heav­en with family

As my dad said this evening, watch­ing the girls play­ing togeth­er, the dads build­ing a course of horsey jumps with Avery’s beloved set of jumps, my moth­er and I sit­ting with my sis­ter as she fed the baby, “Too bad you don’t live just a half a mile away.” Truer words were nev­er spo­ken, a truth I try very hard not to think about 11 months of the year. Life is so absorb­ing as it is, in Lon­don, that it isn’t too dif­fi­cult to feel that it’s all just fine, work­ing splen­did­ly thank you. Until our fam­i­ly is all togeth­er (minus my broth­er who stayed home to mind the house and cats), I don’t think too much about What Might Have Been, what life might be like if we all lived with­in shout­ing dis­tance of each oth­er and had the time to spend week­ends togeth­er, do home repair projects togeth­er, to have our par­ents mind our child, to have the lux­u­ry of get­ting sick of each oth­er, annoyed by each oth­er. As it is, we just hold it close these few weeks (just days with my moth­er and father), and enjoy.

Today was such fun! All three of us cleaned house with a vengeance, erad­i­cat­ing spi­ders in their webs (they pro­lif­er­ate unbe­liev­ably in the sum­mer months!), dust bun­nies under beds, I washed kitchen rugs AND the floor, we made the guest room bed, gro­cery shopped till we dropped for the day today and the big birth­day par­ty tomor­row. Final­ly the house was com­plete­ly pre­sentable, one more load of laun­dry in the machine.

John and I suf­fered, there’s no oth­er word for it, through a swel­ter­ing, stink­ing game of ten­nis mid-morn­ing, while Avery swam. I do not do well HOT. I kept strain­ing to hear the sounds of chil­dren jump­ing into clear, cold water, and felt all the hot­ter and more mar­tyred to the game. But we per­se­vered in the humid­i­ty and got in about 40 min­utes before I final­ly said UNCLE and drank my last enor­mous gulp of icy water, and we head­ed to the pool. Glo­ri­ous, face-cool­ing laps, refresh­ing beyond belief to drift through the water, lis­ten­ing to chil­dren’s shouts, life­guard’s occa­sion­al lack­adaisi­cal whis­tles and all-too-repet­i­tive “Don’t run!”, the Top 40 Clap­trap radio blar­ing its wares over the still sum­mer air. We roused our­selves to show­er, go home and get dressed for the arrival of my par­ents. I lis­tened to one of my favorite sum­mer books on tape, “Miss­ing Susan,” about a mys­tery tour of Eng­land with one of the tourists an intend­ed mur­der vic­tim, snort­ing with laugh­ter as I fed Avery some left­over pas­ta with a tru­ly stu­pen­dous toma­toey vod­ka sauce and start­ed on dev­illed eggs for my moth­er, who would kill for them. And then there they were!

What on earth are you doing com­ing in the front door?” I asked in bewil­der­ment, since nobody but Ter­minix ever enters the house in that fash­ion. “Your moth­er want­ed to enter the house,” my father began, and my moth­er fin­ished, “Through the prop­er entrance, and to see how you’ve changed these rooms!”

The changed music room and din­ing room found favor, as did the res­ur­rect­ed book­shelves, spe­cial orna­ments, all the old objects find­ing new life. I always sim­ply bow to the fact that my moth­er is a supreme­ly gift­ed inte­ri­or design­er and I myself, as I con­fessed to her, just put things where they go and gen­er­al­ly nev­er think about them again. It’s fun­ny: her gifts in home decor found no pur­chase with me, where she can­not be both­ered to think a thing about what to eat. But I great­ly enjoyed grow­ing up in a beau­ti­ful home and she loves to eat my food, so some­how we both fell into appre­ci­at­ing each oth­er’s tal­ents with­out hav­ing the slight­est incli­na­tion to pick up the oth­er’s inter­ests. It’s a rare moth­er, I think, who can see her child grow­ing up with­out shar­ing her own pas­sions, devel­op­ing her own, and go on to love vis­it­ing that child in her design-chal­lenged home and love being fed by her. We real­ly enjoy each oth­er, that’s the sim­ple truth.

My father came armed with sol­id-gold toma­toes from his own gar­den, which my sis­ter and I are meant to share. Exact­ly how will that work, I won­der? We all gazed upon them today and I prompt­ly made my toma­to-moz­zarel­la sal­ad out of dull toma­toes from the super­mar­ket, post­pon­ing the inevitable squab­ble. My moth­er brought me a water­col­or of my child­hood home, where they still live! And an old shad­ow-box made of a print­er’s tray that I, in high school, had filled with trin­kets and memen­toes from that senior year: so many things I had for­got­ten about com­plete­ly! My city cham­pi­on div­ing medal! And medals from singing com­pe­ti­tions, and essay con­tests, a key to the city from the may­or of my home­town… And a piece of drift­wood from Oma­ha Beach, amaz­ing­ly, with the flag of Nor­mandy behind it, and my board­ing pass to France when I was 17.

