life enhancers

Life – at least, MY life – is made up of a cast of char­ac­ters.  Some walk onto the stage to pro­vide drama, to advance the plot.  Some are inserted to give the main char­ac­ter (me) a prob­lem to solve, a cri­sis to han­dle.  Some just want to have a seat at the din­ner table and con­tribute to the con­ver­sa­tion. Some wan­der onstage to pro­vide the nui­sance quo­tient, like the chip­munks at Red Gate Farm, after you’ve fed them innu­mer­able peanuts.  They eat a hole through your shed door in search of more.

But my favorites among the cast are the drama­tis per­sonae who make you want to watch the play, for the play to last longer, maybe even to see it a sec­ond time.  They are the life enhancers, and hap­pily in the past week my life has been full of them.

Last Sat­ur­day, we drove up our quiet coun­try road after din­ner with my sister’s fam­ily to find about three hun­dred cars parked along the shoul­der.  “Somebody’s hav­ing a party,” John remarked and it wasn’t hard to see who it was: the fam­ily with all the teenagers, whose dri­ve­way con­tained about another six hun­dred cars.  I felt the knell of doom.

Just as John had gone to sleep that night and his mother and Avery and I were put­ter­ing around in the desul­tory way of peo­ple who know it’s bed­time but don’t want to give up the fight.  There was a knock on the door.  I thought I was hear­ing things and did noth­ing.  Then I heard it again, and think­ing it was some­one from across the road with a toddler-related emer­gency, I opened the door, to find a very hand­some teenage boy on the step.

“I’m really sorry, but I just reversed into your dri­ve­way and took out part of your fence,” he said sheep­ishly.  “I didn’t want to just drive away.  I’m really sorry.”  John’s mom assessed the sit­u­a­tion and decided that a man was required, so poor John stum­bled down­stairs to han­dle things.  “Why don’t you give us your details on this card, and we’ll deal with it in the morning?”

While the boy wrote down his name, address and phone num­bers, I tried to judge whether or not he had been drink­ing, and decided I couldn’t.  He wasn’t lurch­ing around or belch­ing or weav­ing, and seemed per­fectly able to wield a pen.  “You are really a respon­si­ble per­son to take the deci­sion to tell us what hap­pened,” I said sin­cerely.  “It would have been so easy just to drive away.”

“Oh, there wasn’t any ques­tion of that,” he said, and I let him out the front door.

In the morn­ing it was clear we weren’t going to be able to throw a cou­ple of nails at it and solve the problem.

Before we could even begin to worry, the dad called and came over to assess the dam­age.  “I’m a shop teacher,” he said, “so this is no prob­lem to fix.  Some­thing Tyler and I can do together.  Help him take it seri­ously.  We’ll be over in the morn­ing.”  And they were.

Within two hours, the sec­tion of the fence he’d dri­ven into looked far health­ier than the rest of the dilap­i­dated structure.

“Gee, I wish you’d run over a MUCH larger sec­tion!” I said.  “That’s a really mature, respon­si­ble way to han­dle the sit­u­a­tion, and you should be proud of Tyler, and what a great job you’ve done as a par­ent.”  The dad took this in stride.  “Well, he’s off to col­lege next month and it’s a nice feel­ing to know he can step up to an unpleas­ant sit­u­a­tion, and do the right thing.”

The state of the world might not be as grim as it some­times looks, with peo­ple like Tyler and his dad out there.

Of course, an evening with my nieces Jane and Molly con­vinces you of that.

Who needs a fork?  Din­ner at the Japan­ese Steak­house requires only chop­sticks for intre­pid Molly, who alter­nately screamed and laughed through the fiery presentation.

Then, there’s our neigh­bor friend Mark, who pas­tures his horses in the meadow that stretches behind our house.  Out of the good­ness of his heart, he rode over on his big bush-whacking trac­tor one impos­si­bly hot and humid after­noon, to try to res­cue our stone wall from mau­raud­ing climb­ing weeds.  Here’s before.

I took him an icy bot­tle of water and we chat­ted about the fierce desire of all green plants to take over the uni­verse.  The next day, John put on every long gar­ment he could find to fine-tune the job, try­ing des­per­ately to avoid the plen­ti­ful poi­son ivy.

What a dif­fer­ence those two men made in the landscape!

And the next day our Land Trust friends brought over an even more seri­ous machine for John to play with.

Over the next few days, he became obsessed with clear­ing every scrap of brush and tree that even LOOKED like it was in the wrong place.

Mean­while, neigh­bor Kate and I did cart­wheels together, in the Olympic spirit.

And Kate dis­cov­ered, as only some­one very small can, a trea­sure in the ancient steps up to our house.  How have we lived here for eight years and never noticed a kitty print?

How glo­ri­ous the meadow looked that day, steam­ing gen­tly under the blaz­ing August sun.

Heavy rains came, and the air cooled, just in time for us to head to New York City for the day.  I for­get how much I adore New York, until I get there and absorb its unique energy.

