the last day

Well, we’re in that unpleas­ant, cranky stage of leav­ing that entails mass­ing huge num­bers of books on the stair­way (“Can some­body carry those upstairs when you go next? AND the pair of shoes next to them, please”), rip­ping labels from pre­vi­ous jour­neys off the suit­cases, mon­i­tor­ing what’s in the dryer, mak­ing beds with fresh sheets to greet us at Christ­mas, try­ing to decide between air con­di­tion­ing while we pack and the dish­washer. Every­one is annoyed. “But I DID tidy my room, only now it’s messy again from hav­ing shifted books and clothes to pack or not pack…” “Are we REALLY out of paper tow­els??” “I know I told you where the car key was!” and “Can you pos­si­bly eat this hard-boiled egg before we leave, or do I have to throw it away?” Throw­ing away food at this point of pre-departure makes me crazy. As a result, our din­ner was bizarre: crab salad with cel­ery, tomato and moz­zarella and an avo­cado, plus corn on the cob and some stale Triscuits…

Part­way through this dubi­ous feast, Judy and Rol­lie appeared to say good­bye, give Avery a CARE pack­age for the flight (some lovely puz­zles and choco­lates, thank you!), and sat with us, watch­ing us eat our weird din­ner, hav­ing had their much more nor­mal repast ear­lier (“we were sure you’d have fin­ished!”). We gos­siped, told sto­ries by can­dle­light, watched Avery not eat (her appetite still not returned after her fever over the week­end). Judy and I decided for SURE where the Christ­mas tree would go (def­i­nitely for sure) now that we’ve changed around the rooms… They took their leave, sig­nal­ing the true end to sum­mer, as much a blow as that from Anne, David and Alice’s depar­ture with Katie yes­ter­day afternoon.

This neigh­bor four­some turned up while I was sit­ting with Avery at her chicken soup lunch yes­ter­day, and said their good­byes, so sad. “Katie will have changed so much by Christ­mas,” I mourned, hug­ging her for real, instead of just hold­ing her as I usu­ally do… Alice lis­tened to the ter­ri­ble “E above mid­dle C” on our incor­ri­gi­ble piano, Anne gave Avery one more hug, and they were gone… I ran across one more time to give Dave “Bread and Jam for Frances,” for Kate, and then Anne ran across one more time to return a dish to me and give a final hug, tak­ing our left­over cof­fee with her! That’s our friend­ship in a nut­shell: shared chil­dren, cof­fee, dishes. We looked across at lit­tle Kate, bal­anc­ing her­self against the screen door across the road, shout­ing, “Bye, bye, bye…” “This is so sad,” Anne moaned. The phrase of the last cou­ple of days, every sum­mer it is repeated.

How funny it is, that invis­i­ble line between one day and “the last day.” Two days ago we were hap­pily host­ing our across-the-road-crowd for a gor­geous salmon din­ner, upon our return from Fire Island. We raced in from the Island, unpacked gro­ceries, checked with every­one to see if they were cool with com­ing when Avery had a fever (she would be clois­tered upstairs, but still, with a baby it’s worth ask­ing), and YES. So home I went to sprin­kle an enor­mous side of salmon with olive oil and the irre­place­able Fox Point Sea­son­ing from Penzey’s, quite the best way to cook most things besides brown­ies, in my hum­ble opin­ion. Only at the last minute, John at the grill dis­cov­ered that our sup­ply of propane had run out, pre­cisely one day too early. DRAT.

Except that we made a dis­cov­ery (as so many culi­nary adven­tures turn out). Fox Point with salmon is per­fect in the oven. Here you go.

Baked Salmon with Fox Point Sea­son­ing
(serves six)

1 large side of salmon (about 3 pounds)
2 tbsps olive oil
2 tbsps Fox Point Seasoning

With your clean hands, smear the salmon, skin side down, flesh side up, with olive oil, then sprin­kle with Fox Point. Leave to reach room tem­per­a­ture before you slide the salmon onto a cookie sheet lined with alu­minum foil (super easy cleanup). Bake at 425F (210C) for 25 min­utes. SUBLIME.

