the arrival of the mothers

There comes a moment, every sum­mer, when we’ve tru­ly set­tled in.  Tri­cia has brought her tra­di­tion­al her­by cen­ter­piece, bless her heart.  We’ve spent the first few weeks set­tling in, see­ing all the neigh­bors, play­ing ten­nis, cook­ing, swim­ming, reread­ing all the sum­mer books we’ve been think­ing about all win­ter.  I catch David in a rare moment of relax­ation, read­ing by the pond, and this image seems to epit­o­mize summer.

There’s time for an after­noon pho­to­shoot with Avery, try­ing to cap­ture her 14-year-old self.  Our house is pep­pered with framed series of pho­tographs of her as a lit­tle girl, mak­ing faces, being sil­ly.  It has been a few years since I sat her down to be cap­tured, and it was more like work­ing with a pro­fes­sion­al mod­el than a child.  Times have changed.

She has opin­ions now on the pho­tographs I take!  “Delete!  Delete!  I look demon­ic!”  I have to be strong.  But there are some we agree on.

We’ve had plen­ty of hot and humid ten­nis games, accom­pa­nied inevitably by the Grumpy Old Men At the Ten­nis Court, whose grumpi­ness seemed to have been ratch­eted up recent­ly.  One morn­ing last week, after a heavy rain the night before, we arrived at the courts to dis­cov­er that they had eschewed the shady court out of fear of its pud­dles, and were installed on the far court in the blaz­ing sun.  A recipe for dis­as­ter.  All four of them spent the whole morn­ing won­der­ing under their col­lec­tive, grumpy and high­ly audi­ble breaths.

“Those young peo­ple might not want that shady court, they might rather have a sun­ny court… we should ask them if they want to move to our court, here in the sun.”

“Of course not, you fool, if they did, they’d move to the cen­ter court… Nobody wants to play in the sun.  Shut up and serve.”

There has been the chance for Anne to bond with her kit­ty niece, Jes­samy, here at Camp Curran.

I’ve had time to recre­ate — with my own quirky addi­tions — the break­fast stra­ta con­cept that Alyssa and I inhaled dur­ing our jaunt to Beecher’s Cheese Shop in Man­hat­tan.  I have to warn you: it’s very rich.  But what a cel­e­bra­tion of savoury.

Break­fast Strata

(serves 8)

12 slices old-fash­ioned white bread, cut into 1‑inch cubes

1 lb pork sausage

1/2 lb chest­nut mush­rooms, chopped

1 Padron pep­per, sliced thin

hand­ful small heir­loom toma­toes, cut in half

1 cup cheese curds (or piz­za moz­zarel­la, cut in bite-size pieces)

1 cup shred­ded Ched­dar cheese

4 eggs

2 cups half and half

But­ter a 9 x 13 bak­ing dish.  Place the bread in a large bowl.  Saute the sausage and break it up into small pieces.  Add the chopped mush­rooms to the sausage and saute until soft.

Add the sausage, mush­rooms, pep­per, toma­toes and two cheeses to the bread in the bowl and mix well.  Beat the eggs briefly and then whisk in the half and half.  Scat­ter the bread mix­ture in the bak­ing dish and pour the egg mix­ture over.  Bake at 350F/180C for 40 min­utes or until egg mix­ture is set.  Serve warm.

***************

All these activ­i­ties are com­pelling and deli­cious, to be sure.  It’s our summer.

But it’s all a bit of a wait­ing game, until the moth­ers come.

Of course in sum­mers gone by it was the moth­ers and the fathers.  In those won­der­ful days we revert­ed to being the chil­dren again, with the fathers fight­ing over who would car­ry heavy bags of gro­ceries and pay the din­ner checks, and the moth­ers bring­ing enter­tain­ing gifts from their bags for the grand­daugh­ters.  When the fathers were here, they ran errands: to the hard­ware store for the screw­drivers they thought we need­ed, to the bal­loon store to car­ry home dozens of bal­loons for birth­day par­ties, to the liquor store for a spe­cial Scotch to accom­pa­ny a chess game.  They came with us to the pool to swim laps and toss lit­tle kids to and fro in the water, and to pro­vide end­less quar­ters for the snack machine.

