reunited in the Hamp­tons, aka The Glam­orous Life

Whew, where to begin? I think that so much has been hap­pen­ing, I’ll start with today and work back­wards. I’ve been sav­ing some nice pic­tures from past weeks in a cou­ple of draft posts, and I’ll def­i­nitely make a stab at catch­ing up. As you can see from the above, it’s get­ting harder and harder to win­now down the pic­tures, try­ing to encap­su­late our sum­mer. I’ll have to make some deci­sions “strateget­i­cally,” as Avery would say. My favorite word of the sum­mer. In the meantime…

We just pulled in from pick­ing up Avery in Man­hat­tan. Why was our only child in the city with­out us, you ask? Well, it all started at the Hamp­ton Clas­sic, over the weekend.

The Clas­sic, as you may know, is the apogee of the North­east­ern Amer­i­can horse world. Set in glo­ri­ous Southamp­ton, truly the most sophis­ti­cated and glam­orous place I’ve ever been, it brings together all the best rid­ers of all ages. Back in the years when Avery went to a horse show prac­ti­cally every week­end, it was not so cru­cial to hap­pi­ness as we know it. But this year, of course, it was the ONLY show. And she’s been train­ing twice a week all sum­mer just to be ready. Joey, her insane but genius trainer, has raised his mel­liflu­ous voice more than once in the ques­tion that typ­i­fies his style: “NO NO NO! Girls, what has Avery just done that is the WORST thing you can ever do on a pony?” Wisely, the girls treat this as the rhetor­i­cal ques­tion it is, and wait patiently, in silence, for Joey to point out what­ever infrac­tion has caught his eye at that par­tic­u­lar moment and has earned the moniker “worst thing.” Sure enough two min­utes later, the Bronx air rings with the shouted words, “NO NO NO! Girls, what has Gabby just done that is the WORST thing…” And on and on through­out the sum­mer. The pic­tures shown here do not do his mer­cu­r­ial tem­per justice!

So after our last din­ner at Jill and Joel’s house, on Fri­day night (mmm, that parmesan-baked chicken and tomato-basil risotto was divine, thank you Joel), we got up Sat­ur­day morn­ing and headed to the Bridge­port, Con­necti­cut side of an hour-ish ferry ride to Long Island. What a trip! The rain that was to play such a cru­cial and unpleas­ant role in our week­end was gear­ing up yet again, but for the dura­tion of the ride we were able to sit out­side, enjoy the sea air, and lis­ten to me say­ing really stu­pid things about the geo­graph­i­cal loca­tion of var­i­ous pieces of land and water. I really have NO sense of direc­tion. We landed and drove the wind­ing way along the coast, pass­ing through the stun­ning towns of Water Mill (est. 1644, I was impressed) and Southamp­ton to arrive at Avery’s friend Tess’s house. Hon­estly, even accus­tomed to beau­ti­ful towns in Con­necti­cut, and the Eng­lish coun­try­side, it was amaz­ing, and intim­i­dat­ing a bit, to see on either side of the road huge expanses of metic­u­lously main­tained and land­scaped shrubs, hedges and lawns, all embrac­ing vast estates of stone or shin­gle houses, some dat­ing back prob­a­bly to the turn of the cen­tury or before, when the great tycoons of New York spent their sum­mers on Long Island. Some­where was Christie Brinkley’s famed estate, and who knows who else. We arrived at Tess’s house ear­lier than expected and Francesca, her mother, was out gro­cery shop­ping for the 30 or so peo­ple she had madly invited to din­ner that evening! Sounds like some­thing I would do. But what I would not do is accom­plish all my shop­ping at Citarella, the peer­less food shop I’ve vis­ited on the Upper West Side of Man­hat­tan, but never dared to patron­ize. Now they’ve opened a shop in Southamp­ton, and I fear, nay shud­der to think what this din­ner for 30 set Francesca and her hus­band Matt back. Twelve pounds of filet mignon! Ten pounds of shrimp! To say noth­ing of foie gras, roasted veg­eta­bles, dozens of figs to slow-bake in organic honey… Amaz­ing! So extrav­a­gant, so generous.

The house itself was gor­geous. A sort of Mies Van der Rohe-inspired low stone build­ing, per­fectly land­scaped with exotic plants. Every­thing pris­tine, match­ing, new, all the soft­est, thick­est, shini­est and most glam­orous of its kind. Here’s the item that, for me, encap­su­lated the entire extrav­a­gant, styl­ish and per­fect atmos­phere (I’m sorry I didn’t take a pic­ture but that would have seemed very odd!): in a glass-fronted double-doored cup­board in the front foyer, there were row upon row of per­fectly rolled, enor­mously thick bath sheets. Half the cup­board was filled with white, half with a trendy acid green. All just wait­ing to be used to towel off after a quick dip in the sybaritic waters of the in-ground pool, or the ocean a short walk away. Men­tally I con­trasted this with my skimpy pile of striped affairs, none of them match­ing or par­tic­u­larly thick, stuffed into an L.L. Bean can­vas bag to drag off to the pool in South­bury! Some­how I didn’t mind the image: the life out in the Hamp­tons is too per­fect to be real. Or am I just telling myself that so I don’t feel like a big fat loser? Which reminds me, John has been obsessed all sum­mer with apply­ing this epi­thet to dri­vers who dare to occupy “his” lane. To empha­sise his words, he places the fore­fin­ger and thumb of his right hand against his fore­head, a big fat “L.” The sad thing is, Avery and I laugh every time.

