a giraffe in your din­ing room

And why not? Have a giraffe in your din­ing room, I mean? This, along with fresh chick­en sal­ad and gaz­pa­cho, and irre­place­able din­ner con­ver­sa­tion, is the rea­son to vis­it our beloved friends Cyn­thia and Jeanne in Orange, New Jer­sey. I have come to terms with the hedge­hogs, spi­ders, lob­sters, koi fish, fox­es, rab­bits and ponies that adorn the plate rack in their library, Steiff ani­mals all com­plete with the lit­tle gold but­tons in their ears. I myself had a fair col­lec­tion as a child. But even I was tak­en aback by Claris­sa, liv­ing in their din­ing room. And yet why not?

We had our usu­al per­fect vis­it, miss­ing only John. I think when you get known as a per­son who likes to cook, few­er and few­er peo­ple cook for you. But Jeanne, bet­ter known as Jean­nemom­my since Avery thus chris­tened her prob­a­bly eight years ago, always feeds me. And noth­ing ever tastes as good as what she makes, no mat­ter what it is. In this case it was per­fect­ly roast­ed chick­en breast, pulled apart and tossed with pineap­ple, endive, cel­ery, white grapes and a bit of may­on­naise. Sim­ply divine. And this after we had dragged her on prac­ti­cal­ly the hottest day of the year, to find rid­ing clothes for Avery, in a charm­ing tack shop where the own­er of the barn actu­al­ly knew crazy Joey, Avery’s train­er. His fame, or insan­i­ty, pre­cedes him.

After din­ner we were joined by Cyn­thi­a’s niece Alexan­dra, who I met when she was Avery’s age and is now, fright­en­ing­ly, a post-grad­u­ate intern at Simon and Schus­ter in the city. To think the lit­tle sprout, Irish as they come, taught me to sing “Over in Kil­lar­ney” to try to qui­et new­born Avery, clos­et­ing us in the library dur­ing a din­ner par­ty. “It’s always com­fort­ed me,” I remem­ber her say­ing, and now not a bed­time in Avery’s life has gone by with­out its being sung.

After our love­ly vis­it to them, we were off again back to Con­necti­cut, this time to my sis­ter’s house to see my whole fam­i­ly! Won­der­ful to be togeth­er, but hon­est­ly, we could be any­where and we would all still be engaged in that pop­u­lar eter­nal game: “Watch Baby Jane”! It real­ly does­n’t mat­ter where we are, or who’s around the table or the room. Most­ly we all try to get her to say cook­ie (“did­dle lid­dle lid­dle”) or stroller (“doo­dle loo­d­le loo­d­le”) or squir­rel (“dur­dle lur­dle lur­dle”), or show us her hap­py feet, or say “What does Dad­dy do when he sees a bug?” and see her clap her lit­tle fat hands togeth­er, squeal­ing “Dad­deeee!” “Mom­my” is “mina­ma­li­na” or some such thing. Dad was busy help­ing Joel do some­thing involv­ing wet con­crete in the garage, and Moth­er was enjoy­ing being called “No—-na” by Jane at the top of her lungs. Every­one took time to appre­ci­ate Avery’s report card from QCPS and her Latin cup, then we were back to ask­ing Jane how does a sneeze sound.

More updates in a bit, but right now Avery are off on our typ­i­cal sum­mer­time rit­u­al: the library and the POOL! It’s 80 and sun­ny, what could be better.