town and country

Thank good­ness, the humid­i­ty has loos­ened its grip on the North­east!  I thought we were all going to be reduced to a pud­dle of sweat, frankly.  The last day of the ter­ri­ble heat was Thurs­day, when nat­u­ral­ly I had made plans to be in New York City.  Let me just say out­right that there is no place as humid as New York when it’s humid.  The air looked like it was rain­ing, but it was just the damp­ness sus­pend­ed between the build­ings, ris­ing up from the swel­ter­ing side­walks.  Ugh.

But this nasty sit­u­a­tion did not stop me from hav­ing a com­plete­ly won­der­ful time with my dear­est friend Alyssa and her dear friend Ivy, my edi­tor and pub­lish­er of Vin­tage Mag­a­zine, the coolest new kid on the block of print media.  I am ter­ri­bly proud to have had pieces pub­lished in both the first and sec­ond issues of Vin­tage, and if you get a chance, sub­scribe.  Whether you alight on an arti­cle extolling the nos­tal­gic virtues of the type­writer, or an essay on “Mad Men,” or my own piece on bell-ring­ing and Dorothy L. Say­ers, you will find some­thing to whet your cre­ative appetite, and my dears, the paper qual­i­ty!  No two arti­cles on the same paper, it seems, and pop-ups and cut-outs and all the excite­ment you nev­er get from a mag­a­zine any­more.  I’m real­ly tick­led to be part of it.

Alyssa intro­duced Ivy to my blog some time ago, and although we’ve suc­cess­ful­ly nego­ti­at­ed two edit­ing expe­ri­ences togeth­er, Ivy and I had not met in per­son until Thurs­day.  We con­vened at The Clin­ton Street Bak­ing Com­pa­ny on New York’s LES (Low­er East Side, I did­n’t know either when I saw it on the wait­ress’s t‑shirt) where grant­ed, as the name implies, most of the empha­sis is on bak­ing.  Alyssa and Ivy both chose the enor­mous waf­fle topped with peach­es AND nec­tarines and whipped cream.  Not hav­ing a sweet tooth, of course, I grav­i­tat­ed to the savory bits on the menu and had a real­ly fresh, crunchy Cobb-ish sal­ad where instead of chick­en, there were giant shrimps poached in a fen­nel broth, and avo­ca­do, crisp bacon, blue cheese, romaine let­tuce and toma­toes: luscious.

Ivy is a delight.  A real icon­o­clast with her own way of doing things, as you’ll see from the mag­a­zine.  What it must be like to live inside a brain teem­ing as hers is with such wide-rang­ing cre­ative notions!  True to her jour­nal­is­tic obses­sion with how the past can be brought into the present, she wore a vin­tage Her­mes blue suit, over a sweater with mar­ti­ni glass­es knit­ted into it.  Vin­tage pumps, and hand­bag.  And she car­ries her cred­it cards in an enam­elled case!  Not for her the worn-out wal­let that graces my cot­ton tote bag, stuffed with hand wipes and a library book just in case.  Total style is what Ivy has.  I could nev­er pull it off.

We had such fun, talk­ing about the mag­a­zine (which has won acco­lades left, right and cen­ter), our chil­dren, food, New York ver­sus Con­necti­cut.  The kind of far-reach­ing dis­cus­sion I count on my girl­friends for, and now I have a new one, in Ivy.

We part­ed from Ivy and slogged through the heat up the street to Katz’s Deli, my answer to that Food Net­work’s pro­gram, “The Best Thing I Ever Ate,” the episode called “Between Bread.”  What’s the best sand­wich you ever ate?  For me, it’s hands-down the pas­tra­mi on rye from Katz’s, with a slather­ing of hot mus­tard and a pile of half-sour pick­les on the side.  Not to men­tion the mat­zoh ball soup (not as good as Alyssa’s but damn good), and the pota­to latkes with sour cream (or apple­sauce, if you’re Avery).  Alyssa smiled indul­gent­ly at me as the bags piled up around my feet, watched me fight­ing for my spot at the pas­tra­mi-slic­ing counter, hand­ing over cash (that’s all they take) for my gold­en haul.  “Your car’s going to smell REAL good on that two-hour dri­ve,” she laughed.  It did.

And my good­ness, on the dri­ve into Man­hat­tan, the nos­tal­gia! NoHo, where we brought home our tiny baby Avery, and baby Avery’s first doc­tor vis­it just off Wash­ing­ton Square, Shake­speare and Co book­sellers where I first took her book shop­ping, the Gap where I went in just home from the hos­pi­tal to say, “I’m sure I’ll be a size 6 again some­day,” with clerks solemn­ly advis­ing, “Why not wait a bit… buy an 8…”

But so much changed!  The icon­ic DKNY mur­al at Broad­way and Hous­ton, which fea­tured the World Trade Cen­ter, is now a Hol­lis­ter ad, a sign of the times…  I will nev­er for­get that I once sat in traf­fic in the dead of night, home from teach­ing, at that very inter­sec­tion.  A traf­fic dra­ma ensued and, in the car next to me, the dri­ver reached behind his visor, pulled out a pis­tol, got out of the car and walked to the car who had pulled into his lane.  Tapped with the pis­tol on the duct-taped plas­tic that served as a dri­ver’s-side win­dow, pushed aside the plas­tic, said, “What the ****?” and then the light changed.   He got back in his car, put the gun back behind the visor, and we all resumed our jour­neys.  New York City, nev­er boring!

