a big storm, and a tiny pony

What a fab­u­lous time we’ve had here with Cici to add to the vaca­tion cheer. The first day of her vis­it was a washout, which was actu­al­ly per­fect: cozy indoor times for Avery and Cici to catch up on all the year’s gos­sip and news, time for me to bleach out the nasty kitchen cup­boards that had gath­ered cob- and spi­der­webs all year, to emp­ty out the pantry sta­ples that did­n’t sur­vive the win­ter, assess what need­ed to be brought home from the super­mar­ket, watch a lit­tle “Days of Our Lives,” rev­el in the enor­mous wash­ing machine (but it does­n’t do half the job our much-maligned tiny Miele does in Eng­land: you can get either effi­cien­cy or capac­i­ty, it would seem but not both).

The lawn thrived over the win­ter, as you can see, with the intre­pid help of our grass-care team who refus­es to bill us. Hon­est­ly, we live in fear of the day that who­ev­er in the office at that out­fit finds out they haven’t billed us in four years. How many times can we beg for an invoice? “Ayep, I’ll have to talk to Eric/Scott/David in the office and they’ll be in touch about that. See ya.” Oh my. We’ll owe the nation­al debt. It’s just one of those Con­necti­cut things. They exist on a dif­fer­ent plane here.

Avery had a ten­nis les­son! A nice East­ern Euro­pean man called Val, in superb phys­i­cal con­di­tion, with a nice no-non­sense man­ner, taught her for an hour, very relaxed but exact­ing, and by the end of the les­son she was able to hold up her end of a very respectable ral­ly, or vol­ley, or what­ev­er it’s called. Then, sad­ly, the next morn­ing dur­ing HIS les­son with Val, John tore up some essen­tial mus­cle in his back and spent the day full of Advil and feel­ing every one of his 43 years. It’s tough to get old! We girls on the oth­er hand spent the day laz­ing around at the South­bury Munic­i­pal Pool, soak­ing up care­ful­ly screened sun, pag­ing through books (Avery was amused to see that a lady across the grass was just about as far through the fifth Har­ry Pot­ter book as Avery was her­self!), watch­ing clouds cross the sun at infre­quent inter­vals. At one point I heard a voice say, “Hey there,” and then, “Hel­lo!” and final­ly decid­ed the per­son was talk­ing to me, and I gazed up with my hand block­ing the sun to see… my sis­ter Jill! Have you ever been tak­en com­plete­ly unaware by a per­son who most def­i­nite­ly did­n’t belong where she was? I felt that an alter­nate uni­verse had opened up, or a hole in time. What fun to have an unex­pect­ed chat! She had been on her way from check­ing on a race-sup­port truck in New Jer­sey (the life of an ESPN exec­u­tive stops for no one) and decid­ed to take a detour and see us, and was sent to the pool by the patient John, flat on his injured back. We made a plan to get togeth­er over the weekend.

Final­ly we had to go home, with a stop at the gro­cery store to get ingre­di­ents for a lip-smack­ing bar­be­cued rib din­ner com­plete with corn on the cob. I sent Avery and Cici over to invit­ed Anne and David from across the road, and it was but the work of a moment to put togeth­er a vari­a­tion on the bar­be­cue sauce I gave you last week:

Bar­be­cue Sauce Part II

equal parts: ketchup, soy sauce, sesame oil, lime juice
1‑inch knob of gin­er, peeled and minced
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
zest of 1 lemon

Mix all ingre­di­ents and slather over what­ev­er you plan to grill. Our baby back spare ribs took about an hour on medi­um heat, after mar­i­nat­ing for half an hour. Longer mar­i­na­tion would be bet­ter even than that, but they were real­ly tasty.

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What a delight to have Anne and David back in our lives. I try not to think, dur­ing the year in Lon­don, what it used to be like to have their friend­ship a road­’s width away every week­end. As much as I adore my Lon­don friends, and our hap­py social cir­cle (hap­py for the most part, of course!), there’s noth­ing like old friends, who have known you under lots of dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stances: being intro­duced on that first sun­ny house-hunt­ing day so long ago, when we first encoun­tered Red Gate Farm. We were all stand­ing across the road, hav­ing just met, look­ing over at the house and feel­ing the first thrill of own­er­ship. Anne was most dif­fi­dent in explain­ing her con­nec­tion to the neigh­bor­hood: hav­ing been raised there week­ends with her famous grand­moth­er, Gladys Taber. David described a very small bit his upcom­ing book pub­li­ca­tion, which lat­er of course was revealed as the extreme­ly well-researched and unput­down­able Crash Out, about Sing Sing Prison. Both of them were com­plete­ly unnec­es­sar­i­ly nice to Avery, then just a small five-year-old with a pen­chant for behav­ing already as if she belonged in a cov­ey of adults.

Since then of course there have been count­less vis­its over the fence, a heart­warm­ing bagel brunch on one anniver­sary of Sep­tem­ber 11, when it felt right to be with oth­er New York­ers, can­delit pic­nic table din­ners by the dozens, a Christ­mas Eve cock­tail par­ty here with all Gladys Taber hors d’oeu­vres! And so many live­ly dis­cus­sions of books, films, the antics of Quin­cy and Emmy the cats. How many times have they enter­tained Avery just on her own? It takes unusu­al peo­ple to want to answer the screen-door knock of a six- or even ten-year old girl, to hear what she has to say.

