lazy (so not!) days of summer

This morn­ing dawned bright and fair and with the promise of MANY tasks undone: before I could blink I had scaled the love­ly plants left for us by Rol­lie’s wife Judy, had jumped into the car with Avery and gone to the bak­ery for dough­nuts for the upcom­ing Three-Girl Camp, thence to the Town Hall to pay our vehi­cle tax, thence to the New Town Hall to get our South­bury Com­mu­ni­ty Pool Sum­mer Pass, the lam­i­nat­ed pos­ses­sion of which always spells Real Sum­mer to me. Thence to Star­chak’s Farm Stand for Avery’s sum­mer favorite, black plums, and red pep­pers, peach­es, white onions, local blue­ber­ries. Thence to the super­mar­ket for every­thing else need­ed for a camp like sausages, mel­ons, pas­ta, milk, you name it. The Gap hap­pened to be next door, so Avery’s sum­mer wardrobe was accom­plished in about ten min­utes in a humon­gous sale. She’s in that fun­ny space between the old­est Gap Kids size and the small­est Ladies’ Gap, but we man­aged to find plen­ty of bits and pieces to kit her out for the fore­see­able growth spurt.

Home to kiss John good luck for his mas­sive den­tist appoint­ment, to drop off all our pur­chas­es, I fried a quick egg to get me through the next two hours in a car, and off we were to Green­wich, to find Avery’ camp-mates Anna and Ellie! A light­ning-fast kiss for their mom Becky and sis­ter Ash­ley who is, in her inim­itably ele­gant teenage way, off for a trip to Guatemala tomor­row… such dra­ma! I could hap­pi­ly kiss Becky every day of the week, and used to in the old, gold­en days in Lon­don, so once a Mon­day worked for me. Packed the girls up, and off back home.

A sand­wich for lunch, a trip to the local book­store for mag­a­zines for the pool, and we thought we were off there when up popped John, in Quin­cy! Who, dare you ask, is Quin­cy? Our 1967 Land Rover, of course, who reg­u­lar­ly starts up with more reli­a­bil­i­ty than our 1999 VW sta­tion wag­on, but there you go. John home from the den­tist ear­ly and with a burn­ing desire to play ten­nis. So off we went, to drop the girls at the pool with their hot new sum­mer pass, and we to play at the adja­cent courts (love­ly to hear “Avery” occa­sion­al­ly drift across the inter­ven­ing pine-scent­ed lawn). We played until clouds made the air entire­ly too cold for three urban chicks to tol­er­ate, so up they came to the courts for snack mon­ey and to sit out the cloud cov­er in the car. “Isn’t any­body going to swim with me?” I wailed after our ten­nis game (much improved by sev­er­al new trys at rack­ets, so hard to decide). I got Avery and Ellie, and Anna went home with John to get an ear­ly start on their tram­po­line routine.

A quick stop at the pool, then, to dive and swim and remem­ber, as I do each sum­mer, how the green of the pine trees against the blue of the sky reminds me of our old sum­mers in Maine… why is that? A sub­lim­i­nal con­nec­tion, so pow­er­ful and sweet, of old sum­mer times in a far­away island.

Home via the super­mar­ket where I had to sup­ple­ment my ear­li­er trip with the request­ed riga­toni for my vod­ka sauce! The per­fect recipe for sev­er­al starv­ing girls.

Riga­toni alla Vodka
(serves six with leftovers)

1 lb dried rigatoni
2 tbsps olive oil
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 white onion, minced
gen­er­ous splash vodka
2 tbsps Ital­ian seasoning
1 large (larg­er than soup-size) can whole Ital­ian plum tomatoes
1/2 cup light cream

Boil the pas­ta. In the mean­time, saute the gar­lic and onions in the olive oil. When soft, add the vod­ka and cook high for two min­utes. Add the Ital­ian sea­son­ing and mix well. If you like smooth sauce, puree the toma­toes in your food proces­sor and add to the gar­lic mix­ture and cook till warmed through. If you like chunky sauce, add the toma­toes plain to the gar­lic mix and stir often over a medi­um heat till heat­ed through.

When pas­ta is cooked through (10 min­utes-ish), drain well and coat with sauce. Serve with grat­ed pecori­no or parme­san cheese.

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This is so sim­ple, so inex­pen­sive and so love­ly that you’ll for­get how much you love it till your child begs on bend­ed knee.

Tomor­row will depend upon the weath­er. Quassy Amuse­ment Park if the fates smile well on the girls (and a bit cru­el­ly on me? to be hon­est?) or an after­noon at home with the tram­po­line and the library of books, if it rains?

But most­ly it has been such heav­en to have three of our favorite girls (grant­ed, one of them I gave birth to) with us, when we know that sep­a­ra­tion is in the off­ing, as they move entire­ly too far away. Anna and Ellie have been there for years for all my cook­ing, all Avery’s par­ties, all John’s sil­ly jokes, count­less rides in our now-gone con­vert­ible in Lon­don, end­less rides on num­ber­less ponies (with emer­gency shared gear, no doubt) and their moth­er Becky my con­stant com­pan­ion for all of the above plus mind­less gro­cery shop­ping, cof­fee drink­ing, errand run­ning love­li­ness. Their pres­ence and their charm marks out one of the most grace­ful peri­ods in my whole life: our ear­ly time in Lon­don when a lone­ly new­com­er (me) was picked up by a gra­cious, sophis­ti­cat­ed world trav­el­er (Becky) and we spent three hap­py years togeth­er just enjoy­ing it all, watch­ing our girls grow up through one of the most intense­ly changeling-ish peri­ods (how long is a piece of string?), with each oth­er’s always empa­thet­ic com­pa­ny to share the moments. Thank you, Becky, for all of that, and for the loan of your sweet girls this week.