tuce leaf!

Chicken Chilli with Three Beans and Mushrooms

(serves LOTS, at least eight)

2 lbs chicken breast fillets

3 tbsps olive oil

1 pack­age chilli sea­son­ing of your choice, doc­tored up (I used Car­rol Shelby’s and added extra cumin, paprika, onion pow­der and cayenne)

hand­ful mush­rooms, cut in bite-size pieces

1 jar Mex­i­can sofrito base

1 large can plum toma­toes, squeezed into pieces

1 soup-size can each: black beans, lit­tle pink beans, red beans (really, any beans)

Trim chicken com­pletely and grind in food proces­sor until the con­sis­tency of ground beef.  Heat oil in a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan and brown chicken until cooked through.  Add chilli sea­son­ing and stir well until chicken is coated.  Add the mush­rooms and soften slightly, then add sofrito, toma­toes and beans.  Sim­mer for at least two hours, cov­ered.  Serve with sour cream, shred­ded cheese and cilantro.  In a leaf or with tor­tilla chips, or both!

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

The meadow shim­mered in the pour­ing sum­mer rain, as I cooked.

On Sat­ur­day, we will get Avery back from pho­tog­ra­phy camp, where she has been bliss­fully happy!  And then we will mean­der into our sum­mer rou­tine, the three of us, my own lit­tle fam­ily.  I feel so lucky to have been raised with gen­er­a­tions of fam­ily, all of them teach­ing me how to be a mother, a cousin, a niece, a daugh­ter, a grand­daugh­ter.  I can bring it all to Red Gate Farm and cre­ate my own tra­di­tions.  Sum­mer. Sigh.

I couldn’t be hap­pier today.

We’re home.

After a Lon­don win­ter and spring (and what passes for sum­mer) full of social work stresses, Lost Prop­erty dra­mas, bell­ring­ing chal­lenges, worry about fam­ily far away, and most crazy of all — the British government’s hang­ing onto our pass­ports and visas until TWO DAYS before we left! — we are HOME.

Of course, being home includes its own crazi­ness, like the car not start­ing and the hood stay­ing firmly locked so we couldn’t charge the bat­tery.  Then the elec­tri­cal sys­tem of our lit­tle farm­house means that we couldn’t turn on the air con­di­tion­ing with any­thing else plugged in, or else the power goes out.  Which it promptly did.  But we chose to con­cen­trate on things like the very last tiger lily of summer…

And then there is the enor­mous, ancient fern bed that with absolutely no effort on my part some­how reap­pears every sin­gle sum­mer.  I look at it at Christ­mas time, empty and bare and gray, and think, “This will never come back.”  But here we are.

Our relax­ing state began with our jour­ney out of Lon­don when lo and behold, we were all bumped up into Busi­ness Class!  Woo-hoo!  That is cer­tainly the way to travel… comfy chairs with lovely footrests, a hand­some man to bend toward me and ask, “Orange juice or cham­pagne, madam?”  Wafted aloft in the lap of lux­ury, I could feel all my wor­ries melt­ing away.  John leaned over and touched a but­ton and I was lying down!  I fell asleep almost as if I were in my own bed.  Heav­enly!  I wish I could get used to it.

We landed, popped into a rental car and drove through the sti­fling, almost vis­i­ble heat to stay with our friends in New Jer­sey, Livia and Jan­ice, our tra­di­tional twice-yearly reunion.  How won­der­ful it is to be in a place that never changes, with friends who never change.  And after all, they col­lect stuffed giraffes.

ALL SORTS of giraffes!

Avery was feel­ing a bit ill, with the begin­nings of a cold (plus jet­lag), so we put her to bed in the room where she always sleeps, with her beloved Gladys the Goose for company.

So many mem­o­ries of our 23-year friend­ship with these won­der­ful ladies, in this immense stone house where all the sheets are white, all the floors are gor­geous old wood, all the meals are deli­cious (rich, pink gaz­pa­cho).  I thought about the time I came to visit with Baby Avery and we put her to bed in a mahogany drawer, in a side­board.  We remem­bered the Fourths of July with Avery in a white dress smocked with an Amer­i­can flag.  The mag­nif­i­cent Mil­len­nium New Year’s Eve black-tie party, and lately, all our vis­its to and from Lon­don, enjoy­ing a single-malt Scotch in their never-changing old-fashioned white kitchen.  The most peace­ful house in the world.

We stayed awake as long as we could, gos­sip­ing and catch­ing up, lis­ten­ing to Livia and Jan­ice appre­ci­ate Avery as they always have, as a real per­son.  Now, of course, she is nearly adult!  “She is prac­ti­cally per­fect in every way,” they agreed, which is a very nice thing for a mother to hear.

In the morn­ing we woke early and raced off to the Maple Leaf Restau­rant in nearby Maple­wood, where John and I lived as new­ly­weds (I was too scared to live in New York!).  With per­fect “two eggs with sausage and cheese on a roll” in our hands, we went back to the house and gob­bled, lov­ing the New York tra­di­tion, the per­fect break­fast EVER.  And after a bit of time watch­ing Andy Mur­ray try to trounce Roger Fed­erer (good luck with that), we were off.

