Plen­ty of Girls

So fun­ny it was yes­ter­day, late after­noon: the tram­po­line was sim­ply filled with girls! I felt quite sen­ti­men­tal, in an odd way con­sid­er­ing I nev­er met any of the old ladies who inhab­it­ed these two hous­es in our lit­tle stretch of road, to think of their spir­its look­ing in on us in some way and see­ing so much young life around the place. There was Avery, look­ing gor­geous and quite removed from the action, but still kind and sweet to the younger sprouts, then there were my nieces Jane and Mol­ly, 4 1/2 and 9 months old (today!), then there was Baby Kate from across the road and her house­guest Gaia, age 3 1/2. The mag­net­ic lure of the tram­po­line! Mol­ly took refuge on John’s lap, to be pro­tect­ed from the flail­ing arms and legs of big­ger but still rather incon­sis­tent­ly mov­ing girls. Kate sat with a bit more inde­pen­dence, but Gaia and Jane were mov­ing tar­gets, shout­ing, leap­ing, trip­ping over each oth­er, san­dals and Crocs every­where. This pleased Kate to no end, who if her first long sen­tence isn’t “Give me those Manolo Blah­niks” I’ll eat my ancient Welling­tons. She sim­ply can­not resist shoes, any­one’s shoes.

And can you resist these lit­tle kit­ty faces? The girls are set­tling down, not as seam­less­ly as one might per­haps wish (should kit­tens poo in the bath­tub? rhetor­i­cal ques­tion), and their broth­er is a com­plete nut­case and delight. Avery is devot­ed to the task of set­tling them and gen­tling them, and in their ser­vice has accom­plished many things I would nev­er have dreamed pos­si­ble, includ­ing learn­ing to open a pull-top can, will won­ders nev­er cease.

I’ve just set­tled down from my accus­tomed night­time wan­der­ings: straight­en­ing flow­ers still thriv­ing from Olimpia’s vis­it, check­ing can­dles in win­dows I always leave when Anne and David (espe­cial­ly David) are across the road because they like the sign that all is well and cozy at Red Gate. I walked around down­stairs, rais­ing the shades in the bath­room from Avery’s hours-long spa bath ear­li­er in the week, putting down a dish of dry food for the kit­tens, fold­ing one more load of laun­dry, dry­ing up the odd tray and water pitch­er and what­not on the drain­ing board, turn­ing off the dish­wash­er so the AC can remove some of this humid­i­ty with­out shut­ting off all the power…

Late Fri­day after­noon brought us Judy’s quick vis­it, laugh­ing as she stepped over my floor-wash­ing. “You can come to my house when you’re fin­ished here,” she said, and I was hap­py to be found indus­tri­ous and pur­pose­ful, instead of sit­ting around read­ing Soap Opera Digest as I might well have been found. She asked if I’d found a piano, since one of her friends thought she might be get­ting rid of hers, “Her daugh­ter’s got a much bet­ter piano now, she’s a good lit­tle musi­cian…”, then report­ed on Rol­lie’s fin­ger, final­ly recov­er­ing from being thrashed by the milk­ing cows. She com­plained, as all the farm­ers are, about the slow hay­ing with wet weath­er. I must aver, how­ev­er, that to my mem­o­ry, the Con­necti­cut farmer’s reportage of weath­er is much like the Eng­lish per­son­’s: elic­it­ing amaze­ment no mat­ter what the out­come! Wet! Hot! Dry! It’s all remark­able, and each sum­mer the reac­tion is the same, “Well, what can you expect with the crazy WEATH­ER we’ve been hav­ing this summer?!”

We’ve kept busy with all our home repair and clean­ing projects, while wait­ing fruit­less for the painter to call or come by. Anoth­er sum­mer will go by and this house will not be paint­ed. For this we are tru­ly sor­ry, but what can we do? I would have thought that in this eco­nom­ic cli­mate a per­son who paint­ed for a liv­ing would real­ly like a job paint­ing for a liv­ing, but appar­ent­ly there are forces at work here that I do not under­stand. In the mean­time, I fol­low the adorable sight of John and Avery fill­ing the bird feed­ers, or John fill­ing them as Avery fol­lows him around with a ram­bling account of her dream last night, an involved one hav­ing to do with skat­ing cos­tumes avail­able in online stores that then turn into REAL stores, or have mag­i­cal URLs that can be accessed with­in the dream and then come true in real life. Actu­al­ly, the skat­ing dress is that unat­tain­able dream that will doubt­less fol­low Avery through the next 30 years of her life, like our find­ing a house painter.

Oh, and we have vis­it­ed the worst, most awful horsey tag sale! How annoy­ing to fol­low neon signs all over the neigh­bor­hood, announc­ing a HUGE HUGE TAG SALE, only to find that the items for sale were… horse blan­kets, bits, bri­dles, old dusty boots, and, branch­ing out a bit, filthy dirty aban­doned rab­bit hutch­es, sets of chipped chi­na mugs with graz­ing hors­es on them, used nail pol­ish (I’m sor­ry to say Avery fell for a bot­tle in the shape of a kit­ten), and most amus­ing, two box­es semi-full of chalk, clear­ly labelled with the orig­i­nal price tags from KMart, 39 cents each, offered for the bar­gain price of… two for a dollar.