Alyssa dragged me through the half-humid-mist, half-rain, under her leop­ard-print umbrel­la, to Econ­o­my Can­dy, a mec­ca from which I would nev­er be able to extri­cate Avery, should I take her there.  Where else could you buy gum in a pack­age that says, “Don’t Have Ugly Kids”?  Only on the Low­er East Side of Man­hat­tan, for $1.  Vis­it their web­site, do: it tells you every­thing you need to know.  Just awful, and yet some­how won­der­ful too.  I am a fool about New York.

We all spent that night in a funk over the kit­ty shel­ter’s demand that we bring them in for an Adop­tion Event on Sat­ur­day.  NOOO!  We had not had them long enough.  The dra­ma even cast a pall over the mar­vel of pas­tra­mi… and indeed all Fri­day I felt under a cloud at the idea of let­ting Jes­si­ca, Jamie and Jes­samy go…

But time, and an impend­ing din­ner par­ty, wait for no man, so there was noth­ing for it but to get to work.  Bleach­ing the pic­nic table, site of innu­mer­able lunch­es and din­ners, and soon to be laden with din­ner for my dar­ling friend Shel­ley and her fam­i­ly!  And in between this chore and scrub­bing the barn win­dows (why I was com­pelled to do this when so many of them are bro­ken or out­right miss­ing, I do not know), I man­aged to catch most of “Days of Our Lives” and “Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal,” a mas­sive plea­sure of mine when I’m in Amer­i­ca.  I am liv­ing in shock at the can­cel­la­tion of “As The World Turns,” so close on the heels of los­ing “Guid­ing Light” last fall.  Times do change.

And Shel­ley and her fam­i­ly arrived, to our excite­ment, and bear­ing mass­es of gifts: wine, toma­toes, cucum­bers, choco­late mint (the herb, not the can­dy!), basil, oregano, sage and rose­mary from their herb patch.  Heav­en­ly!  Now, I shall wait until tomor­row’s post to tell you what we ate… because it is a post all on its own.  For the moment, be con­tent with the Condi­ment of the Night:

Sal­sa Verde

(serves a lot as a driz­zle, then an addi­tion to sal­ad dress­ing, a dol­lop on a burg­er, etc.)

2 cups each: basil, curly or Ital­ian pars­ley, arugula

4 cloves garlic

juice of 1 lemon

sea salt and pep­per to taste

enough olive oil to make a paste (per­haps 3/4 cup?)

Sim­ply put every­thing in the Cuisi­nart and run it until it’s a per­fect saucey con­sis­ten­cy.  It’s like pesto, only with­out cheese, or pine nuts.  VERY light and adds a zesty JNSQ (you know, “je ne sais quoi”) to every­thing.  LOVE IT.

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As we ate, rev­el­ling in famil­iar com­pa­ny and the sort of con­ver­sa­tion that occurs when three teenage girls get togeth­er, and when friends like Shel­ley and I can hold at least three top­ics in the air at once, our friend Rol­lie, Jr., and his gor­geous wife Tri­cia stopped by, bear­ing… ZUC­CHI­NI and CUCUM­BERS!  Our boun­ty was com­plete.  Tri­cia laughed over var­i­ous goat recipes I had giv­en her: we have become firm friends on Face­book, and that means noth­ing’s off lim­its as far as top­ics go!  And before we knew it, Anne had stopped by, and we pored over mate­ri­als from the Gladys Taber reunion, orga­nized by Shel­ley and Erik, here and across the street, in June before we arrived.  I am flab­ber­gast­ed by the fans Gladys had, still has, and the love they have for our two hum­ble white clap­board hous­es, sit­ting in friend­ship across a dirt road, for 200 years.

I sat back, lis­ten­ing to the girls’ laugh­ter, Shel­ley’s soft com­ments at my piece in Vin­tage, Rol­lie and Tri­ci­a’s tales of the gar­den, Anne’s rue­ful reports of bath­time and the dread­ed Wash­ing-Of-Hair across the road.  “Did you hear the screams?”  And I sim­ply felt grate­ful.  Grate­ful for the gra­cious, ancient maple tree spread­ing its branch­es out to cov­er our table, grate­ful for the gift of friend­ship, vis­its to my ter­race both planned and impromp­tu, for my dar­ling daugh­ter and hus­band, for the kit­tens scrab­bling inside.  Even grate­ful for the moun­tain of dirty dish­es I knew was mount­ing up ahead of me, and for the knowl­edge that I had to choose between the dish­wash­er and the wash­ing machine: our elec­tric­i­ty can­not han­dle both at the same time!

Sum­mer, in fact, whether in town or coun­try, is suit­ing me just fine.

And to top it all off, the shel­ter called just as we were going to bed, to say they had enough kit­tens for their Adop­tion Event and we could keep ours to find homes for them our­selves.  HUGE sigh of relief, tum­bled into bed with the three of them milling about, chew­ing on each oth­er, bounc­ing off the walls.  And then… to sleep.