then every­one said goodbye

It’s always so hard to believe, when we wake up on the last day of sum­mer, that the next time we get out of bed it will be in Lon­don.  I’m too old-fash­ioned to think that’s nor­mal, no mat­ter how many sum­mers (and Christ­mases) we go through the unbe­liev­able tran­si­tion.  Change, and say­ing good­bye, is nev­er my favorite thing.

We drove one last time to New Jer­sey, four weeks after the big Sum­mer Exper­i­ment of 2014, to pick up Avery at Jeanne and Cyn­thi­a’s where she’s lived, high at the top of their celes­tial house, com­mut­ing to New York.  Good­ness, the expe­ri­ences she has had, many of them she is anx­ious not to repeat, most­ly of a com­mut­ing nature.  South Orange, New Jer­sey Tran­sit, the PATH train, Hobo­ken, Sea­cau­cus, Penn Sta­tion, Grand Cen­tral, Bridge­port, Sey­mour.  The Metro­Card in her wal­let can now be shelved.  But liv­ing with Jeanne and Binky?  That was heaven.

We arrived for lunch, bring­ing egg sal­ad made from the eggman’s last deliv­ery.  But there was no one at home!  I thought for a moment that they had all been beamed up by aliens (includ­ing Binky’s car).  In a moment, though, we found that Jeanne was tak­ing a qui­et nap in the library, and then the girls came in from a most prof­itable trip to the con­sign­ment shop: glo­ri­ous sweater bar­gains!  We had our lunch, then said good­bye, feel­ing a fun­ny cock­tail of emo­tions: nos­tal­gia for all the meals we’ve enjoyed around that kitchen table, relief that Avery’s sum­mer of tri-state dra­ma had come to an end with no bones bro­ken, and sad­ness at say­ing goodbye.

Avery, in her end-of-sum­mer exhaus­tion, growled out the win­dow at the pass­ing land­scape.  “Blast you, Newark,” and then slept peace­ful­ly all the way home.

At home, we raced to the farmer’s mar­ket to meet Mike, Lau­ren and their kids for a pic­nic from the Chub­by Oven, a move­able piz­za feast: but they had run out of food!  A quick exchange of phone calls revealed that Mike and Lau­ren already knew this and were head­ed to Red Gate Farm armed with Di Pal­ma’s piz­zas, which we devoured on the ter­race.  As the sun set, we moved inside for some seri­ous doll­house time for Abi­gail, for me to hold Gabriel on my shoul­der.  Rose­mary’s gift, left behind for Abi­gail, was a big success.

To think that we met Mike only because Anne-across-the-road thought he might be a can­di­date to adopt one of Avery’s shel­ter projects, the divine kit­ten Jes­si­ca.  Four years, two kids and count­less meals togeth­er lat­er, they are a trea­sured addi­tion to the cast of char­ac­ters at Red Gate Farm.  It’s good to have friends who are at a dif­fer­ent (ear­li­er or lat­er) stage of life than where we are, fun to look back and remem­ber, or look ahead and imagine.

The last days slipped by.  Every day we said, “Isn’t it the most beau­ti­ful day?”, not mind­ing the repetition.

You know how they say that if you stand by the Eros stat­ue in Pic­cadil­ly Cir­cus for 24 hours, some­one you know will pass along?  Change that to five min­utes, and you’ll have some idea of what our ter­race is like, the last few days of our vis­it.  Some­times I think it is my most beloved place on earth.

I love Judy’s gera­ni­um wav­ing pinkly, maple leaves falling onto the pic­nic table, the chang­ing view high over head, a patch of sky between the trees and chimneys.

Judy her­self stopped by as I was per­form­ing my usu­al futile and yet pleas­ant task of car­ry­ing stacks of books from one room to anoth­er, shelv­ing, chang­ing my mind, reshelv­ing.  Hot and sweaty, I was more than hap­py to sit with Judy and a glass of ice water and while away an hour or so, dis­cussing the sum­mer.  Regi­na from the Land Trust saw us enjoy­ing the after­noon and came to join us.

I do believe that we all need as many moth­ers as we can get, and I am very hap­py to have Judy in my arse­nal, although she’s real­ly far too young to be my moth­er.  She is every­one’s mother.

Truth to tell, though, her star­ring role is as Lit­tle Rol­lie’s grand­moth­er.  She brought him by for a quick jump on the trampoline.

Once he got over his shy­ness, he popped up to the ter­race to gaze ador­ing­ly at Avery, to watch the chip­munks and squir­rels help­ing them­selves to peanuts from the glass John keeps filled.

Ful­ly con­fi­dent, then, he began dis­cussing with amaz­ing speci­fici­ty the var­i­ous farm imple­ments he had encoun­tered on a recent vis­it to his great-uncle’s farm.  “I saw a back­hoe, and a brew­er’s grain hauler, and a hay-baler…”  Fourth-gen­er­a­tion Con­necti­cut farmer in the making.

Anne crossed the road with Kate and sat with us, strate­giz­ing our joint project of the cook­book and her plans to bring her grand­moth­er’s writ­ings into the 21st cen­tu­ry.  We both think Gladys would be hap­py to think of us talk­ing about her work, updat­ing her recipe for chick­en liv­er pate, feed­ing her grand­daugh­ter in the icon­ic kitchen.  I sit with my copy of Anne’s moth­er’s mem­oir of their child­hood.  Kate exists hap­pi­ly in the reflect­ed glow of her ancestors.

How on earth did the whole sum­mer go by with­out a trip to the pool?  Excuse me, the Poo.

Years ago, in the after­math of Hur­ri­cane Sandy, the “L” blew off the pavil­ion (a rather grand name for the life­guards’ hut).  Yes­ter­day I said in sur­prise, “But I thought you replaced the ‘L’.  Did­n’t I see it last summer?”

“Yep, but in the mid­dle of the night last month, some­body took it off again.  We keep mean­ing to put one back, but…”

“I like it that way,” I said stubbornly.

“Yeah, well, so does some­body else.”

Because school’s already in ses­sion, we prac­ti­cal­ly had the poo to our­selves.  A bronzed teenage life­guard horsed around with his lit­tle clients, an elder­ly lady swam majes­ti­cal­ly up and down her lane.  Avery read aloud from “Miss­ing Susan,” one of our sum­mer sta­ples, and the after­noon pro­gressed as all pool after­noons do.

We shared the absolute­ly nec­es­sary bag of Bugles, sim­ply the best snack ever invented.

“How do you even GET 53% of your dai­ly allowance of sat­u­rat­ed fat into just 210 calo­ries?” I marvelled.

“52%,” Avery answered, tak­ing one.

We swung by Mike and Lau­ren’s house on a last, joy­ful errand: pet­ting Jes­si­ca, who Mike cap­tured and held for us.

And because it’s always nice to have some­thing to look for­ward to, while we’re away this autumn, our friend Al will fix the win­dows in the Big Red Barn, a project that’s been star­ing us in the face since we bought the house.

Away we fly this evening with lots to think about: Moun­tain Sta­tion, “Fresh Out,”  steamed clams and lob­sters, Amer­i­can cheese, grams ver­sus cups, the shady court, piz­za deliv­ered, 666, The Hon­ourable Woman, chip­munks, squir­rels, wood­peck­ers and goldfinch­es, moldy cars, a fam­i­ly reunion, grand­moth­ers, yel­low bal­loons, for­got­ten pho­tographs, new­ly-cut wood, dad­dy-long-legs, corn on the cob, toma­toes, spicy mayo, hot dogs.  See you in just four months.