Yes­ter­day, though, was one of those days of sum­mer that comes along all too rarely: a whole day with my sis­ter’s fam­i­ly to vis­it, although alas no actu­al sis­ter as she was trav­el­ing. We got, how­ev­er, her hus­band Joel and their two lit­tle girls, Jane and Mol­ly, they of the tram­polin­ing fes­ti­val. Here for some play in the sun, Jane run­ning around after Avery and Mol­ly ensconced on a red and green quilt spread out on the ter­race, sur­round­ed by puffy pil­lows designed to keep her safe. Of course, she was able to aim one spec­tac­u­lar fall direct­ly in the gap between these pil­lows and face-plant­ed, with an enor­mous belat­ed scream and spurt­ing tears, into the stones. Ah, just a blip on an oth­er­wise per­fect day, and from the per­spec­tive of par­ents of a much old­er and more com­pli­cat­ed child, how love­ly to have tears so eas­i­ly comforted!

We set­tled down at the pic­nic table with a feast. The first course: why on earth has it tak­en me so long this sum­mer to make what is quite obvi­ous­ly the best pos­si­ble cold soup? A long-time fam­i­ly clas­sic, and one def­i­nite­ly worth your while to make, the day before, and chill overnight.

Vichys­soise
(serves )

3 tbsps butter
2 bunch­es (about four cups of chopped good white and light green bits) leeks
1 large white onion, cut in eighths
6 medi­um pota­toes, peeled and cut in bite-size chunks
1 48-ounce can com­mer­cial chick­en broth, like Col­lege Inn
dash white pepper
1 cup light cream
1 cup skim milk (or two cups real­ly good whole milk and skip the cream)
chopped chives to garnish

Melt the but­ter in a heavy stock­pot and throw in the leeks, onions and pota­toes. Stir until leeks are translu­cent, then cov­er in chick­en broth and sim­mer for about 45 min­utes until pota­toes are ten­der. Liq­uidize with a hand blender and mix in cream and milk, then pass through a sieve into anoth­er stock­pot into a large bowl. Refrig­er­ate the soup overnight and then gar­nish with chives to serve. Perfection.

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I have innu­mer­able hap­py mem­o­ries of this soup, giv­en to me first by my dar­ling New Jer­sey friends who host­ed us for the Fourth of July. It’s sim­ply per­fect: creamy, cold, beau­ti­ful with its flecks of green chives, sim­ple yet com­plex. It’s been the soup of choice for dozens of my gallery open­ing par­ties, Avery’s enor­mous birth­day cel­e­bra­tions in New York, pic­nics, all sum­mer out­ings. Old-fash­ioned, and yet irre­sistible. I’ve worked for months, even years, on a chap­ter for my even­tu­al book, describ­ing this soup and its impor­tance in our fam­i­ly his­to­ry, and it’s sur­pris­ing­ly hard to pro­duce. You’d be amazed how easy it is to turn out thou­sands of words about some­thing spon­ta­neous that does­n’t real­ly sig­ni­fy, where on the oth­er hand to express some­thing real­ly cen­tral to one’s life is near­ly impos­si­ble. Sigh.

Well, we fol­lowed our soup with grilled Cor­nish game hens — to my mind, the unsung heroes of Amer­i­can poul­try (did you know there was such a cat­e­go­ry?). Don’t even THINK about spend­ing mon­ey on com­mer­cial bar­be­cue sauce. You open up your fridge and make your own ver­sion of:

Refrig­er­a­tor Door Bar­be­cue Sauce
(makes enough for one round on the bar­be­cue of what­ev­er meat you have going)

1/3 cup each: hon­ey, maple syrup, left­over toma­to sauce, hoi­son (plum) sauce
cou­ple shakes: maple vine­gar, Worces­ter­shire sauce, lemon juice

Stir or shake all this up, rinse out the emp­ty jars you’ve lib­er­at­ed from your refrig­er­a­tor door, recy­cle them and count this a lucky, fru­gal, envi­ron­men­tal­ly sound and deli­cious condiment.

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This bar­be­cue sauce won RAVE reviews. You sim­ply remove the back­bones of your Cor­nish game hens, flat­ten them out, and cov­er them with sauce, then grill them for about 20 min­utes per side at 400. This sauce was even bet­ter tonight as cold left­overs, so give it a try. But the star of the lunch? Avery’s blue­ber­ry tart. A triumph!

