home

Sigh of relief.  After nego­ti­at­ing five air­ports suc­cess­fully, I am at Red Gate Farm.  And after an intensely hot and sunny day spent unpack­ing and weed­ing the ter­race, the skies have opened and the rain is pat­ter­ing gen­tly down in the great upside-down bell of the side meadow, pool­ing in the gut­ters that want clear­ing out, and drip­ping from the roof of the big red barn.  I am home.

John and Avery picked me up last evening, one of those golden-blue Con­necti­cut evenings when there seem to be more orange lilies wav­ing in the breeze than you knew had grown on earth, when the hour’s jour­ney from the air­port sees the skies turn to pink and pur­ple, mak­ing every­thing look misty and per­fect.  Our own gar­den boasts one last per­fect lily.

This was an intel­li­gent strate­gic deci­sion on the part of our lit­tle farm­house: to appear first in a dim, dim light.  Because poor thing, it’s suf­fered over the long snowy win­ter.  We have arrived to dis­cover the ceil­ing of the laun­dry room falling down, mold in the rafters and pathet­i­cally stained walls in the liv­ing room.  Repairs are in order.

It’s a small price to pay for the lux­ury of hav­ing this lovely oasis to come to twice a year.  Poor thing, aban­doned all win­ter while we cavorted in Lon­don, all spring while we moved into our new house.  But now it’s Red Gate Farm’s turn for some ten­der lov­ing care.

First up on the agenda was to switch out the gor­geous win­ter glass doors for the clever screens made by our clever car­pen­ter.  “Avery, because you are a city child, this is your first expe­ri­ence liv­ing with a screened-door.  DO NOT, EVER, open or close them by the screens!” John warns.  It takes awhile.

Never mind, it will all come right in time.  Mean­while, we can turn our atten­tion to the impor­tant things in life: weed­ing the ter­race, rid­ding the wide lawns of a spring’s worth of fallen sticks and branches, vis­it­ing the super­mar­ket and the farm­stand and fill­ing the fridge with Amer­i­can food and drink: sweet­corn, Amer­i­can cheese, limeade, enor­mous kosher dill pick­les.  It’s impor­tant to take time to appre­ci­ate the July buds of the hydrangea tree, whose sea­sonal blos­som­ing marks the tran­si­tion from begin­ning of sum­mer, to time to say good­bye, every year.  Thank good­ness today it was “hello, hydrangea.”  We have a whole sum­mer to enjoy.

But I’m get­ting ahead of myself.  In between leav­ing Lon­don and arriv­ing at Red Gate Farm, I have been “home.”  How many places can one call home, any­way?  Well, three, if you’re me.  The third, but by no means least impor­tant, is my child­hood home in Indi­ana.  And that’s where I spent the last five days, with my mother and brother.

It breaks my heart not to include my adored father in this list of loved ones, because while I was able to visit him, he wasn’t at home.

In Feb­ru­ary, our fam­ily was forced to the con­clu­sion that my bril­liant dad, life­long sharpest brain — and tongue to match — in the Mid­west and beyond, must be moved to another stage of his life, in a home where he could be prop­erly cared for.  Alzheimer’s spares no one.  The dis­ease has taken my pre­cious father into another dimen­sion, a place where we can­not fol­low.  How sharply I felt his absence when I emerged from the walk­way from the plane, how keenly I missed his sharp gaze, his tight and encir­cling hug.  “Here’s the Kreeper, then, whad­dya know, safe and sound,” he would say, using my child­hood nick­name with no embar­rass­ment, effort­lessly shoul­der­ing my heav­i­est bag, “What the dick­ens do you have in here, rocks?”  In the old, dear days, how I loved his dash to grab lit­tle tod­dler Avery from rush­ing into the crowds, “Hey, you lit­tle monkey…”

My dad, who rel­ished the hot days of sum­mer that would bring me home for a visit, who adored dis­cov­er­ing the track­ing soft­ware that would help him fol­low my flight in the skies, who couldn’t wait to show me the tallest tomato plants in his gar­den, the plumpest spec­i­mens, bran­dish­ing with­out eco-obsessed shame his spray can of Miracle-Gro… who aban­doned any fam­ily dis­cus­sion when it was time for his evening roller-blading ses­sion, who single-handedly (my lit­tle self thought) kept all of Cen­tral Indi­ana in its right mind (“I’m out spread­ing men­tal health,” he’d say with irony as he went off to work)… he is another per­son now.

That dad has been replaced by another, qui­eter, more puz­zled man.  I approached him at his home, sur­rounded as he was by warm, lov­ing ladies hold­ing his arm, coax­ing him to eat.  They were not expect­ing me.

“Hey, here comes some­body who means some­thing to the Doc­tor!” one nurse said, watch­ing my dad stand up straighter, take his hands out of his pock­ets.  His eyes stared mag­net­i­cally into mine as I greeted him, press­ing a framed photo of Avery into his hands.  He clutched it tightly, I asked if I could hug him, and after a few sec­onds his arms came around me tightly, the framed photo in one hand.  We stood a bit apart, he star­ing intently at me.  Was he look­ing for some­thing, I won­dered, or was he try­ing to tell me some­thing, or both?  I could only look back, try­ing both to give and to receive, what­ever the impor­tant mes­sages might be.

