a tru­ly home Christmas

There’s one dis­tinct advan­tage to mov­ing house (and coun­try) so very many times.

When you’re home, you know it.

Red Gate Farm has done its usu­al mag­ic at Christ­mas­time.  We are home.

But I’m get­ting ahead — way ahead — of myself.

Ten days ago found us in our Lon­don flat with me fret­ting and fuss­ing over leav­ing Avery there alone, to make her way to a DIF­FER­ENT AIR­PORT from the one we were depart­ing from, to board a plane on her own (not that she has­n’t done that a hun­dred times, but you know what I mean — we were leav­ing from the same city to arrive in the same city, but not togeth­er.  I freaked out a bit.).

We waved to her from the Lon­don pave­ment below our build­ing, and made our way to Heathrow, while she made hers to Gatwick.  And some seem­ing­ly mil­lion hours lat­er, we met up, mirac­u­lous­ly as it seemed to me, at the rental car agency at JFK and came home to Red Gate Farm, where we were met by Rose­mary who had had a cou­ple of qui­et days here in the peace of this lit­tle house.  A house sur­round­ed entire­ly by a whole fal­l’s worth of leaves, as it turned out in the light of day!

“I guess I knew the lawn guys had­n’t come for the fall cleanup,” John said, “when Anne told us so, but I did­n’t real­ly pic­ture this.”

It was kind of beau­ti­ful, in a neglect­ed, Grey Gar­dens, aban­doned-home type of way.  Kate came from across the road to kick in the fra­grant piles.

I myself enjoyed a bit of kick­ing, and the autum­nal, Char­lie Brown‑y smell.  All too quick­ly a new set of lawn guys turned up to blow them all away.

And then that was that.

Because it was Christ­mas, and leaves don’t feel very Christmassy.

The Leaf Men them­selves were mod­els of effi­cien­cy, ener­gy and pro­fes­sion­al­ism.  The head guy came in to talk to John.  “This is an awe­some house,” he said, bend­ing down to admire the floor­boards, for which “ran­dom” oak is no exag­ger­a­tion.  You could lose a small pet between some of them.

“When I did my house, I laid con­crete down first, then a lay­er of sheet­ing, then the floor­boards, and sealed them between.  It’s warm in the win­ter and cool in the sum­mer.”  Where­as we can see the light from the base­ment shin­ing between our floorboards.

Jet­lagged, we wan­dered around the prop­er­ty iden­ti­fy­ing build­ings that were falling down more than oth­er build­ings that were falling down.

Mark came to feed and water the hors­es in the mead­ow, and we stood hap­pi­ly in the ear­ly-morn­ing light, hear­ing about his autumn, most espe­cial­ly his new project of culling the local abun­dant deer pop­u­la­tion with — I’m not mak­ing this up — a bow and arrow.  We read­i­ly gave our approval for him to use our acreage, and as a result he came by lat­er in the day with a pack­age of veni­son steaks from his lat­est triumph.

Quite sim­ply the most deli­cious, ten­der meat I have ever eat­en.  I want lots  more — to grind and make burg­ers and chilli, and can you imag­ine veni­son meat­loaf?  I can.

Oh, Mark, you are so cool.  So American.

Avery traipsed off to Man­hat­tan for a cou­ple of days with a friend, so we went to the Lau­rel Din­er for sus­te­nance before a busy day of Christ­mas prepa­ra­tions.  There is a new, com­plete­ly deli­cious dish called the “Kiki.”  Per­fect hash browns, topped with sausages, Ched­dar cheese and sour cream.  Oh my.

And then onto Christ­mas tree-shop­ping.  Which in Con­necti­cut means ARO­MA.  I wish I could con­vey it to you, the intense­ly piney, evoca­tive, mys­te­ri­ous, per­fect aroma.

Oh, why can’t it be Christ­mas all year round?  Is there any­thing more beau­ti­ful than the evergreen?

Our friend Judy’s friend helped us choose, with the “bah hum­bug” assis­tance of young Kyle, whose con­tri­bu­tions to the pro­ceed­ings were vari­a­tions on, “What­ev­er tree you want.  This one is okay,” and “I don’t know.  It isn’t going in my house.”  But even he could not stay glum in the face of my extreme hol­i­day hap­pi­ness.  We chose two trees.

On the way home through the grey land­scape we came upon this fairy­tale vista.  Some­times in Con­necti­cut you just look up and find a page from a calendar.

We set up the trees and put on the lights, prepara­to­ry to Avery’s arrival the next day to dec­o­rate.  And for just a moment we all thought, “What dec­o­ra­tions?  Just lights are fine.”

Oh, the smell of the wreaths in the win­dows, the green­ery on the table, the trees.  Sim­ply heavenly.

