of friends and fam­i­ly (can you tell them apart?)

Well, even after as sen­ti­men­tal, won­der­ful and emo­tion­al day as I’ve had today, I do think I can tell peo­ple from sal­ad. But telling peo­ple you’re blood-relat­ed to from peo­ple you just WISH you were relat­ed to… that’s anoth­er story.

It start­ed this morn­ing with the arrival of Alyssa and Annabelle and Elliot. I know I have to stop whing­ing about how much I miss Alyssa when I’m in Lon­don, because I am very lucky to have such staunch friends as I have there. Lord knows, in the ear­ly days I did­n’t know if I ever would have friends. But even so, noth­ing stops me from miss­ing the sort of sis­ter­ly (only we nev­er bick­er, as my sis­ter and I used to when I was a nasty pre-teen) fun of a day with my old friend. And I am the great­est pos­si­ble fan of her chil­dren, the gin­ger-sprout­ed Elliot, and Annabelle, the raven-haired show tunes maven. They are much more like cousins to Avery than mere friends, bat­tling over how to include Elliot in games that, on the sur­face, are more suit­ed to two girls than to two girls plus their mascot.

We had Katz Deli sand­wich­es! This has become a tra­di­tion for our sum­mer reunions at Red Gate Farm (in my book, a good thing has to hap­pen only once in order to become a cher­ished tra­di­tion: life’s too short to make things like that fer­ment, or mature or what­ev­er. Go for it.). Then it was a long gos­sip ses­sion in the sun until John tore him­self reluc­tant­ly away to pick up his folks at the air­port. I have to share Alyssa with my hus­band, which can be tedious except that it’s so nice. Then we girls and Elliot were off to the pool in the bril­liant, per­fect after­noon sun­shine, sim­ply a glo­ri­ous day more like June than August.

By the time we returned, it was time for them to go back to Man­hat­tan. Hugs all around, with plans to see each oth­er at Christ­mas­time up here, although noth­ing will EVER top last year’s Christ­mas in Lon­don togeth­er. Is that what being mid­dle-aged means, hav­ing so much of your hap­pi­ness bound up in remem­ber­ing things? Not a bad bar­gain, if so. As always, a ter­rif­ic wrench to feel the last hug. If only I could take her back in my pocket.

But I had lit­tle time to feel sor­ry for myself, because the phone rang and it was John say­ing he and his par­ents were half an hour away! Oh my. A rush to create:

The Per­fect Salad

This with bar­be­cued Cor­nish game hens, and some heav­en­ly scal­loped corn, was quite a nice sum­mer meal.

It’s almost a sur­feit of delights to have so much fam­i­ly around so close togeth­er. I just bare­ly got used to hav­ing had my beloved par­ents and broth­er here over the week­end, and whoops: here’s my hus­band’s fam­i­ly too. How I wish we could see them all, all year round. But the time-hon­ored cus­tom of see­ing a car pull up con­tain­ing John’s par­ents, and hol­ler­ing like crazy, was hon­ored tonight, in the approach­ing twi­light, and then John and his dad walked the prop­er­ty, mak­ing sure it was all still there, and Avery and her grand­moth­er trailed around mak­ing per­fume and vis­it­ing the fairies, and I played around in the kitchen mak­ing sure we’d have some­thing to eat, watch­ing them all through the tiny-paned win­dows of our old farm­house, think­ing how unbe­liev­ably won­der­ful it was. To have fam­i­ly around. Anoth­er August at Red Gate Farm, anoth­er vis­it. Top THAT.

But John’s dad STILL beat us at Aggra­va­tion, no mat­ter how fond we were feel­ing of him! Ah well, the vis­it is young…