Some All-Girls’ Out­ings (with kittens)

We’ve been a sort of clearing-house for vis­i­tors these days, thank good­ness: after three straight weeks with just me 24/7, Avery was about to start climb­ing the walls (in her own com­pletely ele­gant way of course). Our fun with Farmer Rol­lie and his fam­ily, Anne, David and Katie, and Jill, Jane and Joel were wel­come lit­tle stars in our sky of togeth­er­ness. But it was time for houseguests.

Avery had started a run­ning com­men­tary of the news broad­casts: last night some dopey talking-head was describ­ing some­thing Obama had said, and descended into one of the typ­i­cal mixed bag of metaphors, sim­i­les and poet­i­cal imagery. “He’s tread­ing on thin ground here.” Avery groaned, “All right, that’s IT! He has to choose between tread­ing on thin ice, and cov­er­ing dif­fi­cult ground, but there is no such thing as THIN GROUND!” And as we watched my favorite episode of “The Vicar of Dib­ley,” star­ring my crush, Richard Armitage, she laughed per­func­to­rily at a joke and looked at me out of the cor­ner of her eye and said, “You real­ize I’m only humor­ing you.”

So it was with great hap­pi­ness that we received Jane for her sleep­over hol­i­day of the sum­mer, this week­end. She came with her bag per­fectly packed to include every­thing she could pos­si­bly need and her father ready for a night of concert-going all on his own. My unbe­liev­ably ener­getic sis­ter was on a busi­ness trip to Indi­anapo­lis, so Jane was ours for the week­end. There was tram­polin­ing, a din­ner adven­ture to Mag­gie McFly’s (there’s noth­ing like a light-up ice cube to MAKE your pink lemon­ade really shine), fun with kit­tens, a thun­der­storm in the wee hours, some fun with a whole col­lec­tion of brightly col­ored clay lumps, a trip to the incom­pa­ra­ble Lau­rel Diner for brunch on Sun­day, sweaty visit to the play­ground and some rugged hide and seek. Through it all was Jane’s own per­sonal sound­track, fea­tur­ing her bel­lowed ver­sion of “Life is a high­way, and I wanna ride it, all night long…” When I reported this to her dot­ing father Joel, he merely sighed and said, “She doesn’t even LIKE highways!”

Of course every­where we went every­one adored Jane. This would be repet­i­tive except that every­one must get in line behind Avery and me, who find Jane to be prac­ti­cally per­fect in every way. She’s incred­i­bly artic­u­late, humor­ous, ener­getic and warm. I told Joel, “Every­one found her so charm­ing…” and Jane, lis­ten­ing in from her posi­tion on the tram­po­line, chimed in dead­pan, “Well, I’m a charm­ing lit­tle girl.”

All too soon it was time to take her home. What­ever Jill and Joel are doing to pro­duce such an agree­able, enter­tain­ing and SWEET child, they should keep doing it. She wears Avery out, though! It’s so hard for me to look back at the three and a half year old Avery, what­ever she might have been like. I just don’t remem­ber it aside from lit­tle vignettes (at the park, she came to me with a bub­blegum wrap­per and said, “Mommy, please take my detri­tus”), but look­ing at the slightly pre-teenish girl calmly nego­ti­at­ing our lim­ited CD selec­tion in the car, it seemed there had never been a goofy, heed­less, reck­less, silly, sweaty lit­tle near-baby in her place. But I know there must have been. Avery, this sum­mer, seems to be in a bub­ble of extreme calm. “I love this age,” I said the other day, and she rejoined, “You always say that, Mommy,” and I said, “Yes, but it’s really true this year.” She is won­der­ful com­pany, morn­ing, noon and night.

We came home to a black­en­ing sky and wail­ing tree branches, and a visit from Anne, David and Katie to our cheer­ful kitchen to pay homage to the kit­tens. Thank good­ness I had suc­cumbed to my house­wifely instincts the other day and thor­oughly scrubbed the kitchen floor, as we all ended up sit­ting on it, on the kit­tens’ level, mak­ing absolute fools of our­selves with those voices that even intel­li­gent peo­ple can make when faced with the fuzzy lit­tle crea­tures. These voices use a lot of “o” sounds, as in “oooooo, they are sooooo cute!” And they are. Wig­gly, fear­less, hop­ping about and bounc­ing from lap to chair to rug, chas­ing their favorite toy: a roll of red Christ­mas rib­bon! Avery mar­velled at all the things they can, do, when their human com­pa­triot Katie, the very same age, can do… just mewl­ing and ask­ing for food! I explained this, point­ing to the cats and say­ing, “All these things they can do? That’s all they’ll EVER be able to do.” “Good point, Mommy.”