I hope sin­cere­ly that I appre­ci­at­ed those days and sum­mers with our fathers.

Every­thing changes.  Our moth­ers are exam­ples to me of The Right Stuff.  While life changes and chil­dren get taller and the fathers are no longer with us, the moth­ers still pack their suit­cas­es and take end­less flights to arrive at Red Gate Farm, arms out­stretched, smiles glow­ing, bags still packed with home­made cook­ies, piles of hilar­i­ous old fam­i­ly pho­tographs, ready to have a good time.  Din­ner con­ver­sa­tions are sprin­kled with sto­ries and mem­o­ries of the fathers, and it is as if they were still with us, for scat­tered moments.

The impor­tant thing is to make sure we appre­ci­ate our fam­i­lies as they are now.

My, how we pre­pared for John’s mom’s arrival!  We became the Com­pleat Clean­ing Team, scrub­bing every inch of the house, putting up the new clothes­line so I could wash and hang out the ancient red rug in the guest room that always takes a bit of a beat­ing dur­ing the busy sum­mers.  Espe­cial­ly with a toi­let-paper-obsessed kit­ten around.

Final­ly every­thing was bleached, Hoovered, mopped and fold­ed.  And we were off to the sweet lit­tle munic­i­pal air­port to fetch Non­na.  With all the dread­ful inter­na­tion­al air­ports we seem to find our­selves in, I love this lit­tle local one, nes­tled under blue skies in a cozy hol­low of green hills, always smelling of new car­pet, with one unin­tim­i­dat­ing arrival gate which seems to emit only hap­py peo­ple being reunit­ed with grand­chil­dren!  And so we found her, gath­ered her up and brought her home to relax with a glass of wine and enjoy the spe­cial brand of ease and com­fort that this old house seems to offer everyone.

And we had such a good din­ner… there is just noth­ing like fresh fried had­dock, with home­made tartare sauce.  John’s mom asks me to tell you that although she always says this, it was “the best had­dock ever.”

With sweet­corn — plen­ty of but­ter! — and broc­coli, sauteed in olive oil, it was the per­fect sum­mer sup­per to wel­come her.

I love the feel­ing I get when my moth­er-in-law is safe­ly under my roof.  I love her set­tling into her cozy red room with the green glass lamp, the table piled with tan­ta­liz­ing books she might like to leaf through before going to sleep, a selec­tion of lit­tle presents gath­ered in Lon­don and New York — a jar of ras el hanout, a fun­ny mug with bicy­cles paint­ed on it.  I went through box­es and box­es of pho­tos from the barn and assem­bled a lit­tle pile, full of memories.

It’s one of the unex­pect­ed ben­e­fits of get­ting old­er.  We are final­ly able to give a lit­tle bit of com­fort, a lit­tle cozi­ness, some cher­ish­ing, to our par­ents, who have giv­en so much to us.  A place to come and relax.

And the next evening brings MY moth­er, all the way from Indi­ana.  I know she was a bit intim­i­dat­ed by the idea of trav­el­ling with­out my dad, for the first time.  A first time to check in by her­self, to han­dle the lug­gage, to be in charge.  But she han­dled every­thing with aplomb, with my broth­er’s help, and I was so glad to get her here, safe and sound.

They arrived with Jill and her fam­i­ly, for an evening of trampolining…

And a din­ner of beef fil­lets with a but­tery, mush­roomy Duxelles.

Here’s how my con­ver­sa­tions go with my niece Molly.

Mol­ly: “Aunt Kris­ten, how old were you when you were my size?”

“Well, how old are YOU, Molly?”

(she holds up fin­gers) “Two.”

“Then I think I was two when I was your size.”

Mol­ly con­sid­ers.  “No, I think YOU were ONE.”

*******

The moth­ers arrived.  All was right with the world.