hol­i­day fervor

Whew.

That’s about all I can say: whew! Can it be only a week since we arrived for our Christ­mas hol­i­day, and we leave again tomor­row? It’s a mat­ter of air­line avail­abil­ity, as unro­man­tic as that seems. We just couldn’t get out any later. And any­way, there will be the return jet lag to con­tend with, and the begin­ning of school. But I’m get­ting ahead of myself.

Our arrival, fol­lowed by a des­per­ate bed­time, was fol­lowed then by a cloudy, semi-snowy Con­necti­cut morn­ing in which Rol­lie stopped by quite early just to say hello. “We were just about to come see you,” I said, “to pick up our tree.” I had, of course, writ­ten ahead in one of the few rela­tion­ships in my life that involves putting pen to paper, exchang­ing views on local weather, wildlife, famil­ial rela­tions, etc. No phone, no email, a real let­ter. “Ayuh, but haven’t you looked in the big barn?” Rol­lie asked, in glee. “They’re all THERE.”

Sure enough, the per­fect tree, dimen­sions to fit the hall­way per­fectly, plus four lus­cious green wreaths for the front win­dows, com­plete with bows made by Rollie’s wife Judy. Per­fect. He grinned with plea­sure to see our hap­pi­ness. And the aroma! I swear the tree never dropped a nee­dle in the week (far too short) that we had him.

Avery and I hunted down all the orna­ments in the white painted cup­board I have set aside for Christ­mas: lights, the ancient wax fig­ures of bird on leaf, Father Christ­mas with sack of presents, open Bible, that have graced a mil­lion Christ­mases since we found them at ABC in Union Square a mil­lion years ago, as new­ly­weds. And the orna­ments from my baby mobile, and the one cel­lu­loid gin­ger­bread house from my mother’s child­hood, and the 18 (!) sil­ver bells that John’s mother gives us, one each year, engraved with the sen­ti­ment of the year. “Another open­ing, another show,” from my gallery-owning days, “3 11 1996″ for Avery’s birth. “Unde­ni­able New York­ers,” for 2001, which brought its cus­tom­ary tears to my eyes. “Moscow Lon­don,” and “514 Broad­way,” from our old SoHo days. Avery this year was, for the first time, really inter­ested in what each bell said.

We fin­ished the tree and made our mas­sive gro­cery shop, and Avery sled­ded down the mod­est hills in the lawn, and I attached the VIc­to­rian can­dle hold­ers to the hydrangea tree, ready for their candle-lit splen­dour to come. The pho­tographs will not dis­ap­point, I promise!

Oys­ter stew on the stove, my fam­ily all came to visit. The usual, cosy and famil­iar arrange­ment: my mother in the kitchen rock­ing chair, my father wan­der­ing around look­ing at book­shelves and phone books and laun­dry room, and gen­er­ally inves­ti­gat­ing his sur­round­ings, my brother tast­ing some of every­thing that emerged from my knives, cut­ting boards and stock­pots. They all watched sports on the minus­cule kitchen tele­vi­sion that is all our house can boast, we lis­tened to Jane and Avery chat­ter­ing away. We made Christ­mas cook­ies (Jane mostly ate the col­ored sugar, why not), we ate my new favorite turkey salad.

Shred­ded Long-Roasted Turkey Salad
(serves 8)

1 turkey breast
1 hand­ful cilantro
1 hand­ful mint leaves
1 cup chopped roasted peanuts
2 cups bean sprouts
2 bunches salad onions (scal­lions), sliced thin white and green parts
dress­ing: 1 part soy sauce, 1 part lime juice, 3 parts sesame oil

Roast the turkey breast SUPER slow and SUPER long: 6 hours at 125 degrees fahren­heit will be about right. Remove skin and slice, then slice thin, the best of the breast. Save the rest for soup.

Toss it all together: DONE. Lovely.

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A fab­u­lous evening then, with Anne, David and Alice, oys­ter stew and oys­ter crack­ers with the rein­deer stat­ues and can­dles on the din­ing room table (Avery falling asleep from her cold), and ghost sto­ries about the Green Room and Red Room across the road! Just to relax with good friends and soup and can­dle­light and a lit­tle girl asleep upstairs… only what was that enor­mous thump? She hadn’t fallen out of bed as we thought: the ghost sto­ries came back to haunt us!

And on Christ­mas Even we went to col­lect John’s par­ents from the Hart­ford air­port (hilar­i­ous young local tele­vi­sion reporter there, so proud to cover the board of delayed arrivals, tons of makeup and “hol­i­day pay,” she reported). Home to a FULL MOON and the most remark­able shad­ows, as you see, on the snowy fern bed out­side our bed­room win­dow. Gor­geous, mag­i­cal, peace­ful and serene.

All right, I’m falling asleep. It’s our last night here, we have my sis­ter and her fam­ily, plus Anne and David across the road, to come and eat bagels with all the trim­mings tomor­row, plus tak­ing down Rollie’s per­fect tree and all its orna­ments to put away for next year.

Plus we just said good­bye on the phone to my fam­ily last night, and in per­son to John’s fam­ily, this after­noon. John’s dad’s been feel­ing poorly and so the good­bye was all the more wrench­ing. Every­one tired out tonight, so I’ll say good­night: espe­cially to Lynette, my dear high school friend who com­mented on the blog, and to our adored Amy who did so as well (love to you both!), and to the anony­mous reader who reported that Lon­don is thriv­ing in our absence but looks for­ward to our return. Our sen­ti­ments exactly…