And life with no stove or oven? Get­ting old. I real­ize that for most peo­ple a microwave is used for more than, say, microwave pop­corn and… melt­ing but­ter. For microwave pop­corn. So last night I reverted to child­hood and steamed up a serv­ing of good old rice pilaf, used to love it as a child, not bad now. But corn in the microwave? Don’t love it. Mush­rooms in but­ter? Can’t cook them evenly. But a thinly-pounded chicken ten­der­loin, mar­i­nated in gar­lic, gin­ger, sesame oil and soy sauce, takes about 5 min­utes to grill, and that was lovely. Today I acquired a hot plate, in des­per­a­tion. At least then I can make pasta sauce, keep it warm in the microwave, and boil water for pasta. Anne keeps invit­ing us to use her stove and oven, but I feel that the last thing a woman with a new­born baby needs is a whole house­hold camp­ing out keep­ing an eye on a roast chicken. We’ll see. The gas peo­ple informed me loftily today that they don’t par­tic­u­larly care when my stove peo­ple are com­ing (tomor­row), that they can­not get me a new gas tank until… Fri­day. There must be more peo­ple who can sup­ply gas to me?

Today was the day Avery has looked for­ward to for MONTHS: the day she got to intro­duce the joys of Red Gate Farm to her beloved Anna and Ellie. Who knew (well, actu­ally we did, but we were sad any­way) on that last, hor­ri­bly sad day of school, that in just a few weeks we’d be reunited in the super-American, sunny, blue-skied side­walks of Katonah, New York, the per­fect halfway point between Green­wich and South­bury. It was fun to catch up with Becky, lis­ten­ing to her per­fectly exag­ger­ated South­ern accent as she describes her North Car­olina adven­tures. Then it was onto home for us, and the girls’ absolute on-their-knees devo­tion to the kit­tens. What else could you expect? One kit­ten per girl, noth­ing so 20th cen­tury as shoelaces to be sure with these girls and their Crocs, their plat­form wed­gies… but other toys pre­sented them­selves: Avery’s sum­mer obses­sion of lan­yards has pro­duced end­less num­bers of key­chains, bracelets, zip­per pulls… they all made per­fect teasers for the lit­tle ones. “I just KNOW that my mom will give in when she sees these lit­tle guys!” Anna said hope­fully. “My dad’s not THAT allergic.”

Finally they tore them­selves away and we headed to the pool, for a late after­noon dip. I actu­ally fell asleep on my towel in the sun, in total relax­ation with those girls occu­pied in the pool: no lit­tle voice clam­or­ing, “Come in, Mommy, it’s really warm when you get used to it!” I felt very grownup as I swam with them for just ten min­utes and then acted like a real mother, get­ting out and read­ing my book as they played. This is what I dream of all year in Lon­don when times get com­pli­cated. Just a calm sum­mer after­noon, every­one healthy and happy, sun blink­ing in and out of the fir trees, a nice icy bot­tle of water in the pool bag, a mind­less novel to hold up against the sky, Amer­i­can voices shout­ing, a radio play­ing tacky 1980s pop hits, most of them involv­ing “Jour­ney.” Perfect.

And what lux­ury to come home, take a leisurely shower while the girls prac­ticed their tram­po­line rou­tines, then to another din­ner (enough!) at Mag­gie McFlys, and more light-up ice cubes, nat­u­rally. The girls are like a com­edy act together, with a friendship’s worth of shared sto­ries, corny jokes and what seems to me an amaz­ing sophis­ti­ca­tion for chil­dren so young. Among them these three have racked up an out­stand­ing travel: can you imag­ine they’ve been to Rome, Flo­rence, Paris, Dubai, South Africa, Morocco, Ire­land, Scot­land, and count­less cities in their own United States? It bog­gles the mind to think of the restau­rants these girls have eaten in, the flights and hotels and tours and muse­ums and plays… and yet what really makes them happy is three stray kit­tens and a light-up ice cube. There’s a les­son there for sure.

We stopped at Anne’s to deliver some emer­gency cat food to her two, and now the girls are play­ing “Horseopoly,” at least when they can tear them­selves away from the kit­tens. I’m very happy with my lit­tle house­hold. But tomor­row night: I’m cook­ing in, no mat­ter how sick we are of grilling! Any new sug­ges­tions grate­fully accepted…