per­spec­tive, and blue sky

Ah, gas trou­bles and fence trou­bles and ter­mite trou­bles can move aside for… a sick Avery today. The poor dear woke up very early this morn­ing with what I can only hope is her typ­i­cal high, 24-hour fever, no other symp­toms to take much notice of, just the fever, and feel­ing logey and pathetic. Who cares about any­thing else that isn’t quite per­fect; all we need is for Avery to feel well and be at her best. The tram­po­line was silent for the first time since our arrival, like­wise the swing that didn’t swing, no request for a sprin­kler, no desire to take a kit­ten out­doors and make her jump… just a silent day watch­ing “Robin Hood: Series 2.”

I rushed out to get a chicken and some car­rots, and made chicken soup. In an ideal world I’d chill it overnight to skim the fat, but you know what? If you’re des­per­ate, it works like this:

Chicken Soup in a Hurry
(serves sev­eral help­ings to a hun­gry but ill lit­tle girl)

1 whole chicken (small­ish)
3 car­rots, sliced
3 stalks cel­ery, sliced
3 parsnips, sliced
1 onion, quar­tered
1 hand­ful dill
salt, pep­per, bay leaves
large hand­ful noodles

Place the chicken and every­thing else in a large stock­pot and cover with cold water. Boil low for 2 hours. Strain every­thing through a colan­der over a smaller stock­pot and pull off the good bits of chicken from the bones, and place them in the stock. Put stock back on stove and throw in noo­dles. Sim­mer for ten min­utes, and when you see the stock bub­ble around the out­side of the pot and leave a still pool in the cen­ter of the pot, scoop out every­thing in that cen­ter: that’s the fat.

By the end of ten min­utes the soup will be ready for an imme­di­ate serv­ing to the patient. But after she has her first bowl, add more cel­ery and car­rots and sim­mer until nicely cooked. The patient can have lit­tle serv­ings through­out the rest of the day and night.

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As wor­ri­some as a fever is, I feel she’s prob­a­bly fine. Between help­ings of soup, and glasses of ice, and the occa­sional banana slice, she made it through the day with naps and a LONG bath at night. I had for­got­ten how much fun it was to read aloud “Nancy Drew,” espe­cially “The Sign of the Twisted Can­dles,” so that was good. Halfway through I swore I heard a “tap, tap, tap,” and fig­ured it was my imag­i­na­tion, liv­ing through the Twisted Can­dles. But it was Anne, tap­ping at the back door to give back my bowl from the curry left­overs. We sat down at the pic­nic table out­side on the ter­race and I described Avery’s symp­toms, and she agreed that it sounded like noth­ing much, but hap­pily offered up, “I know every doc­tor in town, so just let me know if you want a visit to some­body tomor­row.” I fig­ure if Avery’s feel­ing tip-top (ish) by the morn­ing, we can let it go. But just the same, I walked over to Anne’s house and got the bit of mango ice cream she thought might help the patient, and looked on at lit­tle Katie asleep in the swing. What incred­i­ble good for­tune to have a neigh­bor who crosses the road and lis­tens to a bit of a worry, and offers up ice cream. “If Avery’s able, could she feed and look after the cats on Wednes­day and Thurs­day? It’s the baby’s injections…”

How lucky I felt, cross­ing the dusty road, to come back to our sun-dappled ter­race, com­mu­nity of squir­rels and chip­munks, peace­ful bird­feed­ers, Avery in her bath through the shade in the bath­room. Blue, blue skies and scud­ding clouds. The peace of Red Gate Farm!

Home­made pizza for din­ner, and she ate! The very best pizza sauce EVER is left­over sauce from last night’s:

Riga­toni alla Vodka
(serves 4)

2 tbsps olive oil
4 cloves gar­lic, sliced
1/2 Vidalia onion, or other mild white onion, sliced
3 tbsps vodka
1 tbsp Ital­ian sea­son­ing
1 large can or 2 soup cans whole toma­toes, squeezed in hand into saucepan
1/2 cup light cream
2 tbsps grated pecorino cheese

Heat olive oil and saute gar­lic and onion until soft. Pour on vodka and let bub­ble high. Add sea­son­ing and toma­toes and cook down, stir­ring fre­quently and break­ing up toma­toes, until well cooked, at least 45 min­utes. At the end, puree with hand­held blender and add cream and cheese, stir­ring well.

Use first for pasta sauce and then for pizza the next night!