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We served this with cucum­ber salad with sour cream, dill and lime juice, and Alyssa’s cheese-dripping corn on the cob, and sauteed aspara­gus. A FEAST. One final evening with them, start­ing out with din­ner on the ter­race with can­dles, then as the bugs found us, we repaired inside for Ciao Bella Key Lime Gra­ham Cracker gelato, a present from Anne and David, a superb follow-on from salmon. So good, so sim­ple. We sim­ply shouted with laugh­ter over var­i­ous sto­ries from the sum­mer, includ­ing John’s expla­na­tion of why we can no longer close the sun roof on our 10-year-old Pas­sat, now at 97,000 miles. “Mice made homes in the mech­a­nism, which means they stole insu­la­tion from every­where they could find it,” he said, “plus tak­ing all the work­ings out of the radio and the antenna.” “Which means,” Dave said, “that all the radio will play is ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks.’”

The fol­low­ing day found us begin­ning to acknowl­edge that the end of sum­mer had come. John was sift­ing through piles of papers, insur­ance, bills, con­tracts, finan­cial thises and thats. I was sift­ing through kitchen sup­plies: to save or not to save the half-used wild rice, where to store the sugar and flour… Avery was drift­ing around feel­ing almost-not-ill. And we were all get­ting ready for the last evening with Jill, Joel, Jane and Molly. The adults in the group had asked for “those ribs in tomato sauce that you did last year,” so I quickly emailed my friend Olimpia to ask for her recipe. Which I messed with a bit, because I was also in the mood for meat­balls. Gorgeous.

Olimpia’s Spare Ribs and Meat­balls in Tomato Sauce
(serves 10 easily)

2 tbsps olive oil
24 pork spare ribs
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 small white onion, minced
1 cup red wine
1 large can tomato sauce
1 large can peeled plum tomatoes

for meat­balls:
1 1/2 lbs ground pork
3 eggs
2/3 cups bread­crumbs
1 tbsp Ital­ian seasoning

So here’s what I did. Fol­low­ing Olimpia’s instruc­tions, I heated the olive oil in a heavy, very large pot and browned the ribs all over, on all sides. Then I added the gar­lic, onion and red wine and sim­mered, uncov­ered, for 5 min­utes. Then I added all the tomato bits and cov­ered the pot and sim­mered, NO MORE than a sim­mer, for 3 hours.

Then I mixed all the meat­ball ingre­di­ents as you would a dough (take off your rings) until it was nice and mixed, clean and con­sis­tent through­out. Form into medium balls (I think my mix­ture made about 15), and drop one by one into the tomato sauce, filled with ribs. Don’t try to stir yet. Cover the pot and sim­mer for half an hour, at which point the meat­balls will be cooked enough for you to stir the pot. Stir it up gen­tly, mix­ing up the ribs and the meat­balls. The whole thing can sit nicely, cov­ered, indef­i­nitely until dinner.

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This with some gar­lic bread was din­ner. The Three Js and One M arrived in a gath­er­ing sort of threat­en­ing sky. It didn’t take long for Joel to sug­gest gen­tly, as I set the table out­side, “Don’t you think that was thun­der, Kris­ten?” “DEF­I­NITELY NOT,” I rejoined, in no uncer­tain terms. I con­tin­ued to put out tealights, grated cheese, you name it. Avery was roused from her bed of con­tin­u­ing sort of mini-illness to run a course of jumps with her dar­ling cousin Jane, while Molly sat on my lap and ges­tured toward what­ever she could see. John and Jill repaired to dis­cuss things of finan­cial moment while Joel fed Molly and the sky, I am sorry to say, dark­ened alarm­ingly. “Are you sure you want to eat out­side? I’d really love to see what your din­ing room is like now, we’ve never used it before.” He’s too kind not to phrase it in the form of a ques­tion. “It is NOT going to rain,” I main­tained, while mak­ing salad dressing.

“It’s seri­ously going to rain,” Joel finally said, and I looked up at the sky. Avery and Jane were still jump­ing, under light that was, I had to admit, green. OK, OK, OK. Just in case, I’ll bring in the plates and nap­kins. The skies opened. It sim­ply POURED. “Aren’t you glad we’re inside?”