So we sat on by the light of the can­dles on Fri­day evening, watch­ing moths do their kamikaze rou­tines, while the girls watched a movie, and just caught up. As we do every time we go back and forth between Amer­i­ca and Eng­land, we end­ed up sur­vey­ing the world scene as we see it and com­par­ing Amer­i­can views to what we’ve been exposed to as Eng­lish views, ana­lyz­ing pol­i­tics of the past and present, won­der­ing what is on the hori­zon for the com­ing year or so. I always come away from these talks wish­ing I were even half as well-informed and ana­lyt­i­cal as they are; I think of them as true New York­ers who would not let the week go by with­out thor­ough­ly perus­ing the Times (which I could nev­er man­age even when I lived there) and giv­ing ample thought to the week’s events, crit­i­cal of what they see and read, ready to have a pas­sion­ate opin­ion on just about every­thing, but in the end, opti­mistic and full of ener­gy. Such fun just to sit back and rev­el in the dis­cus­sion. Then, too, we heard sto­ries about the Land Trust activ­i­ties around here (always grate­ful for every piece of green earth that escapes the devel­op­ers!), the var­i­ous wildlife cruis­ing the neigh­bor­hood, they heard sto­ries about Avery’s man­ic Lon­don sched­ule, John’s real estate obses­sions, my cook­ing goals. It’s always hard to look at the clock and admit we should all go to sleep and be ready to face the next morning!

Which brought a trip into town, even­tu­al­ly to see “Wicked,” but first to stop off in Riverdale for a rid­ing les­son with Avery’s beloved and much-missed train­er Chris­tine. Oh, the con­trast between her Lon­don expe­ri­ences and these in New York! There is no way to pre­fer one over the oth­er, but it’s night and day. In Lon­don Avery’s respon­si­ble for tack­ing up, clean­ing sad­dles, fork­ing hay, clean­ing up all the muck, sweep­ing up poo from the streets as they make their way home from Hyde Park. Then there’s a lit­tle bit of time rid­ing! The sta­ble is presided over by the regal Kirstie Nye (unless her 80-year-old father is around!) and the chil­dren are an inte­gral part of the work­ings of every day. And the hors­es! Big ones, small ones, mouths of steel, tem­pera­men­tal pri­ma don­nas, enor­mous guys who are ter­ri­fied of a tis­sue float­ing by, and then lit­tle 37-year-old ponies who have seen it all. But at Riverdale: Avery shows up in her rid­ing togs, and a love­ly young man who speaks no Eng­lish leads her to a per­fect, com­plete­ly pris­tine white pony who looks as if she just stepped off a carousel. Avery is giv­en a “leg up” onto the pony and rides regal­ly down from the sta­ble to the ring, where she is mer­ci­less­ly screamed at (why she loves this I do not know) for an hour, going round and round, jump­ing ever high­er and more per­fect­ly, on jumps set up by a groom before her arrival. At the end of the hour, she rides serene­ly back to the sta­ble where she’s relieved of the pony by anoth­er groom, and goodbye!

There’s room in the world, cer­tain­ly, for both approach­es. I love see­ing her on a spec­i­men of pony­dom that sim­ply has no flaws, and with whom it’s pos­si­ble for Avery to achieve any skill with­out think­ing about what the pony wants or needs. On the oth­er hand, see­ing her get to know many dif­fer­ent hors­es’ per­son­al­i­ties, lead­ing them to their stalls and tak­ing off all their lit­tle bits and pieces, under­stand­ing their weak­ness­es and flaws: that’s love­ly too. And I would­n’t want to have to choose, full-stop, between the gor­geous red barns and white fences of Riverdale, and the urban glo­ries of Hyde Park. How nice we can have both.

It’s great to be back. I keep try­ing to ana­lyze what makes life in Con­necti­cut so dif­fer­ent from life in Lon­don. Some of it is noth­ing more than the dif­fer­ence between sub­ur­ban and big-city life: it’s so much eas­i­er to live out in the boon­docks where the park­ing spaces are plen­ti­ful and all larg­er than you need, where the super­mar­ket aisles are ridicu­lous­ly wide and there is always every­thing you need in the store! No traf­fic jams, no pol­lu­tion, no crowds, and GREEN every­where, plus the sound of a rolling brook when it rains, and the sight of a flock of wild turkeys in the mead­ow! And did Gary the ground­hog eat the mel­on rind you left for him? It’s such a wel­come change from remem­ber­ing com­pli­cat­ed sched­ules, cir­cling the block to find a place to put your car (I know! we should­n’t have one at all), drag­ging home too-heavy bags of stuff for din­ner, for lunch at the barn, all the bus­tle of city life, as much as I adore London.

But some of the con­trasts are in the dif­fer­ences between Amer­i­ca and Eng­land. Amer­i­ca feels so relent­less­ly young! Ener­getic, spon­ta­neous, pos­i­tive, pow­er­ful, ambi­tious, friend­ly, opti­mistic, endear­ing­ly naive some­times, and undaunt­ed by… any­thing. Eng­land in ret­ro­spect feels very his­tor­i­cal­ly ground­ed, com­plex, slow to make judg­ments about peo­ple, reserved and ele­gant, reluc­tant to com­mit itself, a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ed, I think, in the world around her, sophis­ti­cat­ed and cos­mopoli­tan. Does that make sense? I love them both, and the flip side of lov­ing them both is that I always miss the ener­gy of Amer­i­ca when I’m in Eng­land, and miss the thought­ful­ness of Eng­land when I’m in Amer­i­ca. What would we have if we could com­bine them? In either a per­son or a coun­try. Maybe if we play our cards right, we could have… Avery!