Avery was enthralled with this hith­er­to undreamed-of evi­dence of my ado­les­cence, and I was vis­it­ed with a beloved mem­o­ry from my child­hood, sit­ting on my bed­room rug with MY moth­er, look­ing at her high-school diary, hear­ing sto­ries of her boyfriends, her quar­rels with my grand­moth­er who always seemed far too serene to go in for such scenes. When I looked at Avery, in all her teenage grace, tuck­ing her hair behind her ear, exclaim­ing with dis­be­lief and admi­ra­tion at the tokens of my child­hood achieve­ments, I felt a com­plete sur­re­al dis­lo­ca­tion of roles, and times. How we replace our moth­ers! How lucky we are to have daugh­ters to sit down with and look at all this tire­some and yet beloved mem­o­ra­bil­ia! How on earth did we pro­duce these won­der­ful girls, Avery this sum­mer seem­ing sud­den­ly to be such a com­pan­ion and friend.

John retreat­ed upstairs to take a nap in the humid sum­mer air, even with AC. I taught my moth­er a skill she nev­er in her LIFE will use: how to remove the back­bone from an enor­mous Amer­i­can chick­en, and smoth­ered it in bar­be­cue sauce. Two of them, in fact, and she was com­plete­ly grossed out, fur­ther rein­forc­ing her view that food should come in a form not rec­og­niz­able as an ani­mal, I’m afraid. I made a sug­ar-cream pie (“Chess Pie,” I think, to my dear South­ern friend Becky), and you can, too.

Sug­ar-Cream Pie
(serves 8, or my moth­er when she’s in the mood)

1 store-bought pie crust, or you can make your own
5 table­spoons flour
1 cup unre­fined sugar
2 1/2 cups heavy cream
1 tsp pure vanil­la extract
whole nutmeg

Sprin­kle flour and sug­ar into the unbaked pas­try crust, then add cream and mix WITH YOUR FIN­GERS. I know this sounds dis­gust­ing and it is. A bit. But every recipe I read includ­ed this arcane instruc­tion to mix with fin­gers, so I did. Just keep stir­ring gen­tly, pick­ing up the sug­ar from the bot­tom, squish­ing the flour bits into the cream, until it’s all mixed. Then gen­tly add vanil­la and grate nut­meg, just a sprin­kling, over the top.

Bake at 450F for 10 min­utes, then turn oven down to 350 and bake for anoth­er hour. Take the pre­cau­tion of lin­ing the oven floor with foil, because I did­n’t and the repul­sive job of clean­ing my oven which I’d done the DAY BEFORE will now have to be redone, because sug­ary cream leaked over the edge of the pie. Drat.

Cool com­plete­ly before serving.

*********************

This pie was received with the enthu­si­as­tic acco­lades of John and my moth­er, the reserved “it’s nice” of oth­er peo­ple, and I myself decid­ed, with Abra­ham Lin­coln, that “it’s the sort of thing you’ll like, if you like that sort of thing.” Very sweet and creamy, sim­ple and old-fash­ioned. Avery can decide whether or not she wants to blog it her­self, after we make the two fur­ther desserts for tomor­row’s birth­day party.

My sis­ter and her fam­i­ly arrived, in the warm August after­noon, to Jane’s scream, “Non­na!” and my father’s amused scruti­ny of Mol­ly, who can match him gaze for gaze. The girls retrieved Avery’s horsey jumps from the barn, I con­coct­ed a sal­ad of spinach and arugu­la with steamed pota­toes and red onions and a mus­tardy vinai­grette, and then Joel walked out of the kitchen say­ing calm­ly, “There’s smoke in there, a LOT of smoke,” and sure enough, my oven was emit­ting angry relent­less waves of smoke from the sug­ar on its floor, utter­ly for­get­ting that its cur­rent job was to cook the bar­be­cued spatch­cocked chick­en. Ah well, John leapt to the res­cue with the grill, and the chick­en was gor­geous in the end, half-baked, half-grilled. Be spon­ta­neous, I always say.

We ate, the girls horsey-jumped, my moth­er gave them adorable gifts in the form of a stuffed alpaca owl for Mol­ly, a stuffed deer baby for Jane, and sil­ver horse charms and a charm neck­lace for Avery!

Tomor­row will bring Anne, David and Kate from across the road, and all the fam­i­ly again for the annu­al birth­day par­ty. I can’t wait. But I’ll leave you with one ques­tion: why is my blog so easy to write and my cookbook/memoir so impos­si­ble? What on EARTH am I miss­ing that I can’t seem to bridge this unbridgable gap? How can I solve this conun­drum? Answer me that and I’ll cater your daugh­ter’s wed­ding. Or what­ev­er. It’s killing me.

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