it was worth the wait

It’s hard to believe: 12 hours from the moment we walk out our door in Lon­don, we walk in the door of Red Gate Farm.  Twelve hours from one world to the next, from taxi to air­port, air then air­port, anoth­er taxi, and here we are.

And we did­n’t just arrive: we were wel­comed!  John’s mom was here, hav­ing put up the Christ­mas tree and the lights with the help of David across the street, and lit the can­dles on the din­ing table, and pro­duced a pot of oys­ter stew, our tra­di­tion­al Christ­mas Eve din­ner!  And our reunion with last sum­mer’s fluffy kit­ten, Jessamy.

It WAS Christ­mas Eve, just as Avery insist­ed it would be.  The date real­ly did­n’t mat­ter a bit; it was fine that all day the flight atten­dants and tick­et tak­ers said, “Mer­ry Christ­mas.”  When we arrived at home, it was Christ­mas Eve, with all the mag­ic of car­ols play­ing in the back­ground, every­one run­ning around bring­ing up box­es from the base­ment, shout­ing, “Has any­body seen the exten­sion cord?”

John and I ran from barn to barn to wood­shed, look­ing for the sec­ond tree stand, find­ing it final­ly and set­ting up the tree to hold the sil­ver balls from John’s par­ents, every year, engraved with a mes­sage that sums up the year.  This year’s read “IOBE Ceci­ly”, for Avery’s amaz­ing per­for­mance in “The Impor­tance of Being Earnest”!

Because I still adhere to some of my child­hood tra­di­tions, I sent John out to get Chi­nese food to go with the oys­ter stew!  While he was away we dug through the box­es, Avery ask­ing, “Where’s the tree skirt?” and I final­ly ran it to earth under a pile of orna­ments, red flan­nel with “Red Gate Farm” writ­ten across it, so under the tree it went.  We went on find­ing trea­sures from years past, bring­ing the rooms to Christ­mas life: wax hous­es and church­es and pine trees on the man­tel, the stock­ings hung by the blaz­ing fire.  Avery exclaimed over each lit­tle piece of the past.  “Indi­ana Non­na gave me this horse two years ago!”  And I leapt on the lit­tle chil­dren rid­ing ani­mals in the clouds, rem­nants from my baby mobile 40-some years ago in Indiana!

The house was heady with the smell of pine, from the two trees, and from the gor­geous wreath sent to us from our friends Olimpia and Tony: the most beau­ti­ful wreath in the world.

We slurped our way through the delec­table, cel­ery-laden oys­ter stew and the piles of shrimp toast and egg rolls, dis­cussing how to han­dle the piles of gifts we were each hid­ing from one anoth­er, unwrapped as they were.  We found in the dusty base­ment a bag full of rem­nants of Christ­mas paper from years past, rolls of tape, bags of used rib­bons.  “Let’s wrap the ones that are too easy to see what they are,” Avery sug­gest­ed, so we did, leav­ing aside the pile of box­es from Ama­zon, JCrew and such.

We set­tled down to a flur­ry of wrap­ping in the music room, push­ing piles of books aside from the mis­sion desk to use as a wrap­ping sta­tion, say­ing, “Stay out of this room for the next five min­utes!”  I final­ly decid­ed it was time for bed when I was caught by John’s mom writ­ing what I thought was Avery’s name on a pack­age.  “What on earth does that spell?” she asked.  “I have no idea.  I think jet­lag is hit­ting.”  After all, by mid­night, I thought it was five in the morn­ing, so I tum­bled to sleep.

We all woke up very ear­ly on “Christ­mas morn­ing” and then the morn­ing flew by in a flur­ry of presents: a gor­geous archival pho­to of Wash­ing­ton Square Park in a 1930s Christ­mas from John for me, an equal­ly beau­ti­ful archival pho­to of Avery’s school in 1904 from me to him!  Sweaters and scarves and books, a stuffed pony for Avery (I don’t want to pic­ture a Christ­mas when Avery does­n’t get a pony in one form or another).

