back in old Blighty

Sigh.

I’m sit­ting here on my sofa con­tem­plat­ing the pass­ing of sum­mer — school starts tomor­row — and the atten­dant ratch­et­ing-up of all the cares of ordi­nary life that come with the end of the hol­i­days.  Since the chief result of con­tem­plat­ing all these things is a wretched stom­ach-ache, I have armed myself with a cup of gin­ger tea and a cat, and the stack of Hel­lo! mag­a­zines that await­ed me upon my return.  As did… the rain.

I can­not com­plain, because I have a clean­ing lady who left every­thing total­ly per­fect (OK, the t‑shirts fold­ed like the Gap and arranged by col­or are slight­ly creepy), and a hus­band who was more than hap­py to make chick­en soup with my spe­cial ten­der almost-dumpling meat­balls, for my recov­ery.  Sofa-bound as I am today, I’ve fin­ished all my Lost Prop­er­ty tasks — rotas, name tags, labels for the box­es — and will go in tomor­row to make sure things are ready for the inevitable onslaught of girls with Lost Stuff.

We have left Red Gate Farm (and all the joys and ten­sions that exist there!) behind.  The gate is closed until Christmas.

I often think of how much I enjoy the cir­cle of friends and fam­i­ly who make up our com­mu­ni­ty at Red Gate Farm and how much MORE I would enjoy it all if I did­n’t feel I was in a con­stant per­ilous state of hav­ing to say good­bye to them all again.  It’s not nor­mal for rela­tion­ships to be so fraught with impend­ing sep­a­ra­tion.  We see our pre­cious neigh­bors across the road only when they man­age to get up from the city for a fran­tic week­end away from their real lives.  There is nev­er enough time to say every­thing we want to say.

Our dar­ling farmer boy Rol­lie man­aged only one after­noon with us.  I found it incred­i­bly touch­ing to con­tem­plate this third Rol­lie in our lives, and mourned the fact that we nev­er got a chance to see him with his dad and his grand­fa­ther.  “At Christ­mas,” we say, as we always do, hop­ing that some­how every­thing will be com­plete then.  Of course, at Christ­mas, we’ll say, “Oh, it’ll get done in the summertime.”

Would­n’t it be won­der­ful, in a per­verse way, to spend so much time with my nieces that I got sick of them, as so many of my friends get tired of fam­i­ly?  That will nev­er hap­pen in this life­time.  Jane will have changed so much by the time I see her in four months.  We had one last din­ner par­ty under a quar­ter moon, and I got to hear her con­fi­dences.  I will nev­er for­get our fun­ni­est con­ver­sa­tion this summer.

Jane: “What’s for din­ner, Aunt Kristen?”

Me: “Spaghet­ti and meat­balls, gar­lic bread and asparagus.”

Jane: “That menu sounds rather promising.”

We man­aged to get one lunch at our pre­cious Lau­rel Din­er with Big Rol­lie and Judy, chat­ter­ing over all the things that will hap­pen on our prop­er­ty while we are away, know­ing that their expe­ri­enced, benev­o­lent, care­tak­ing eyes will watch it all and keep us post­ed.  We’re hav­ing the stone wall repaired!

We swal­lowed hard at the bill, but it’s been years in the mak­ing, dam­age from snow and rain.  We owe it to the house. How excit­ing it will be come back at Christ­mas to find it all beau­ti­ful­ly restored.  “A life­time war­ran­ty,” the Ser­bian stone­ma­son Tony assured me.  “Whose life­time, yours or mine?” I joked, but he replied seri­ous­ly, “Way after both of us, honey.”
Even the wildlife has to be aban­doned!  John’s finch­es will be very sad when the food runs out.

And the chip­munks prob­a­bly can’t even move in their hous­es, stuffed as they must be with sun­flower seeds car­ried care­ful­ly, all sum­mer, from dish to nest.

Gary the Ground­hog made his appear­ances few and far between.  It turns out he will accept ONLY melon.

Jes­samy the cat has gone back to Man­hat­tan, after a suc­cess­ful few weeks at camp.  I’m sur­prised there is any screen LEFT in the door after all her con­cert­ed efforts to join us on the ter­race!  How won­der­ful she is and how unbe­liev­able that any per­son could sim­ply have thrown her away, as a kit­ten, to turn up at a shel­ter and be res­cued by Avery.

Per­haps my most last­ing mem­o­ry of the sum­mer is an unex­pect­ed one: the fun I have had get­ting to know Avery again.  The pres­sures of the Lon­don school year are not kind to a moth­er and daugh­ter’s attempts to share any­thing but din­ner.  She works so hard, spends so much time phys­i­cal­ly away from home and men­tal­ly in some oth­er sphere, that I had for­got­ten the com­plete and total lux­u­ry of hav­ing her around all the time, to enjoy.

I know it isn’t real­is­tic to expect to have her all to myself as I used to when she was lit­tle.  So much of the grow­ing-up process is bit neg­a­tive, I find: chil­dren seem to go from being rather bur­den­some crea­tures con­stant­ly want­i­ng to be washed and fed and tak­en places (places I nev­er want­ed to go, like horse rings and skat­ing rinks) to being inde­pen­dent peo­ple you nev­er get to see enough of, and it seems to hap­pen overnight!  How unfair, I some­times think, that the more inter­est­ing she gets, the less I get of her. Alas.

But this sum­mer, I dis­cov­ered that there is anoth­er side to the coin.  Some­where along the line, a result of her con­stant read­ing and dis­cussing and the­o­riz­ing (and a wealth of inher­it­ed fam­i­ly lore, it has to be said!), she has become the best con­ver­sa­tion­al com­pan­ion I can imag­ine.  How extra­or­di­nary when your child turns out to know so much more than you do on so many, many sub­jects!  As loath­some as I have found the sum­mer obses­sion with pol­i­tics to be, watch­ing her hold more than her own in every con­ver­sa­tion gives me a great deal of plea­sure, and dare I say it… pride.  She has become an remark­able young woman — overnight, it would seem.  And an amaz­ing pho­tog­ra­ph­er, to pro­duce a pho­to of me that I actu­al­ly like.

She does even more impres­sive things with a spi­der, to be honest.

I am hop­ing to be able to hold that wis­dom with me, dur­ing this upcom­ing school year that will end in June with 11 — eleven! — wretched exams.  Avery is still in there, more so than ever, and I hope we’ll be able to find each oth­er now and then.

The end of the hol­i­day had come.  With one last look at the hydrangea, now in full August blos­som, it was time to say goodbye.

Four months.  We have four months in Lon­don to accom­plish a great deal.  I have my social-work fam­i­ly to meet up with again, and plen­ty of lacrosse boots to reunite with their hap­less own­ers.  John has the school Christ­mas Fair to run (sin­gle-hand­ed­ly, it some­times sounds).  Avery and I have made a good start on “The Cook­book,” with my recipes and sto­ries and her pho­tographs, but we have to cook, pho­to­graph and eat our way through about 40 more dish­es before we’re ready to approach a pub­lish­er.  We’ll all be the size of houses!

And then we’ll be back at Red Gate Farm at Christ­mas for anoth­er sea­son, anoth­er set of adven­tures.  And me with a thick­er skin, I like to think, not quite so inclined to think it’s the end of the world to say goodbye.