Lunch with Alyssa!  It’s one of my favorite scenes in my life play, each sum­mer.  She makes me feel cooler, more inter­est­ing and infi­nitely more opti­mistic, just by being with her.  And to add to the fun, she brought Ivy into the mix of our friend­ship.  Ivy, who hired me to write for her beau­ti­ful, peer­less mag­a­zine, “Vin­tage.”

We met at a totally funky Russ­ian restau­rant, Mari Vanna, where all the sal­ads came in cut-glass par­fait dishes and the bath­room was papered with back issues of “Pravda,” over­laid with graf­fiti.  We ate dumplings stuffed with every­thing under the sun – pota­toes, mush­rooms, sour cher­ries! -  and paper-thin slices of egg­plant stuffed with we have no idea what.  “I didn’t want to ask,” Alyssa said.  “If you don’t know, you just eat it.”  We drank beetroot-infused vodka and luke­warm cof­fee and solved all the prob­lems of the cul­tural world.

There is noth­ing in the world like an old friend – some­one who knew you when your child was a baby, who lived right along­side you dur­ing the after­math of Sep­tem­ber 11, who brought her new baby to visit your fledg­ling art gallery, whose daugh­ter was the stal­wart main­stay of your child’s birth­day party guests.

And Ivy… she is a true cul­tural vision­ary, a per­son who looks around her with intensely cre­ative eyes, span­ning the worlds of food, design, lit­er­a­ture, travel, and sees how they can all be brought together under one cover.  The next issue of “Vin­tage” is just around the corner!

Together they helped me sur­vive my slight anx­i­ety over hav­ing sim­ply LEFT my only child on a New York City side­walk with a vague set of instruc­tions on how to find the sub­way and get down­town on it!  We have to let Avery do these things, after all.

On the way back up to Red Gate Farm, we stopped off on the Upper West Side to pick up Jes­samy, kit­ten of the world from two sum­mers ago, now hap­pily the pet­ted daugh­ter of our friends Alice and Con­nie.  It didn’t take Jes­samy very long to remem­ber Avery.

Anne mean­dered over with Kate to visit Jes­samy, but the kitty was hid­ing some­where so instead kate and I made “secret ingre­di­ent lemon­ade” with the end­less sup­ply of mint down by the pond.

What a beau­ti­ful child she is.

Finally, it was time for a trip down mem­ory lane, for me… in my long-ago, mis­spent early mid­dle age, I was a gallery owner in New York City.  Now, as any gallery per­son will tell you, the best AND worst things about the work are the artists!  My dears, the egos!  The nec­es­sary hand-holding, the need to stay com­pletely sober while lis­ten­ing to a lady tell you about her paint­ings whose medium is a mix­ture of human ashes and her own breast milk.

I am not mak­ing this up.

But every once in awhile, my space was graced by peo­ple of humor, per­spec­tive and gen­uine bril­liance and spirit.  And among these were Staci and Craig, hus­band and wife, paint­ing team and among the most gen­er­ous peo­ple I will ever meet.  How my heart broke when I moved to Lon­don and had to leave them behind…

And here, seven years later, they have re-invented them­selves as the brains behind my beloved food-writing gig, Hand­Picked Nation!  On Thurs­day, they arrived with Tomiko, the best edi­tor I’ve ever worked with.  (And Lulu the dog.)

The table looked lovely, though I say it myself.  Avery and I set it together.

Vichys­soise served in my new plummy cab­bage bowls!

Piles of pork ribs with my secret rub…

Three bean and pep­per salad, tomato and moz­zarella salad with pine nuts, lemon zest and red onion.  It turns out that bean salad is much pret­tier to pho­to­graph before you dress it, so Avery went to work.  These guys have been incred­i­bly appre­cia­tive of her efforts and she gets credit on the web­site – thank you!

I was so busy laugh­ing at Craig’s dry humor that I for­got to write down any­thing he said, and so busy eat­ing that I never got a decent photo of us all.  But in bits and pieces, yes!

In the thick, hot, sticky air, Craig filmed me being inter­viewed by Staci.  How daft I sounded I will not know until the clip is aired on Hand­Picked, but I’ll be brave and give you the link when it happens.

Staci remem­bered when she first met Avery.   “There she was, five years old, at the gallery.  She intro­duced her­self and then said, ‘Would you like to see the base­ment?  The space is quite usable.’”  Poor Avery, her child­hood blighted by an art gallery.  Avery and Tomiko bonded on the sub­ject of Doc­tor Who, and Avery and Craig on the sub­ject of the Leica cam­era, which is inch­ing away from being John’s as the days go by, and toward being Avery’s.

Their ambi­tions for the web­site are so excit­ing!  I love being given the chance to put a frame, a set of words, around my cook­ing expe­ri­ences and pop them up on the web for pos­ter­ity.  They, like Ivy and Vin­tage, have vision.  I can only sit back and admire.

What fun we had.

Red Gate Farm siz­zles in the August heat as I size up my sum­mer play, full to the brim with my favorite characters.