Sum­mer Road Trip 2015: the Midwest

Do you remem­ber, back in the autumn, when the Kick­starter cam­paign ruled my life?

When all I could think of was bring­ing our cook­book project out of the recess­es of Word files, graph­ic design plans and pub­lish­ing contracts?

proofs

No one in the world could have been more sup­port­ive than my moth­er, and my moth­er-in-law.  They lis­tened, cajoled me out of my blue moods, remind­ed me how much I real­ly love to cook, to feed peo­ple, to tell our sto­ries.  They con­vinced me that how­ev­er tired I was of the project at any giv­en moment, it would be worth all the trou­ble to bring the book to fruition.

And togeth­er, we did!

book carton

Fast-for­ward to this sum­mer, with John deeply occu­pied in build­ing plans and Avery hap­pi­ly all over Europe for a fun-filled adven­ture.  I decid­ed to go on an adven­ture of my own, to thank as many of the peo­ple as I could who had come togeth­er to make my book a reality.

And frankly, to go home again.

Because as much as we’ve moved around in the last 30 years or so, the won­der­ful years we’ve spent in New York and Lon­don, the Mid­west will always feel like home to me.

I began in Indi­ana, in my child­hood home, cook­ing a cel­e­bra­tion lunch for Mom and her clos­est inner cir­cle, the long-await­ed, exclu­sive Kick­starter lun­cheon!  A day trav­el­ling from Lon­don, through Detroit, I rang Mom from the lounge.  “My flight’s due in at 9 o’clock,” I said breath­less­ly, cock­tail in hand.  “Oh, I don’t think so,” she said sad­ly.  “We are hav­ing near-tor­na­do storms here.”  Sure enough, I ran to the gate to find that the flight before mine, mine, and the flight after had all been can­celled.  “Don’t DO this to me!” I shrieked inward­ly.  “I can’t be late for tomor­row.”  And five LONG hours lat­er, I arrived in Indi­anapo­lis after mid­night, to look at the clock in Mom’s kitchen and realise that I had twelve hours in which to shop for, cook and present a three-course meal for eight!  I had planned to spend some of those hours sleep­ing, to be sure.

It all worked out.  I’d come armed with gifts, of course.

napkins aprons mom's

The guests arrived, among them an ear­ly bird, one of my old­est friends in the world, my dear­est Amy.  Part­ner in many a child­hood caper.

amy me

We talked fast and furi­ous­ly as I raced about, prepar­ing creamy red pep­per soup, slow-braised chick­en thighs with olives and bay leaves, toma­to and moz­zarel­la sal­ad with fresh pesto, steamed rice, all to be served on Mom’s high­ly-prized brown and white china.

mom's lunch

The guests arrived!  Janet, my moth­er’s dear friend for over 50 years.  Oh the years our fam­i­lies shared a duplex, a lit­tle plas­tic swim­ming pool, a swingset.

janet

And their great chum Dal­lene, the best piano teacher a girl ever had.

dallene

Janet’s beau­ti­ful sis­ter Judy, and my moth­er’s newest friend Julie.

julie judy mom

And Julie’s moth­er Nan­cy.  She and her daugh­ter have added so much fun to my moth­er’s life!

nancy book

We set­tled down to our lunch, and a rather fren­zied attempt to relate all the impor­tant things that had hap­pened to us all since we last saw each oth­er — and in Nan­cy and Julie’s case, since it was our first meet­ing, prop­er intro­duc­tions.  “Julie reminds me so much of you!” my moth­er said, which is always an intrigu­ing sug­ges­tion.  And indeed, super-extro­verts we both are, always hap­pi­est when sur­round­ed by lots of peo­ple.  I knew she and Amy would find each oth­er kin­dred spir­its, since my moth­er loves us all.

amy julie

We ate and ate, with sec­ond help­ings, and final­ly cake.  A tow­er­ing Vic­to­ria sponge with a lay­er of lemon curd I had brought all the way from Barnes, from our Christ­mas Fair.

victoria sponge

Our guests depart­ed one by one, Amy with an extra “Tonight at 7.30” apron over her arm, to try a spot of tie-dye­ing on it!  “That way, the places where you wipe your food­ie hands don’t have to try to stay white!”

