the end of my hiatus

This is how prop­er Catholics must feel when “Father, it has been near­ly four months since my last confession.”

I will con­fess: I had kind of decid­ed to stop blog­ging.  I last post­ed in ear­ly Octo­ber and thought that was maybe it, for me.

After all, why write blog posts?  When I first start­ed in 2006, the blog was a way to record all the dai­ly details of our crazy new life here in Lon­don.  Avery had a new school, new plaits, new uni­form, new friends, new accent.  I had new friends, a new home to set­tle, all of Lon­don to dis­cov­er.  We trav­elled to many excit­ing places and every­thing was new.  It was impor­tant to describe and record it all, for you at home, and for us to remem­ber and digest.  I was and have always been so priv­i­leged to have you read my thoughts.

Then there came the food expe­ri­ences, and recipes, and even­tu­al­ly pho­tographs of food by me and then of course, famous­ly by Avery.  And a cook­book to doc­u­ment!  But now?

Avery has moved on with her life, and I became uncer­tain how much of my life, dai­ly as it is, was of inter­est to oth­er peo­ple.  How many times can non-bell­ringers bear to hear about my ring­ing?  (Although the occa­sion­al descrip­tion of a near­ly dis­as­trous Quar­ter Peal can only amuse.  We survived.)

I can’t dis­close details of my pre­cious social work, which occu­pies a lot of my life.  John’s busi­ness these days is rather secret, so I must keep mum about that.  (Except for the occa­sion­al fab­u­lous photo!)

Then, over Christ­mas, lying in bed one frosty night, I was reread­ing blog posts about Christ­mases past and realised how much joy they bring me.  Life is short, and some­times unpleas­ant, and being able to return to the mem­o­ries of times and peo­ple gone by can be an enor­mous com­fort.  Nos­tal­gia!  What­ev­er philoso­pher said, “Hap­pi­ness is not some­thing we expe­ri­ence; it is some­thing we remem­ber” knew what he was talk­ing about.

So I am resolved to con­tin­ue.  To con­tin­ue writ­ing down the things that hap­pen to us, to frame my expe­ri­ences with pho­tographs that will help us remem­ber how lucky we are to have this life, as ordi­nary and quo­ti­di­en as it is.  Because it is all worth remembering!

How to encap­su­late near­ly four months?  Let’s go back to where we left off, in October.

First, of course, we packed Avery up and dropped her off (actu­al­ly unpacked her, an activ­i­ty none of us real­ly enjoys and we’re always glad to see the back of that day with her set­tled in and cosy).  She is in a “stair­case” this year, some­thing I’ve always read about in nov­els and am hap­py to expe­ri­ence in real life.  Oxford is so… Oxford.

God knows the schol­ars with their bur­dens who have walked these treads.  The front view from her rooms is love­ly, with the chapel and Great Hall opposite.

The back view is equal­ly icon­ic, of the High Street with all its love­ly gold­en build­ings.  I think that’s the Rad­cliffe Cam­era, or the “Rad­Cam” in the distance.

To con­sole our­selves on leav­ing her there, we two hopped on a plane and in the blink of an eye were at Red Gate Farm!  We were deter­mined to appre­ci­ate the fall foilage, as my best friend Alyssa’s saint­ed moth­er-in-law would say (now I can’t say it any dif­fer­ent­ly).  The intense nos­tal­gia of arriv­ing at dusk to the house in its lit­tle dirt road, so rem­i­nis­cent of so many Fri­day autum­nal evenings arriv­ing for a restora­tive week­end, with lit­tle Avery in the back­seat of the car.  I had to call her up imme­di­ate­ly to describe the feel­ing, of going back in time, with the smell of leaves in the air and the sound of crickets.

In the morn­ing we were able to take in the lat­est addi­tion to RGF — stone path­ways from the dri­ve­way to the house on two sides!  Flag­stones from the sur­round­ing woods, set in place by our Irish stone­ma­son Vincent.

So beau­ti­ful.

The three weeks of our vis­it were an absolute dream.  We had deter­mined not to go in to the city, not to go out for meals to which we were invit­ed by well-mean­ing and gen­er­ous friends, instead to stay home and have every­one come to us!  And they did.  Dear, dear Rollie.

Judy and Rol­lie both for a lus­cious steak lunch!

Of course Jill and her family!

It was near­ly Hal­loween, but the weath­er was balmy and beau­ti­ful.  Such great girls.

The Lyons came en famille, of course.

Mark came by to explain that he was com­plete­ly swamped and had absolute­ly no time to do any­thing, and then stayed for an hour to chat.  More than once, to our delight.  This is Mark’s way.  He is one of my favorite peo­ple in the world, a man with a gun, a bow and arrow, a freez­er full of deer, a barn full of sheep and chick­ens, the ulti­mate sur­vival­ist fam­i­ly man who can also put out fires for a liv­ing and make rab­bit sausage.  I adore Mark.