Francesca and Matt, along with assorted cousins and Avery’s beloved Tess, saun­tered in and we were reunited. Francesca is one of my favorite barn moth­ers, with whom I have spent count­less hours sit­ting by a jump­ing ring watch­ing our daugh­ters go round and round, sup­ply­ing end­less bot­tles of water for the parched rid­ers, dish­ing about our com­pa­tri­ots, whose pony is doing what, how every­one is doing in school, what insane thing Joey has done or said lately. Every once in awhile our con­ver­sa­tion is inter­rupted to make sure that someone’s child’s fall hasn’t bro­ken any impor­tant bones. Then it’s back to gos­sip. Francesca is a psy­cho­an­a­lyst, which makes con­ver­sa­tion very enter­tain­ing. So we all sat around with dozens of panini from the Blue Duck Bak­ery Cafe in Southamp­ton, ham and gruyere, tomato and moz­zarella, BLTs with basil. And corn chow­der (but not, I must admit, as good as mine; how­ever I know pride goeth before a fall), and lunchtime cock­tails of our new favorite Ruby Red Abso­lut vodka mixed with fizzy pink lemon­ade. I know, it sounds repul­sive and too pink for words, but it’s yummy. After lunch, the seri­ous busi­ness of prepar­ing din­ner for 30 con­sumed us. Francesca’s house­keeper Eliz­a­beth (for whom I would seri­ously sac­ri­fice a lot, what an amaz­ing help in the kitchen) toiled with us as we formed crab­cakes, mixed pasta with the fresh pesto I brought, watched Francesca roll the meat in a rub of her own inven­tion (car­away and lemon were pre­dom­i­nant) and tol­er­ated a lot of com­ments from the peanut gallery of John and Matt about “work­ing the meat.” They’re so mature.

Then there was spinach salad with the carmelized figs, and shrimp mar­i­nated in a hoisin-based sauce, to throw on the grill after the filets were done. All this was accom­plished under the com­pletely strict and Mistress-of-her-Domain speci­ficity of Francesca her­self. Very quickly we all real­ized that any invi­ta­tions to do things to our own stan­dards (“Of course, Kris­ten, chop that how­ever you like, it’s entirely up to you,”) very inef­fi­ciently masked the fact that all would be done EXACTLY as Fran wanted! One pot of boil­ing water to accom­mo­date a huge amount of pasta met with her dis­ap­pro­ba­tion and she enlisted John’s opin­ion as “the real Ital­ian here,” until the dish was reme­died. All this amidst threats to “sim­ply throw it all away and start over,” a man­i­festly imprac­ti­cal aim since the veg­eta­bles had roasted all day!

Avery and Tess alter­nately played chess with the life-size pieces on the in-ground flag­stone chess­board, jumped courses on the set of jumps set up on the lawn, jumped on the tram­po­line, or swam in the pool. Finally guests started arriv­ing and it was all my favorite barn peo­ple! Oriana’s mother, who is Car­olina Herrera’s daugh­ter, and Flo­ren­cia, Sophia’s mother, Gabby’s mom Camille, the Olympic water skier, and Ali’s par­ents, who are both psy­chother­a­pists and never averse to a lit­tle free advice, which I love. Plus of course the crown­ing glory of Joey and Chris­tine, look­ing glam­orous and full of dra­matic tales of the open­ing moments of the Clas­sic, which might or might not have been as impor­tant as Joey’s dis­ap­proval of the way Alexa’s mother arranged the flow­ers at the tent! The talk turned to how train­ing has been all sum­mer, with Joey dis­pens­ing lav­ish praise and hilar­i­ously exag­ger­ated sto­ries of mis­takes made, falls sur­vived, ponies with brain surgery who are at spas get­ting mas­saged every hour. I sim­ply sat back and was thrilled to be with them all, back with peo­ple I have missed all year, imag­in­ing hav­ing been part of it all while we were in Lon­don. How far away they all seemed. And how funny, styl­ish, full of glamor they all are. Through it all ran Francesca’s lit­tle white dog, Buda, whose pres­ence reduces the bril­liant and ascer­bic Har­vard grad­u­ate to phrases like, “Who’s mama’s lit­tle peachy fluffy lit­tle bun­dle, then, my dar­ling Buda? Who’s a clever girl, you lit­tle beauty?” She stopped once in hor­ror and said, “My God, Buda has turned me into Joey talk­ing to the girls!” One of my favorite sounds: Joey’s voice boom­ing across the jump­ing ring, “Is that my gor­geous AVERY I see? Sweet­heart, you are BEAUTIFUL!”