It WAS cozy. I admit it.

The last evening with our fam­ily. Jane sat on my lap, then leapt down to sit with Avery. We all ate more ribs and meat­balls than we could ever have pre­dicted. Molly learned to crawl, with John as her enthu­si­as­tic coach, but the clean­li­ness of my par­lor floor was not all that could have been wished for. I con­cur with my friend Shelley’s expla­na­tion for the unbe­liev­able level of dust in my house: it comes UP from the floor, not just DOWN from the feet that come in!

Jane repaired to a bath, in the serene atmos­phere of the guest bath­room, while we cleared up din­ner and Avery slumped some­where, try­ing to be nor­mal when she really still felt like a piece of Romaine let­tuce that’s been left out too long in the air. Jill cheer­fully dealt with Jane as she splashed, Joel laughed with Molly in the kitchen. We all felt that we did not want to say good­bye, since it was for four whole months. Jane hugged me tightly, say­ing, “You smell like Red Gate Farm,” which I chose to inter­pret as some­thing like can­dle­light, good food and Her­mes. John said pro­saically, “Prob­a­bly moth­balls and dust.” Prob­a­bly, but I can still dream. Off they went. Until Christ­mas. How we will miss them all, and how Molly will have changed in four months when we see her again.

This sum­mer has been so much about get­ting to know Avery every day as she changes so quickly, shop­ping, chat­ting, exchang­ing book ideas, thoughts on fam­ily and friends, menu ideas. She left Lon­don as still a lit­tle girl, but will be return­ing as a young lady. I have trea­sured so much these weeks of time together! Not the least shar­ing her won­der­fully inven­tive project of fos­ter­ing those kit­tens. News­flash: Lit­tle Dor­rit and Nemo were adopted suc­cess­fully! By the fam­ily who took them “just to babysit” on Thurs­day evening. The phone mes­sage said joy­fully, “This is Katie. We’ve fallen in love with both kit­tens and will keep them both. Thank you so much!” What a huge tri­umph for Avery, to take kit­tens who could hardly be touched a month ago, and turn them into kit­tens that a fam­ily could not resist for 24 hours! Bless her lit­tle kitten-whispering heart.

Today was all about doing “every­thing for the last time till next sum­mer,” an annual rit­ual we’ve all got used to. The last trip to the library, our last ten­nis game (my strange foot thingy resolved itself a bit in time to play), the last “Days of Our Lives” lunch, the last after­noon spent fold­ing laun­dry while watch­ing “Gen­eral Hos­pi­tal,” then a phone call from Becky to catch up, to say good­bye one last time. And I ran to Judy and Rollie’s to drop off the left­over bar­be­cued pork from last night which I was pretty sure would find favor with hun­gry young farm­ers as opposed to the rub­bish heap. As I recounted to Judy how we were try­ing to use up refrig­er­a­tor bits and bobs, she said quickly, “Well, I have some bar­be­cued pork from a friend who just dropped it off, if you need it…” That’s Judy. I almost fell for it. “Well, I hap­pen to know she CAN’T COOK, so don’t eat it,” I advised.

And the last trip to the pool for Avery and me while John ran count­less last errands which required mnemonic devices for him to remem­ber: “Cable, post office, corn, propane…”

We swam to and fro, me in a new cute tank­ini donated by Alyssa! How cool to have a new swim­suit on the last day of sum­mer, and pur­ple and black, no less. Thanks, friend. The sky was blue, the pines were green, the radio blared, the chlo­rine was killing. Avery and I glo­ried in the reper­toire that spells “All that it should be, all that is summer.”

Tomor­row at this time we’ll be in mid­flight to Lon­don, and all the unname­able and unsa­vory details that are Get­ting Back Home, like unpack­ing (awful!), Going Through Mail (never pleas­ant!), See­ing What Went Wrong (like dead plants, or worst case sce­nario, cats who did some­thing bad some­where). The flip side will be our happy reunion with our kit­ties, our neigh­bor­hood, our trip to Corn­wall. More from the other side of The Pond, very soon. Good­bye, summer.