It was time to jour­ney to Jil­l’s house to pick up the moun­tain of parcels poor Joel had been receiv­ing since the autumn, and stor­ing in his base­ment.  I hope he does­n’t mind.  Their house looked gor­geous, as always.  What a tree!

Mol­ly grabbed the cam­era and got a slight­ly fuzzy but absolute­ly per­fect pic­ture of Jane and Jill.

There were real live carolers!

Avery came home from Man­hat­tan and we dec­o­rat­ed.  We remem­bered how much we love every sin­gle object, col­lect­ed over so many years.

 Every­one hangs orna­ments, exclaim­ing over favorites.

The mag­ic of Christ­mas is in the feel­ing that child­hood has come back again, not com­pli­cat­ed as it was in real life, but sim­ple and per­fect.  The taste of a can­dy cane, the smell of a wood fire, the glit­tery of orna­ments I remem­ber hang­ing on my moth­er’s tree.  The aro­ma of a tan­ger­ine at Christ­mas brings back the child­hood feel­ing of sit­ting on my father’s hearth, eat­ing an orange he’d been sent by a col­league who win­tered in Flori­da.  Fires, the beau­ty of a dec­o­rat­ed house filled with peo­ple who have trav­elled great dis­tances to be togeth­er, the smell of Rose­mary’s cap­puc­ci­no cook­ies, key lime cook­ies, lit­tle brown­ies tied up in red rib­bon.  Nos­tal­gia, pure and simple.

The sil­ver bell tree, so per­fect.  This year’s gift from Rose­mary said “NEO Bank­side,” and Avery’s “Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege, Oxford.”  That pret­ty much sums it up.

One after­noon when the tem­per­a­ture was some­where between North Car­oli­na and Flori­da, Rose­mary and I got ambi­tious and decid­ed to wash the down­stairs win­dows, she on the inside and I on the out­side.  It was very sat­is­fy­ing to remove the grime and see the Christ­mas lights shin­ing through.

Until, that is, my lad­der slipped and went through an ancient pane.

“Oh no…”

Some days lat­er a burly man, ex-Army, self-described NASCAR nut, came to repair it, with his blow­torch and put­ty knife and a dia­mond blade.  He remind­ed me of my dad, so I kept him com­pa­ny while he got to work, explain­ing to me that he was remov­ing all the old put­ty, which he could date to some­where in the last 25 years based on its com­po­si­tion.  Then quick as any­thing, the new pane was in place.

He’s com­ing back to do the barn win­dows lat­er in the week, a long over­due job.

It occurred to me that there was a theme run­ning through our hol­i­day — hunter and fire­fight­er Mark, the intre­pid Leaf Men, Sam the Win­dow Guy.  There is some­thing that I iden­ti­fy as a sort of quin­tes­sen­tial Amer­i­can spir­it: it’s to do with bound­less ener­gy, inge­nu­ity, self-reliance, a pos­i­tiv­i­ty about the respon­si­bil­i­ties of life.  I know Amer­i­can women like this too.  There’s my friend Anne-Across-the-Road, who nev­er met an acre of land she did­n’t intend to pre­serve, and Judy, my farmer friend, who can jell, can or pick­le any­thing, whilst knit­ting sweaters with John Deer Trac­tors on them, and my friend Lau­ren, who is a gra­nola-mak­ing, Haiti-vol­un­teer­ing pedi­atric nurse.

It was a won­der­ful reminder of the good and great things about the Amer­i­can char­ac­ter.  I’d love to be one of those peo­ple, but I’m wise enough to know that my great­est strength is appre­ci­at­ing them, not try­ing to be one of them.  They’re the kind of peo­ple you want on your side, the kind of peo­ple who actu­al­ly wel­come being grown-ups.

Christ­mas got more Christ­massy when Anne’s fam­i­ly came back up from the city to cel­e­brate.  We got to go on a sec­ond tree-shop­ping trip, just to help them decide.  I taught Kate the fine art of tree-sniff­ing, includ­ing get­ting one’s nose poked by needles.

She, Anne and David found the per­fect tree.

We car­ried on to the gro­cery store to order my Christ­mas Eve oys­ters.  “You want a GAL­LON of oys­ters?” the girl’s eyes were wide with astonishment.

We repaired to Kate’s house in the evening for s’mores in their ancient fireplace.

In a rare moment of exhaus­tion, I sim­ply could­n’t face cook­ing din­ner and so we ordered a piz­za and col­lapsed in the liv­ing room with the tree sparkling and the Christ­mas books in a tempt­ing pile.  There is just noth­ing fun­nier than the “The Latke Who Could­n’t Stop Screaming.”

“And then they ate him.”