“Want to take him for a spin around the porch?” a nurse asked.  “Hold tight, don’t let the Doc­tor wan­der, because he will,” she warned.  I took him around the shoul­ders and we descended in the ele­va­tor, work­able only with a code to be punched in, on his safe, safe floor.  We went out the front doors of the home, for my dad the first time in the fresh air since Feb­ru­ary.  He lifted his face to the sun.  “I know you love to be hot and sweaty,” I said, “so let’s take a lit­tle walk.”

We walked around the porch, greet­ing fel­low res­i­dents with the hes­i­tant smile he he has now — by no means shy, just reserved — and emerged into the park­ing lot, where he iden­ti­fied cars as Ger­man, and I reminded him of his Ger­man car when I was a lit­tle girl, ask­ing, “Do you remem­ber your license plate said ‘PSYCH”?  And Mom’s said “PSY­CHE.’  Because you were a bril­liant psychologist.”

“Was I really,” he mar­velled.  “Unbelievable.”

A lot of things are unbelievable.

We had our walk, and I held him around the shoul­ders, so dimin­ished now, so far removed from the broad, beefy swimmer’s shoul­ders that accom­plished the fastest but­ter­fly stroke in his Wis­con­sin high school, the shoul­ders that car­ried my suit­cases, planted toma­toes, cra­dled my daugh­ter.  “Do you remem­ber tar­ring the dri­ve­way together every sum­mer, Dad?”  “Did I do that this sum­mer?” he asked.  “Of course,” I lied stoutly.  “Every sum­mer, get­ting so hot.”  “Some­times too hot to work,” he remembered.

Some­times.

Sud­denly, as we walked, he leaned into my enclos­ing arm and said, “Bet­ter.  Bet­ter now Kreeper’s here.”

I felt that the world had started all over again, from the moment before.  “Bet­ter for me too,” I said.  “Bet­ter for Kreeper to be here.”

It seems to be the pro­found­est mys­tery of the world, where my father is now.

And home again, to cher­ish being with my mother.  Where on earth did her sense of design go since I seem to have inher­ited none of it; did it skip a gen­er­a­tion to emerge in Avery one day, when she has her own house?  My mother has spent the last six months throw­ing her­self into projects to enliven our child­hood house, her home of 45 years.  Every room is stamped with her inim­itable style: warm, cozy, personal.

Every room con­tains fur­ni­ture made by my father, dis­cov­ered and refin­ished by my mother, her hand­made sam­plers, her china col­lec­tion, her shadow boxes.  A home filled with the pos­ses­sions and love of a life­time of family.

She is brave beyond any­thing I could have imag­ined.  What fun we had.  She invited her best friend Janet to lunch, and I cooked for them a com­pli­cated, freshly sum­mery salad of chicken baked in a parme­san crust, on a bed of but­ter let­tuce with steamed heir­loom pur­ple pota­toes, tiny toma­toes, dev­illed eggs.  We rev­elled in each other’s com­pany, with a life­time of friend­ship to amuse us.

And we went out to lunch, to the gor­geous and mys­te­ri­ous (no sig­nage!) Black Mar­ket Bistro on Indianapolis’s Mass Ave.  Tongue salad with beets and cot­tage cheese!  Ice­berg let­tuce wedge with creamy dress­ing, roasted rain­bow trout on a bed of arugula with two kind of olives and pan­zanella — stale toasted bread, a sort of supe­rior crou­ton.  Heaven, with my old friend Amy.  A joy to see her.

An evening con­cert in an Indy “pocket park,” sur­rounded in the hot, steamy Indi­anapo­lis sum­mer air by old, cher­ished friends, here Shel­ley and Amy again!

Cozy times at home with my mother, my brother, going through child­hood mem­o­ries, some­times lit­er­ally in boxes.

Of course there was time to bond with Maisie, my mother’s boon com­pan­ion, furry con­so­la­tion in so many moments of the new life we are all learn­ing to accept, at home.

And one whole day spent cook­ing my mother’s — and my! — favorite foods, stop­ping to switch the sprin­kler in the gar­den, to try to draw breath in the awe­some Indi­ana humid­ity, and finally to wel­come old friends for a com­pletely heart­warm­ing sup­per party on the gor­geous back porch, built by my dad years ago.  Crab­cakes, Moroc­can meat­balls, fried huge shrimp, stuffed baked mush­rooms, col­or­ful three-cabbage slaw, steamed aspara­gus with shaved Asi­ago… and pals from the past.  What a joy to see Kevin and Todd…

My clos­est friend in the world from child­hood, Amy… turned up totally unex­pect­edly as my mother’s new land­scape gar­dener.  There IS such a thing as fate.

And happiest-making of all, Kevin’s and Amy’s gor­geous daugh­ters, first cousins and the clos­est of friends, Colleen and Jesi.  I believe that is the way we sur­vive the pains of adult­hood: we revel in watch­ing the next gen­er­a­tion leap whole­heart­edly into the joys of THEIR whirl­wind ride.  Long may it last.

That was my visit “home,” bit­ter­sweet, filled with child­hood and adult mem­o­ries, leav­ing me with grat­i­tude for the life I had as a lit­tle girl, with two lov­ing par­ents I cher­ish, a sis­ter and brother I love and don’t see nearly often enough, friends in abun­dance who still sur­round my mother with love.  A beau­ti­ful way to start my Amer­i­can summer.