spin­ning

Every sum­mer it comes as a sur­prise to me to remem­ber why it’s called “fall.”  Because they are – falling, that is.  The love­ly green canopy that has kept us cool on even the hottest sum­mer after­noons has begun to make its way, leaf by crunchy leaf, onto the pic­nic table.  The stretch of hill­side between our pond and the brook has begun to fill with col­or­ful frag­ments, blink­ing in the after­noon sunshine.

The change in the air from sul­try to snap­py fits my mood today.  I’m feel­ing reboot­ed, fresh and ready to take on tasks like clear­ing out the archae­o­log­i­cal night­mare that is Avery’s bed­room, shelv­ing all the ran­dom books I’ve read over the last few weeks, clear­ing away Jessamy’s lit­ter­box and food dish­es and wav­ing her off on her trip back to the city.  Camp Cur­ran is over, for the kit­ty.  She has shred­ded her last roll of toi­let paper, has had her last nap on the liv­ing room chair.

Yes­ter­day I would nev­er have dreamed that today would bring ener­gy to attempt any­thing more stren­u­ous than pour­ing a cock­tail.   I have been on a com­plete­ly insane tra­jec­to­ry of Extreme Hostess­ing, stretch­ing back more days than I can count.  My lov­ing friends and fam­i­ly have point­ed out that I have a very hard time say­ing “no” to any pro­posed get-togeth­er, espe­cial­ly if the get-togeth­er might involve feed­ing some­one.  There is real­ly noth­ing I love more than prepar­ing a tru­ly deli­cious meal for my loved ones, who always seem to enjoy get­ting fed.  I think that while every­one gives me advice to learn to say “no,” all those peo­ple would be aston­ished if I began the prac­tice on them!  At least I hope they’d miss me.

How­ev­er, this ten­den­cy to say only “yes” can be tak­en to an extreme, as I expe­ri­enced in the last ten days or so.  I blithe­ly pro­posed and invit­ed, includ­ed and reached out, and every sin­gle one of my lit­tle plans came to fruition.  Which meant a fren­zy of dement­ed revolv­ing door arrivals and depar­tures, over­lap­ping guests with incom­pat­i­ble dietary require­ments, plus the result­ing filled dish­wash­ers, end­less laun­dry loads.  You know what I mean.  I bet you’ve been there too.

It’s what hap­pens when we come “home” for the sum­mer and try to live in five weeks as if we were here to stay.  I see us as a fam­i­ly of spi­ders try­ing des­per­ate­ly to weave enough webs to last all year, to catch all the love­ly plump, sat­is­fy­ing flies we can to feed us dur­ing the months in Lon­don when we live a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent life, filled with com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent peo­ple.  Except I stop short of actu­al­ly wrap­ping my beloved peo­ple in silk and suck­ing them dry.  At least I hope so.  Speak­ing of spi­ders, look who John found today on the pic­nic table, drink­ing from the rain­wa­ter in my votive candle.

Now that I’ve had a good night’s sleep and the incip­i­ent fall sun is shin­ing, I can step back and say that I would rather get myself in a too-fran­tic pick­le than miss any of the adven­tures we’ve had this summer.

Includ­ing, of course, bell­ring­ing.  As soon as my mother’s birth­day extrav­a­gan­za was over, I had a per­fect­ly won­der­ful, intense bell­ring­ing ses­sion where I had the inim­itable thrill of ring­ing the “tre­ble bell,” which leads every ses­sion of rounds, or a peal.  So, since I was the first to ring, I got to utter the immor­tal — in bell­ring­ing cir­cles! — words, “Look to… [every­one must meet my eyes]… Tre­ble’s going… [we all pull our bells off the bal­ance to be ready to ring]… Tre­ble’s GONE.”  And I pull off and the rounds begin.

Thrilling!

That very after­noon, as I was blithe­ly pulling my ropes, John’s sister’s fam­i­ly arrived from Min­neso­ta.  Now, their vis­it is a rare treat; even see­ing them hasn’t hap­pened in four years, and that time we went to them.  They have not been to vis­it us on the East Coast in – I can’t even remem­ber – eight years?  So it was a reunion well worth wait­ing for.  Cathy, her hus­band David, their girls Sarah and Ellen.  Lovely.