Then we were off to the pool, the two big girls and I, swim bag stuffed to the gills with things to read, extra tow­els, sun­screen, con­di­tion­er for my after-swim show­er, you name it. John and Joel stayed home to put Mol­ly down for her nap (did it real­ly require two strong men? I did­n’t ask), and I was more than hap­py to swim with Avery and Jane, who decid­ed sud­den­ly that it was time to jump off the side of the pool all by her­self, for the first time. How excit­ing! She is intre­pid in the water, bob­bing along in her upside-down gog­gles, shriek­ing with excite­ment. When­ev­er she gets an answer to a ques­tion that she does­n’t expect she says indig­nant­ly, “WHAT?” like she wants her mon­ey back. “Why are you sit­ting out in the sun instead of com­ing in the water, Aunt Kris­ten?” “Because I’m chilly, Jane.” “WHAT?” Her father turned up, full of amaze­ment at her new skills, and con­cerned at the amount of pool water she was bring­ing home, poten­tial­ly, in her bel­ly. When she did some­thing against his wish­es, and he frowned slight­ly, she asked, “Why are you not amused, Daddy?”

Dra­ma when on leav­ing the pool, a scrape was dis­cov­ered on the bot­tom of her big toe. Off to the life­guards who we asked for Neosporin and a bandaid. Joel and I watched in hor­ri­fied silence as a life­guard donned latex gloves and then approached Jane with an unmis­tak­able pad soaked in ALCO­HOL! Before we could stop her, she applied it to the scrape: what an idiot! Poor Jane erupt­ed into under­stand­able screams of pain and fear, and then thought the bandaid was per­me­at­ed with the stuff and would not allow it to be applied! I want to be there when that block­head life­guard has a four-year-old of her own who coughs slight­ly and the moth­er then decides that the best rem­e­dy is to intu­bate her, just in case. Poor Jane. Final­ly home, though, and the lure of the tram­po­line, and all the vis­i­tors from across the road.

Is there any­thing more fun and fes­tive to make for din­ner for a lot of peo­ple than home­made piz­za? That’s a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion, and it was but the work of two min­utes to stir up a bit of her­by dough and stick it in the oven, let­ting it rise for an hour and a half while John and I sliced up toma­toes, pep­per­oni, red onions, moz­zarel­la, cooked sausages and sliced those up too, opened jars of toma­to sauce and ricot­ta cheese and a bag of parme­san and a hand­ful of arugu­la and a dish of home­made pesto. Here’s what I need for my birth­day or some­thing, though: a big piece of mar­ble or gran­ite for my kitchen table which would be per­fect for rolling out piz­za dough if it did­n’t have two leaves, which means the flour drift­ed down to the floor below through the seams, in a gen­tle sort of sum­mer snow­storm. Well, and it’s also com­plete­ly uneven, or the floor under­neath is, so the table rocks as I roll out the dough. Actu­al­ly, as well, I don’t have a rolling pin, so Jane was most amused to see me rolling with a wine bot­tle. OK, I’m mak­ing it sound as if my piz­za-mak­ing facil­i­ties are com­plete­ly inad­e­quate, and they are, but I can tell you that even with two piz­za trays, one cook­ie sheet and one tart pan, din­ner turned out pret­ty spec­tac­u­lar. It’s so much more fun than deliv­ery or pick­up, every­one can choose her own top­pings, and it’s just… fun.

Much, MUCH more fun than today. One word: GUT­TERS. We knew it was com­ing, we knew it was nec­es­sary. Today rain was fore­cast all the live­long day, so we rushed to get in our ten­nis game ear­ly, and then raced to the gro­cery store for what­ev­er we might need dur­ing the del­uge, and then pro­ceed­ed home at a far more pet­ty pace to face up to the gut­ters. And they were worth dreading.

For one thing, John has a pret­ty painful fear of heights. Even under the best of cir­cum­stances, what­ev­er those might be, he’s just not hap­py up high. Well, home repair at our house is nev­er under the best of cir­cum­stances. The barns yield up rick­ety hun­dred-year-old wood­en hand-hewn lad­ders, which John then insists will be made per­fect­ly lev­el on the ground with a BRICK under one leg. And he hauls up ancient buck­ets that were once filled with bird seed, to catch the debris. So I fol­lowed him around, climb­ing up onto the roof myself to shim­my across and gain access to out-of-the-way places, and prompt­ly slid down halfway, leav­ing all my shin skin on the roof tiles. Cranky! John had me hold the lad­der, where­upon he acci­den­tal­ly threw whole hand­fuls of the gut­ter mess onto my face, hair and the like. Final­ly, in a grow­ing pan­ic and fit of anger, I said, “ENOUGH!” and we stopped short of the final side of the house, which is under­laid with soft moss that I sim­ply could not see sup­port­ing the “lad­der.” Plus John, on an explorato­ry climb, report­ed he could not pen­e­trate the leaves and maple heli­copters even with a stick. Hmm. A prob­lem for anoth­er day. He insist­ed on kiss­ing me to dis­pel my bad humor and then said, “It had bet­ter f**ing rain.”

So a bit of trou­ble in par­adise. That’s the trou­ble with nature, one of my favorite writ­ers once said. “It’s so nat­ur­al.” Poi­son ivy, spi­ders, dirty moldy leaves falling in your hair. You don’t find that in Lon­don. Can it be that we’ve turned the cor­ner of our sum­mer emo­tions and find our­selves antic­i­pat­ing the charm in the life we’ve left behind? It’s been known to hap­pen. But then I look at this gor­geous pho­to of the Farm, tak­en by Shel­ley, and I’m smit­ten again.