The next day it all came unglued! Glamor was replaced with tor­ren­tial freez­ing down­pours, glossy man­i­cured lawns with suck­ing mud, the Prada and Issey Miyake of the night before with soaked Levis and Blunny boots, foie gras with damp taste­less ham­burg­ers from a scary trailer. But Avery won fourth in “walk trot,” a huge achieve­ment con­sid­er­ing her absence from the barn all year, and the incred­i­ble com­pe­ti­tion of 28 other rid­ers. Good on you, Avery. And her divine Lady­bug. So all was worth the effort.

Back home via the Gap where we bought all new clothes since we were freez­ing and had packed badly! The girls retired to Tess’s room, with a dar­ling white trun­dle bed, many heaped Moroc­can cush­ions, huge blown-up pho­tos of Tess at a horse show. We grownups snacked on more foie gras and flat­bread, and con­tem­plated what to do for din­ner. Talk­ing to Francesca is a clas­sic exam­ple of what John calls “shiny object syn­drome.” She can be com­pletely focused on some really sig­nif­i­cant topic, but then a metaphor­i­cal shiny object crosses her men­tal field of vision, and it’s com­pletely off onto another topic alto­gether. “Should we just order in bad pizza? or there’s also bad Chi­nese we could pick up in town. Who’s Mommy’s best Buda, come here dar­ling, and Matt, when did you say you had to leave for New Haven? Why don’t you teach Nick to play Risk, I know I know how, but you two should learn it together, con­sider it a chal­lenge. John, could you order me boots like yours online? I am really afraid of the com­puter, or we could go out to the sort of dumpy Ital­ian place in town? Did some­body pour me a drink?” Com­pletely enter­tain­ing. Finally she and I went out to get Chi­nese, and on the way home ran into a party that had been shut down by the police and caus­ing huge traf­fic prob­lems as every­one tried to leave at the same time, totally flum­mox­ing the inad­e­quate park­ing valets that had been hired to take care of the cars. In the tor­ren­tial rain! Francesca sim­ply began back­ing up, to the noted dis­may of the dri­vers behind her. “Does that idiot see me back­ing up? Does he con­tem­plate that I will in fact run over his sorry butt if he doesn’t move? Did you get fried rice, Kris­ten? I said, I’m BACK­ING UP!”

Totally cosy to cud­dle up in the lux­u­ri­ous whatever-threadcount sheets, the bed piled with every pos­si­ble com­fort in shades of gold and bar­ley, and sip some of the Bus­nel Cal­va­dos I brought, in view of the weather. I always for­get, dur­ing the sum­mers, that there’s noth­ing on a cold, rainy night like a warm glass of Calvados.

Before bed we decided on a com­pletely spur-of-the-moment plan: Avery would stay with the Jacob­sons while we came back to the farm (fore­go­ing our planned trip to see the Sad­offs in Fire Island, since Alyssa answered the phone “Hur­ri­cane Sad­off, would you like a rain check?”). So proud of Avery to be able to stay with peo­ple she really has just got­ten to know, in such a cool place, and behave so nicely that they want her to stay. So in the morn­ing we headed off back to Con­necti­cut, talk­ing six­teen to the dozen all the way about the fas­ci­nat­ing peo­ple, the fab­u­lous food, the lifestyle we had a brief and entic­ing glimpse of. The per­fec­tion! Then we walked in the door of Red Gate Farm and sighed. It’s clut­tered, noth­ing matches, the kitchen always smells like the fire­place, there are bowls full of fruit and veg­eta­bles all over the counter and piles of library books, doll clothes and laun­dry to put away. But it’s also home.

So we picked Avery up at 39th and 3rd Avenue (let me tell you, after a half-hour’s stroll killing time I can report that there is noth­ing to rec­om­mend that inter­sec­tion, so cross it off your list for your next trip to the city), she hav­ing trav­eled on the Hamp­tons Jit­ney with Tess’s babysit­ter for the hand­off. Many sto­ries of adven­ture and may­hem at the Clas­sic, as well as reports on meals eaten (“I know you want to know about the food, Mommy, so I’ll get it over with”), toys acquired, Buda’s iniq­ui­ties includ­ing chew­ing on Avery and her belong­ings dur­ing the night (“it’s very dis­con­cert­ing to be in the mid­dle of a dream, and then some­thing is pulling on your arm, lit­er­ally pulling you out of your dream!”). Thank you, Francesca and Matt. For everything.