I had clev­er­ly under­ch­effed plates of chopped veg­eta­bles and cooked sausage and shred­ded cheese before I went off bell­ring­ing, so even though I got lost on the rainy way home (typ­i­cal me!) we were able to assem­ble crispy, tall piz­zas when I got in, and set­tle down around the din­ing room table to catch up on our var­i­ous lives.

After din­ner some of us played “Aggra­va­tion” while oth­ers gath­ered around the tel­ly at the back of the kitchen, to lis­ten to the pat­ter­ing rain on the roof and watch “Dark Shad­ows”!  Do you remem­ber, Barn­abas Collins and all the sheetrock ceme­ter­ies and sup­pos­ed­ly blood-cur­dling music and… noth­ing hap­pen­ing, episode after episode?  Too fun­ny.  Avery and Cathy began what would be a four-day con­ver­sa­tion called “Books You Must Read.”  It was very sweet to see the two most vora­cious and eclec­tic read­ers any of us knows, por­ing over title after title.

In the morn­ing the rain was relent­less, so we piled into the car and drove up to see Joel and the girls for a din­er lunch, so they could meet John’s fam­i­ly and also recov­er from their dis­ap­point­ment at my moth­er and broth­er going home that morn­ing.  Then we were onto the Mark Twain House and Muse­um in Hart­ford, a real­ly won­der­ful place to take any peo­ple who love books as my fam­i­ly does.  I per­son­al­ly love Twain’s quote, “I nev­er let the truth get in the way of a good sto­ry.” Words to live by!

From there we were onto a trip to Barnes and Noble, to stock up even more ful­ly than my house already is, and I must say I found this par­tic­u­lar sec­tion a lit­tle grisly.

Home for riga­toni alla vod­ka sauce, cheesy spinach, and cros­ti­ni piled with every­thing in the fridge, includ­ing creamy moz­zarel­la for Cathy who is a veg­e­tar­i­an, and anchovy but­ter for John, his mom and me.

After recharg­ing my bat­ter­ies to some­thing like 60% overnight, I awoke to John with a toothache, a jour­ney that has occu­pied us through to today, poor man.  But at the time, that sun­rise, we did­n’t know how bad it would get, and I could enjoy the dawn sky, not some­thing I EVER nor­mal­ly see, as my near­est and dear­est will tell you.  Now I kind of won­der why.

When Cathy’s fam­i­ly arrived from the hotel, we man­aged a clean-out-the-fridge lunch, and then a ride up the Phillips Farm mead­ow in Quin­cy the Land Rover, to see John’s Dad’s Bench.  How the girls screamed and shout­ed as Quin­cy bounced up and down the hills!

There was time for quick stop at Tri­ci­a’s gar­den, where Cathy bond­ed with Baby Rol­lie and I cal­lous­ly raid­ed for veg­eta­bles.  Tiny egg­plants from their branch­es, and beets, pulled right from the ground!  If I weren’t a com­bi­na­tion of not-here-in=spring and super-lazy, I would LOVE to have a gar­den yield­ing such sol­id gold bounty.

Cathy and I cooked togeth­er in the per­fect after­noon sun­shine, pro­duc­ing the beets and egg­plants ready for grilling, and lit­tle round squash­es stuffed with mush­rooms and goat cheese.  I can NEV­ER get enough grilled beets.

These lovelies were sup­ple­ment­ed by bison burg­ers, and sweet­corn, and David and Katie from across the road.  What an unfor­get­table menu, and guests.

Any mem­o­ries of Cathy’s fam­i­ly vis­it would not be com­plete with­out a ref­er­ence to our trips to the local dairy farm, Rich’s, for ice cream.  Have you heard Jon Stew­art’s hilar­i­ous injunc­tion against the use of the word “rich”?  “We have to call them ‘job cre­ators’ now, not ‘rich.’  You know, like say­ing, ‘This cake is so moist and JOB CRE­ATOR.”  Well, we have made many vis­its to “Job Cre­ator” Dairy Farm late­ly.  I per­son­al­ly can­not take that much sug­ary fat, but I am alone in this, so I keep every­one com­pa­ny.  Except Avery, who brings a book.  Cathy prob­a­bly would too if she weren’t all grown up.