I raced to a near­by bar to make my next ren­dez-vous, drinks with a lit­tle group of high school friends, plus my dear friend Kristin.  We talked over and over each oth­er, try­ing to explain to Kristin via a sort of Venn dia­gram on the table­cloth, how intri­cate­ly we are all involved in each oth­er’s pasts: who dat­ed whom, who mar­ried whom, whose broth­er was mar­ried to whose sis­ter, whose law firm rep­re­sents whose busi­ness.  A tan­gled web, stretch­ing back 35 years or more.

kristen toast (1)

I drove away in the intense­ly humid Indi­ana heat, reflect­ing on the extra­or­di­nary luck that gave me such friends, still such fun after such a long time.

And as I set­tled into a nice talk with my moth­er, the door­bell rang and up popped Todd, who was to be the only man at our drinks par­ty but missed me, and trailed me home!

todd and me

It was a hap­py acci­dent, real­ly, to miss each oth­er at the bar, because we got an unin­ter­rupt­ed evening of catch­ing-up, hear­ing of his bril­liant chil­dren’s activ­i­ties, telling him about Avery’s adven­tures.  Some­day our fam­i­lies will meet.

I awoke again very ear­ly next morn­ing, on Lon­don time, and decid­ed that I would go on a lit­tle voy­age of rem­i­nis­cence around my child­hood neigh­bor­hood.  Every­thing always feels slight­ly askew, when I return.  The church where my madri­gal group sang its Christ­mas con­certs, for my dear old friend Mrs. Young, looks tiny, insignif­i­cant and rather awful, com­pared with the glow­ing image in my memory.

mrs young's church

The tiny, doll­house-like house where I had my first baby-sit­ting jobs, watch­ing “The New­ly­wed Game” and doing my home­work, seems also much small­er than in my mem­o­ry.  It’s now on the His­toric Register.

babysitting house

I parked the car and wan­dered, duck­ing under the hang­ing branch­es of oaks and maples, down to the creek where as a lit­tle girl with my friends I clam­bered among the rocks, swung from a very dan­ger­ous rope swing.  No one must play there any­more; the path is entire­ly cov­ered in ivy.

ivy path

Where, in fact, were the chil­dren, any chil­dren?  In the whole of my Mid­west­ern trip this sum­mer, I saw no chil­dren just out and about play­ing.  Per­haps they were all indoors look­ing at one kind of screen or anoth­er, but I chose to think they were in sum­mer camp some­where.  Not that my child­hood was spent at camp; most of it was spent tres­pass­ing across this love­ly golf course, whether dis­turb­ing angry golf­ing dads in sum­mer, or sled­ding down snowy hills in winter.

golf course

I mean­dered in a fog com­bined of Mid­west­ern humid­i­ty and nos­tal­gia, think­ing of the inno­cent hours I spent on my bicy­cle in these neigh­bor­hood haunts, dream­ing of what would become of me when I grew up.  I picked up a sou­venir for Avery, whose child­hood — spent in the urban purviews of New York and Lon­don — has prob­a­bly nev­er admit­ted such an exot­ic object.

golf ball

I like to imag­ine anoth­er kind of life I might have had, one where I stayed “home,” close to my par­ents and my friends, a con­tin­u­ous sort of life rather than one I’ve had, with a series of cur­tains com­ing down between its acts — child­hood in Indi­ana, the first scary deci­sion to live on the East Coast, ear­ly mar­ried life in Lon­don, my teach­ing years and Avery’s baby­hood in New York, our Euro­pean adven­tures since then.  Oh, it’s been won­der­ful, but how won­der­ful, too, it would have been to remain where I began, ties unbroken.