Because it was time to take Avery to her long-awaited, highly-anticipated pho­tog­ra­phy camp in Brooklyn!

In the sim­mer­ing New York heat, we all stood for a moment on the side­walk with all Avery’s belong­ings and looked up at the rather impos­ing uni­ver­sity build­ing where she’ll be spend­ing the next two weeks.

In the icily air-conditioned lobby, we joined the queue with all the other kids and their par­ents, sign­ing her up and watch­ing her hang her ID and price­less dor­mi­tory key (actu­ally there is a price on it if she loses it, but let’s not think about that) around her neck.  We went up to her room and set­tled in a cou­ple of things before real­iz­ing there was no more rea­son to hang around, and that it was time to leave her there.  At least she has her books.

I wished we could have stayed to meet one of her three room­mates, but I had to admit it was time to leave her to her inde­pen­dence.  We got a hug and went, cross­ing the bridge, think­ing of all the oppor­tu­ni­ties she’ll have in the com­ing days, all the expe­ri­ences we won’t share.  It’s just the begin­ning, I know!

And onward to Red Gate Farm.  We stopped at the gro­cery for the first of our no-Avery din­ners: lob­ster, tomato moz­zarella salad, and… CORN ON THE COB!

How the house seemed to shim­mer in the heat!  We opened the front door to the famil­iar Red Gate Farm smell: a com­bi­na­tion of old books, leather chairs, woolly rugs, and some­thing like the ancient remains of thou­sands of log fires over the 201 years of its exis­tence.  I walked around famil­iar­iz­ing myself with this most pre­cious place!

We unpacked and set­tled in, I cooked din­ner, we had a cock­tail on the ter­race while wait­ing for the AAA guy to come and restart the car after its long win­ter in the lit­tle red barn.  And then the strug­gle to stay awake began!

We made it by sim­ply wan­der­ing around appre­ci­at­ing our beau­ti­ful, crazy, idio­syn­cratic lit­tle house.  Who could com­plain about doing the dishes with a view like this over the sink?

I woke up this morn­ing (too early!) and we started in on the var­i­ous tasks we always do together — swap­ping the glass front and back doors for their screened sis­ters, weed­ing the ter­race and blow­ing all the leaves and dirt of a win­ter and spring away, doing a mam­moth gro­cery shop (while think­ing lov­ingly of our neigh­bors Anne and David who filled our fridge with the ingre­di­ents for a mid­night snack, an early break­fast, bless them)… All through our chores, we kept say­ing how mind­lessly happy we are to be here.

“Every­thing is so Amer­i­can!” we kept repeat­ing, try­ing to cap­ture what we mean by that.  And you know how much I adore my adopted home­land of Eng­land, so it isn’t that I don’t love my life there.  But there is some­thing shoulder-relaxing, breath-slowing, heart-smiling about being here.  It sounds like a cliche, I sup­pose because it is, but the air is warm, the sky is blue, the red barns wel­come us home, the green, green Amer­i­can maple leaves and hydrangea tree wave gen­tly in the sum­mer breeze.  Even the white picket fence seems to say, “I know, I’m such a cliche, but aren’t I charm­ing?  Haven’t you waited all win­ter to see me?”

So we are home.  All the annoy­ing tasks we know we need to accom­plish: lay­ing a path from the dri­ve­way to the back door, shoring up the ancient stone wall — while avoid­ing the poi­son ivy that clings to it! — weed­ing the pond of all the greens chok­ing it and its fam­ily of min­nows, all these things await us in the com­ing six weeks or so.  I don’t mind.  It’s nice to swap over one set of prob­lems for another, and for the fore­see­able future, I’m happy to tackle what­ever comes my way, back home in America.

Sim­ple Tomato Moz­zarella Salad

(serves four)

2 cups (about 1 pound) heir­loom toma­toes, or fresh plum tomatoes

2 balls mozzarella

zest of 1/2 lemon

driz­zle extra vir­gin olive oil

sprin­kle sea salt

sprin­kle fresh black pepper

If using large toma­toes, slice thickly.  If using plums, slice in half.  Arrange on a plat­ter and scat­ter over moz­zarella, torn into bite-size pieces.  Dress with oil, salt and pepper.

Pier­rade

(serves 4)

3 duck breasts

2 large sir­loin steaks

1 pack­age hal­loumi cheese

sauces of your choice (Bear­naise, Satay, hoisin, Dijon mus­tard are good)

Place the meats in the freezer for about half an hour before you want to begin prepar­ing din­ner.  This will make them eas­ier to slice.  With a small sharp knife, cut all sinews and mem­branes from the duck and sir­loin.  You can choose whether to keep the fat on the duck, but you’ll want to remove it from the sir­loin.  Now, slice the meats into del­i­cate, bite-sized pieces.  Arrange in a sin­gle layer on plates and sprin­kle with seat salt and fresh black pepper.

Cut hal­loumi into bite-size pieces and place on a platter.

Heat up your pier­rade stone and brush spar­ingly with peanut oil.  Pro­vide every­one with sharp forks, and dig in, each per­son cook­ing his or her own bites as wanted, dip­ping into cho­sen sauces.