The next after­noon saw us burn­ing calo­ries on the ten­nis court and then join­ing Cathy’s fam­i­ly at their hotel pool.  It sort of put our com­mu­ni­ty pool to shame, with its love­ly shad­ed chairs and snack bar, serv­ing “whipped cream vod­ka shots.”  The girls had an amaz­ing time.

We came home to a stir-fry din­ner, with every­thing under the sun includ­ed — many veg­eta­bles for Cathy, plus chick­en and beef fil­let for us, and a touch of Chi­nese five-spice.

We piled into Quin­cy, the girls scream­ing at every bump, for anoth­er trip to Rich’s, and sad­ly, in the mid­dle of the night, John’s tooth absolute­ly killing him.  This meant he was off to the den­tist, and our trip into New York with Cathy’s fam­i­ly off the sched­ule.  We kissed them good­bye, and vowed that it would not be so long before anoth­er reunion.

And the very after­noon they all left, Avery’s best friend Cici arrived for her sum­mer stay, includ­ing the best heir­loom toma­to-bur­rati­na sal­ad ever, with lemon zest and pine nuts.  Glorious!

Why would a giant ball of bur­ra­ta be called “bur­rati­na,” which sounds to me like a diminu­tive?  Who cares.  It is quite sim­ply the creami­est ver­sion of moz­zarel­la you will ever sink your teeth into.  The dress­ing on this sal­ad was noth­ing more or less than olive oil, and lemon juice.

Cici stayed for two days, on the sec­ond of which I drove John to Water­bury for emer­gency root canal surgery, poor MAN.  I raced home to feed the girls and drop them off at the crum­my com­mu­ni­ty pool which did not look any more appeal­ing after our expo­sure to the hotel love­li­ness.  This impres­sion of skank­i­ness was enhanced by the appar­ent acci­den­tal loss of a cru­cial let­ter on the sign.

The day only got cra­zier after that.  We aban­doned poor John to his antibi­otics and nar­cotics and a dark­ened bed­room and raced off to a hasty but beau­ti­ful­ly put-togeth­er tea par­ty giv­en for us by the niece of the old lady who lived in our house before suc­cumb­ing to old age.  Cathy is a supreme bak­er and her apple pie was stu­pen­dous, but I con­fess to wor­ry­ing about sit­ting qui­et­ly chat­ting when I had a large num­ber of peo­ple to feed that night for din­ner, hav­ing invit­ed them in a rash of con­fi­dence that of course I would have time to DO IT ALL.  Off we went.

Cici and Avery paced about in denial that she was about to be col­lect­ed to go home.  A com­bi­na­tion of hot and sweaty (I turned the AC on a bit too late!), wor­ried about John and his mis­er­able chip­munk cheek, and over­whelmed by din­ner prep for 11 in an hour’s time, I began to expe­ri­ence a sen­sa­tion that my sum­mer hol­i­day had become a giant steam­roller with me in its path, about to be crushed.

Jill and Joel and the girls arrived, Jill wise­ly pre­scrib­ing a cock­tail.  I pre­pared shrimp to fry, corn to boil, sliced toma­toes and moz­zarel­la.  John’s mom set the table.  Avery and Cici enter­tained Katie.

Real­iz­ing that Cici’s broth­er, to arrive any minute, suf­fers from celi­ac dis­ease, I dashed to saute a chick­en breast for him.  John emerged from his cave of pain to say hel­lo and threw casu­al­ly over his shoul­der, “Keep the back door shut when you have the AC on,” to which I growled through grit­ted teeth, “I have a lot big­ger prob­lems than that on my mind right now.”

And yet final­ly, can­dles lit, food on the table, every­one gath­ered around, it all came togeth­er as usu­al.  Cici’s fam­i­ly arrived, we made room.  The fried shrimp was crunchy, the toma­toes juicy, the corn but­tery.  We were with fam­i­ly and friends.  The mos­qui­toes land­ed.  All was well.

And so I have sur­vived.  I have rest­ed and spent today qui­et­ly.  It will be only a mat­ter of time before I’ve for­got­ten the crazi­ness and sched­uled six more impos­si­ble things before break­fast.  Maybe that’s what sum­mer is all about.

Or maybe I need an intervention.