And then Jill, Joel, Jane and Mol­ly arrived for the fastest present exchange ever: because a bliz­zard was com­ing!  We got right down to busi­ness and great­ly enjoyed espe­cial­ly Jane’s spe­cial “sniff my lapel rose” which squirts the sniffer!

They depart­ed in advance of the snow, and boy did it!  All the after­noon and evening it fell, per­form­ing its usu­al mir­a­cle of cov­er­ing all the imper­fec­tions of the old house, its scrap­py 100-year-old land­scap­ing, mak­ing every­thing look quite perfect.

Did I men­tion the shut­ters!  We have always known the house orig­i­nal­ly had dark-green shut­ters, for some rea­son left behind in the big red barn when the house was restored about eight years ago.  We found them, hud­dled in a dusty, neglect­ed pile of past glo­ries, one sum­mer.  Then my par­ents gave us a very gen­er­ous Christ­mas check last year, and it was but the work of a moment to find a great car­pen­ter who was will­ing to work on the project while we were away, so we chose the paint col­or as close to the orig­i­nal as we could man­age, and bought love­ly curvy shut­ter dogs to hold them in place, and left for the win­ter.  And here they are!  Thank you, Mom and Dad.

We spent a beau­ti­ful day here enjoy­ing our presents, mak­ing cheesy spinach and Beck­y’s cheesy pota­toes, and mind­ing the strangest turkey cook­ing method on record.  I’ll explain.

I don’t have a very con­sis­tent track record with turkey, that’s for sure.  Two years ago it was dri­er than you could ever imag­ine, and so last year I decid­ed to slow-cook it, but it was raw inside when it was time to eat!  Some quick dis­sect­ing by Joel and the oven turned WAY UP, and we sur­vived.  And for some rea­son the turkey in Lon­don this Thanks­giv­ing cooked almost two hours quick­er than we expect­ed — thank good­ness we checked halfway through! — and was res­cued from over­cook­ing just in time.

This year, I put the turkey in the oven at 10 a.m., expect­ing to eat at 3.  But some­how… the oven was set at 475F, and I did­n’t notice until I smelled a black sort of but­tery aro­ma and went to check, and sure enough, all the but­ter I’d bast­ed him with was char­coal in the bot­tom of the roast­ing dish.  So I put the heat down to 150F, and left it there all day.  We ate lunch and John said, “I don’t think I’ll be hun­gry at 3; let’s post­pone it until 5,” so I turned the oven almost off.  Then around 4, we went over to vis­it Anne and David across the road, through the unbe­liev­able snowfall!

Before we left, I had turned the oven up to 350F or so, think­ing it would be done by 5 when we got back.  Only we lost track of time and got home at near­ly 6, where­upon John’s mom and I took the turkey’s leg off to find it under­cooked inside, so we turned the oven up to 450F for the last hour or so, and bless his heart, that turkey was PER­FEC­TION.  Poor thing, what he’d been through dur­ing the day.

It snowed all through the night and into the morn­ing, dump­ing near­ly 16 inch­es in our lit­tle road.  We tend­ed a huge pot of turkey soup, Joel hav­ing brought me his bird’s bones in the morn­ing.  “Noth­ing says Christ­mas like a turkey carcass!”

That evening gave us all the cozi­est pos­si­ble way to fall asleep, with the sound of the bliz­zard wail­ing out­side, know­ing how lucky we were to have dodged the storm, get­ting here just in time… the feel­ing of a house full of fam­i­ly, a fridge full of food, a pantry full of ingre­di­ents, and snow out­side.  Just love­ly.  And exhausted!

In the morn­ing the world was in man­age­ment mode.  We absolute­ly rejoiced in the inim­itable New York­ers, both offi­cial and non-offi­cial, with their per­fect accents and phras­ing.  There’s noth­ing like a New Yorker!

Fire Chief Sal­va­tore Cas­sano: “Let me tell you, 911 is over­loaded in a big way.  You think you got­ta stom­ach ache, or maybe you put your back out shov­el­ing?  Do NOT call 911.  Tell ya what, go back in the house, relax for a minute, see if it takes care of itself, why dontcha.  Save 911 for the real emergencies.”