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So in the mid­dle of every­thing else we’ve had sev­eral more vis­its from the stove guy and the gas tank guy, each of whom holds the other in the extremis of dis­re­gard. “He uses that bub­bling stuff to find a leak? That’s ancient his­tory. We’ve got this dig­i­tal reader…” just like lit­tle boys with the bet­ter BB gun or com­puter game! “They won’t be pre­pared for this even­tu­al­ity,” one says, and the other adds the next day, “This sort of turn of events will not be famil­iar to THAT sort of technician…”

For heaven’s sake!

Finally the stove worked. And at lunchtime, on Anna’s last day: two dif­fer­ent Gary and Ground­hogs to eat melon and enter­tain us! After lunch the per­fect trip to the pro­duce stand for corn, basil, plums! “I love the smell of basil,” Anna offers shyly, “and a lit­tle bit on my pasta if the pieces aren’t too big.” Then we were off to the pool for a per­fect after­noon of blue skies, shout­ing voices, happy laps. The group of ladies who is always at the pool were quite close to our tow­els, and one called, “You have a new library book today?” but I wasn’t sure she was talk­ing to me, and soon she called out the same again. “A new book?” so I chat­ted with them a bit. I’m try­ing to ana­lyze why their ques­tions put me off. They were anx­ious, hav­ing met John last year at the pool, to ques­tion me about our lives in Eng­land, Avery’s school­ing, why we want to live there. Nor­mally I quite like talk­ing about Lon­don and what­not. But there was some­thing that made me not want to dis­cuss it all. I felt very pro­tec­tive of our lives there, and not inclined to describe everything!

I think it was because the under­tone was so mys­ti­fied and almost hos­tile. “I’ve never felt like leav­ing the good old US of A”, and “Where did you live before you moved there?” and upon hear­ing New York said, “Well, I sup­pose it’s not so dif­fer­ent, them, but liv­ing in South­bury we’re com­fort­able.” And when I said I was orig­i­nally from Indi­ana, the one lady said, “I thought you had a sort of an accent.” I felt like a crea­ture in a zoo!

We do live in two very dif­fer­ent worlds, and I have to say I love them both. I love the crowded, super-competitive, fancy-ingredient, famous-people-sighting, busy life in Lon­don. I miss the voices, and the cul­ture and different-ness. But when we’re here I love the ease of get­ting around, the famil­iar­ity, the friend­li­ness and quiet, the pace that’s so much more relax­ing. And of course if we went back to New York City itself we’d be in yet another cul­ture I love, and miss, but try not to think about too much. As I told the ladies at the pool, far from being glad to leave either place for the other, I feel really lucky that we have BOTH.

So along came the end of Anna’s stay, and we took her back to Green­wich, through a most unpleas­ant rain­storm along the unfa­mil­iar Mer­ritt park­way: I was quite amazed that I was able to get us there, and back! Sad to leave Anna with her fam­ily. The night before we had vis­ited Anne, David and Baby Katie, leav­ing a lus­cious tomato and moz­zarella salad with basil rib­bons and olive oil, and chat­ting about Avery and Anna’s friend­ship. “We didn’t like each other AT ALL!” the girls chor­tled, rem­i­nisc­ing about those early days before they were joined at the hips. “Our moth­ers MADE us be friends!” Anne, feed­ing Katie and lis­ten­ing raptly as only she can, said, “That’s quite like the first friend I made at kinder­garten. I was put with her to play with blocks, and I remem­ber she had the most frag­ile WRISTS, and I was so afraid I would hurt her, and was so care­ful… we were friends for­ever after that…” That is what I love about Anne. Even wholly occu­pied with her new baby, she can host two lit­tle girls in her liv­ing room, lis­ten to their tales, and reach back into a story from her heart about her own child­hood. She is com­pletely real, com­pletely sin­cere. David ended up “air­plan­ing” Katie, mar­vel­ling at her growth since we arrived three weeks ago… what would we do with­out them, across the road?

Avery chuck­led one after­noon and said to me, in such a grownup voice, “I for­got an excel­lent Con­necti­cut mer­chant story, Mommy. You’ll love this. I went into the bak­ery, as you said, and asked for a dozen dough­nut holes. A really nice lady said, ‘Oh, honey, I’m sorry, this is all I have,’ and handed me a lit­tle bag. And in it were… a dozen dough­nut holes!” You have to live here to laugh.

Yes­ter­day we headed up to Jill, Joel and Jane’s house to cel­e­brate, as it turned out, Jane’s three-half birth­day, with an excel­lent brunch near their house, in the lovely flower gar­den park across the road. Such a gor­geous day… feel­ing lucky for everything.

Well, dark­ness has fallen and I am wish­ing for just one thing: a peace­ful night for Avery, an abate­ment of her fever, a restora­tive sleep. There’s noth­ing like a sick child to make a per­son stop com­plain­ing about other things…