heav­enly home

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.