The boys — John and David — braved the howl­ing wind to shov­el paths between our hous­es, and to the mailbox.

John’s mom got into the spir­it of the day, put on John’s new LLBean boots and joined them!

Avery con­tributed to the sit­u­a­tion by being entire­ly unsuit­ably, if very glam­orous­ly, attired, as usual.

We spent the morn­ing con­coct­ing the world’s most per­fect dress­ing, to serve with turkey soup and sand­wich­es to Anne and her fam­i­ly when they crossed the per­ilous road.

Christ­mas Dressing

(serves many, many, at least 12)

about 2 large loaves Ital­ian bread, torn into small chunks (skip the crust if it is very hard)

1 lb hot Ital­ian sausage

3 tbsps butter

4 stalks cel­ery, minced

1 large white onion, minced

6 cloves gar­lic, minced

large hand­ful sage leaves, minced

1 lb mush­rooms, minced

sev­er­al ladles-ful turkey or chick­en stock

1/2 cup light cream or half-and-half

salt and fresh black pep­per to taste

If pos­si­ble, pull the bread apart the day before you want to eat and put it some­where warm and dry so it can dry out a bit, fluff­ing it with your hands now and then.  Put it in a very large bowl.

Saute the sausage till ful­ly cooked, then put through a food proces­sor and whizz until the sausage is fair­ly fine­ly minced.  Pour onto the bread chunks.

Melt the but­ter in a saucepan and saute the veg­eta­bles until soft, then dump them onto the bread and sausage.  Mix togeth­er and add turkey stock until the mix­ture is fair­ly wet and none of the bread is dry.  Add the cream, then tip the whole lot into a large bak­ing dish.  Bake at 375F/180C until browned on top and siz­zling under­neath.  It’s per­fect fresh­ly cooked, and even bet­ter reheat­ed the next day (plus I hap­pen to know peo­ple have eat­en it cold from the fridge at midnight.

When we could­n’t enter­tain our­selves anoth­er minute, we took our­selves off to the Dan­bury cin­e­ma and saw “The King’s Speech” and it is quite pos­si­bly the most per­fect film we have ever seen.  The most touch­ing sto­ry of the stam­mer­ing, reluc­tant had-to-be King George VI, played by the gor­geous Col­in Firth (who just gets bet­ter with age), and his uncon­ven­tion­al speech ther­a­pist Lionel Logue, played by Geof­frey Rush.  She who would lat­er become the Queen Moth­er was bril­liant­ly por­trayed by Hele­na Bon­ham Carter.

I want­ed the film to go on for­ev­er, just to be in that world of dark­en­ing pre­war skies, the lit­tle Princess­es in wool­ly dress­ing gowns with giant bows on their heads, awful Wal­lis Simp­son wield­ing her unhap­py pow­er… a won­der­ful, emo­tion­al film.

This evening will see us at my sis­ter’s for din­ner, prob­a­bly being squirt­ed sev­er­al hun­dred more times by a Sniff-Me Rose, help­ing Mol­ly do the wig­gly worm wood­en puz­zle I gave her for Christ­mas.  She can sud­den­ly talk!  Some­how, her August vocab­u­lary of “Ni-ni,” “nay-nay” and “yah-yah” (kit­ten)” has turned into sen­tences like, “This cook­ie is yum­my,” and “where is Uncle John?”  How did that happen?

And tomor­row will be our 21st wed­ding anniver­sary.  We plan to cel­e­brate it in extrav­a­gant style: by the fire, look­ing across the room at our gor­geous child, enjoy­ing the com­pa­ny of John’s per­fect mom, miss­ing his dear dad, wish­ing my fam­i­ly could be with us too, think­ing of that day so long ago when — chil­dren as we were — we decid­ed we would promise to stay togeth­er for­ev­er.  How young and sil­ly we were, but some­how here we are, two decades lat­er, feel­ing very lucky indeed.  Mer­ry Christ­mas, everyone.