And then I hopped on two more planes to see my moth­er!  I have a new method of sur­viv­ing fly­ing these days.  It’s all about knit­ting, and my new obses­sion, “Out­lander.”  So much Out­lander!  There are books to read, a tele­vi­sion show to watch, audi­ble books to lis­ten to, and best of ALL, a won­der­ful pod­cast, “Out­lander­Cast, With Mary and Blake.”  A bit of knit­ting (with vari­able wool so I don’t get bored), and a bit of Mary and Blake, per­haps a mys­tery or two on my lap, and the flights sim­ply…, well, flew by.

In addi­tion to my beloved moth­er and broth­er, I saw about a thou­sand oth­er peo­ple, in Indi­anapo­lis, Indi­ana, where absolute­ly noth­ing ever changes.  I gave a giant din­ner par­ty to cel­e­brate my home­com­ing, with child­hood friends who remain my trea­sured friends to this day.  I cooked my heart out, with my moth­er’s Chef Jen­ny.  I have nev­er cooked before with any­one so insane­ly effi­cient!  We plowed through our work in record time, on a beau­ti­ful blue-sky Indi­ana day.

  No one ever changes.  Lynette and Amy, my child­hood besties.

Jody, our French teacher, and my dear broth­er Andy (I love his shy smile).

Me with Jen­nifer, Janis and Pam…

I love this of Todd, brave enough to be the only boy at the par­ty, once my broth­er had depart­ed!  Here he is with Jen­nifer, Janet, Jody and Lynette.  Such FUN.  Just to be HOME.

Mom with Maisy, the fun­ni­est cat on earth (this is such a sweet video of that devot­ed kit­ty).  The lux­u­ry of long hours spent togeth­er chat­ting, run­ning errands, watch­ing tele­vi­sion in her incred­i­bly cosy home.  A won­der­ful visit.

It was time to go back “home,” what­ev­er that means any­more.  Back to Red Gate Farm for a few more restora­tive days of read­ing, cook­ing, enjoy­ing the leaves and each oth­er.  There were dry days…

And wet days…

We raked leaves, feel­ing ever more that it was 13 years ago.  So much nostalgia!

There is a new fire pit!  For a cou­ple of evenings, it was cool enough to enjoy.  I remem­bered so many such evenings, decom­press­ing from a week of fre­net­ic New York life with John work­ing all the hours God sent, my slav­ing away with stress lev­els at an all-time high at my gallery, Avery sur­viv­ing life in a New York City pub­lic school and rid­ing her beloved ponies.  We need­ed Red Gate Farm every week­end, to recharge our batteries.

One evening, I some­how dis­cov­ered this absolute­ly beau­ti­ful acoustic ver­sion of an 80s song that passed me by… every­one else I know has a com­pelling mem­o­ry of the orig­i­nal, but for me, this aston­ish­ing acoustic ver­sion just grabbed me and could­n’t let go.  I’ve watched it prob­a­bly 100 times, feel­ing so warm­ly toward this singer, and his emo­tion­al deliv­ery.  For me, it’s an indeli­ble mem­o­ry of my Octo­ber holiday.

One of our lazy after­noons, I came to the end of my orange scarf.  I realised sud­den­ly that there was prob­a­bly more to fin­ish­ing a knit­ting project than sim­ply ceas­ing to knit.  I could­n’t just run out of wool, sure­ly.  Just then, a lady came walk­ing up our dri­ve­way with a beau­ti­ful lit­tle girl by the hand.

“Where is the Fall Fes­ti­val, do you know?” she asked.

“Well,” I answered, “it’s not so much where as when.  It’s tomor­row, just up the road at the new Phillips Farm barn.”

“Tomor­row!  Oh no!  Felic­i­ty, I’m so sor­ry, I got it wrong.”

“That’s OK, Grand­ma, maybe we can come back tomorrow?”

“Maybe, maybe.”

I had a sud­den thought.  “I don’t sup­pose that you… know how to knit?”

“Sure, I do.  Do you need help with some­thing?  I’m Susan, by the way, and this is my grand­daugh­ter Felicity.”

“Pleased to meet you, I’m Kris­ten!  And yes, I have fin­ished my scarf, I think, but I don’t know how to stop.”

“It’s called cast­ing off, and I can show you.”

And she did.

In return, I gave her and Felic­i­ty each a copy of the cook­book and we spent all after­noon get­ting to know one anoth­er.  John took Felic­i­ty to feed car­rots to the cows in the pas­ture, and Susan and I chat­ted, quite as if we’d known each oth­er forever.

Final­ly I had to get myself togeth­er to pre­pare din­ner for the Lyons who were expect­ed any minute.

 Turn it over…

 This piece is one of a series, one of which we gave to Avery for her birth­day in Novem­ber.  She brought it home with her for the Christ­mas hol­i­days and I decid­ed we real­ly could­n’t part with it, so I went along to the near­by Con­tem­po­rary Applied Arts Gallery in South­wark Street and bought anoth­er in the series for John for Christ­mas!  We just love it, and I can absolute­ly pic­ture these two artists togeth­er in a group show, organ­ised some­time in my imag­i­nary future.