Oh, the favorite orna­ments.  This demure, hand-crossed lady.

The lit­tle blown-glass Ger­man orna­ments remind us of all our Christ­mas trips to the antique shop up the road in Wood­bury, every year.

 I think the hap­py car­ol­ers might be my very favorite.  To think of this orna­ment mak­ing its way from Ger­many prob­a­bly just before the war, a sym­bol of all that was right in a coun­try fac­ing such dark times.

 Every­one needs a shop­ping kitty.

And trea­sures from the Lon­don Christ­mas Fair, too.  Such hap­py memories.

Because life is nev­er per­fect, no mat­ter how hard you try, Avery made a very unpleas­ant dis­cov­ery of mouse poi­son in her pil­low­case!  Sub­dued shrieks ensued and a father-res­cue.  Oh, Red Gate Farm.

She had picked up a nasty head cold from some­where, so we jour­neyed to Jil­l’s once more with­out her, to see my beau­ti­ful moth­er and my broth­er!  Final­ly, togeth­er after so many months.

Christ­mas Eve came, with bizarre sul­try weath­er which made it pos­si­ble, for once, to light all the can­dles on the hydrangea and watch them burn with per­fect flick­er­ing flames.

We moved the gor­geous ever­green table dec­o­ra­tion to the bench in the din­ing room — oh, so spark­ly and beautiful.

The house looked just beau­ti­ful, wait­ing for every­one to arrive.  It was a glo­ri­ous­ly loud, deli­cious, crowd­ed Christ­mas Eve.

Christ­mas Day dawned bright, sparkling and unsea­son­ably warm, again.  Presents were glee­ful­ly received.  Avery loved her book of Eng­lish Goth­ic art, a new passion.

I gave John a beau­ti­ful draw­ing, a plan of Pot­ters Fields, from his beloved archi­tect in Paris.  He was very hap­py.  I myself received a pre­cious Kitchen Aid mix­er!  Rose­mary pored over her pho­tographs of Avery’s matric­u­la­tion at Oxford.  Avery and John gave me felt creatures.

We were off to Jill and Joel’s for the Christ­mas Day fes­tiv­i­ties, and gor­geous presents.

Of course I car­ried home the turkey car­cass to con­coct a pot of soup, with tiny turkey meat­balls.  What a wel­come thing, with Avery cough­ing away.  I wish I could share with you the savoury aroma.

Of course, the most delec­table parts of Christ­mas aren’t things you can con­vey — you real­ly can’t cap­ture what you want to — the feel­ing of the can­dlelit liv­ing room with the glit­ter­ing tree and the fire pop­ping in the background…

There was the lux­u­ry of sit­ting for hours with my mom just chat­ting about the lat­est out­landish plots on Days of Our Lives, or our favorite mys­tery nov­el series.  There is the smell of the wood fire com­ing from the chim­ney when you pop out to the shed on an errand and look up to see the full moon hov­er­ing over the meadow.

You can try to con­vey the feel­ing of “across the road” when you come home from s’mores to see the Red Gate Farm lit up like a lit­tle dol­l’s house, or the sheer love­li­ness of fam­i­ly, all togeth­er for such a brief time.

To con­sole our­selves after my fam­i­ly’s depar­ture, we drove through a spec­tral evening, admir­ing every­one’s Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions, to have din­ner with Mike, Lau­ren, Abi­gail and Gabriel.  Their house is such a haven of love and com­fort and fun.  Abi­gail and John bond­ed over pic­ture books, and the con­tents of his wallet.

There was Ched­dar cheese and chick­en soup.  And kit­ty Jes­si­ca, such a won­der­ful mem­o­ry from lit­tle Avery days of kit­ten fostering!

And final­ly, in the mid­dle of the night last night — it snowed.  I hap­pened to be up and grabbed my camera.

This morn­ing all was wet, dis­con­so­late drip­pi­ness, but still, indis­putably, snowy!

Cis­co enjoyed a chilly drink, unaware that he was pos­ing for anoth­er of those acci­den­tal Con­necti­cut cal­en­dar photographs.

And so our hol­i­day winds itself down.  The presents have been opened, the oys­ter stew enjoyed, friends and fam­i­ly have been reunit­ed and then have said good­bye again.  This evening Avery will make the long jour­ney from the train sta­tion at Brew­ster to 125th Street, then in a cab to JFK, thence to Gatwick, and final­ly home to our glossy flat, all on her own.  I’m still get­ting used to that idea, but it’s the future.

We will have one more par­ty — a qui­et lit­tle New Year’s Eve bash — and then Rose­mary will make her way back to Iowa.

It’s been a won­der­ful Christ­mas.  I hope very much that you and yours shared a beau­ti­ful one, too.