hand prints

Under­ly­ing my nos­tal­gia, of course, is the mas­sive miss­ing of my father.  So sick now, in far­away Con­necti­cut, no longer him­self, I feel his pres­ence along every path when I go “home.”  I spent many hap­py ear­ly evenings as a lit­tle girl down by the creek, wait­ing for his car to pull into the alley on his way home from work.  Every­thing has changed now, from the dri­ve­way that some pro­fes­sion­al now tars (how I remem­ber the intense smell and the beat­ing heat of those week­end projects with him each sum­mer), to his toma­to gar­den now filled with my moth­er’s daisies, to the garage once so filled with uncon­trolled piles of his tools, small motor parts, col­lec­tions of Mir­a­cle Whip jars con­tain­ing this or that hand­ful of nails.  Now all that remains in the garage is a small hud­dle of the Squirt bot­tles, his favorite tipple.

squirt bottlesIt was just as well that anoth­er lun­cheon par­ty beck­oned, to put an end to my sad reflec­tions and focus again on the present, where I am lucky to be able to go home again.

I drove to the near­by gro­cery store, with its shelves of unabashed Amer­i­can bounty.

jelloWhat fun to whizz along the wide Amer­i­can streets in the ear­ly morn­ing sun­shine, singing hap­pi­ly to “The Great­est Hits from the 80s and 90s” on the radio.  Noth­ing beats the B52s, and “Roam If You Want to,” and Glass Tiger’s “Don’t For­get Me When I’m Gone.”  My teen years, on the FM dial.

Home to pre­pare lunch for my beloved Wedek­ing fam­i­ly all the way from Ken­tucky, on an impromp­tu whirl­wind vis­it to cel­e­brate my uncle’s 70th birth­day!  My Uncle Ken­ny, fond­ly known as Uncle Whiskey for the sin­gle-malt devo­tion we share (he tried the amaz­ing peaty sam­ple I brought from Duty Free!), my beau­ti­ful Aunt Mary Wayne, and their daugh­ter, child­hood part­ner in crime Amy, with her gor­geous son Ryan.  How the years have flown!

Wedekings

We laughed and ate, ate and laughed.  I am always so glad to know that my Ken­tucky fam­i­ly are on the oth­er end of a tele­phone line, and there for my moth­er and broth­er at the Thanks­giv­ings and the Christ­mases when we are not togeth­er.  They have such fun, always.

mom mary wayne kenny

We repaired to the liv­ing room for lemon bars and more fam­i­ly gossip.

lemon bars

Far too soon, with shout­ed good­byes in the late after­noon sun, they depart­ed.  What fun we had had, remem­ber­ing their trip to Lon­don, our fam­i­ly reunions, bring­ing my father into the room with favorite stories.

family reunion

I spent the evening look­ing through old pho­tos of our shared ances­tor, our dar­ling Mamoo.  We all thought we saw a dis­tinct fam­i­ly resem­blance to Avery, though Avery can’t see it her­self.  Maybe we nev­er can, see our­selves, that is.

Mamoo like Avery (1)

Mom and I sat on the porch late into the night, the air filled with light­ning bugs and the sound of two won­der­ful­ly evoca­tive Indi­ana insti­tu­tions: the rail­road, and the race track.  Wooh-wooh, went the train whis­tle, and vroom-vroom, the cars around the Brick­yard.  Those two sounds, like the smell of fresh­ly cut grass, bring back my child­hood in an instant.

The next day found us back on the porch, shar­ing a love­ly chat with Mom’s friend Pam, provider of beau­ti­ful man­i­cures as well as warm friend­ship.  And then I con­coct­ed a big pot of Tom Yum soup and left it on the stove, wan­der­ing out to the love­ly, fer­ny front porch to catch up with our next-door neigh­bors, hear­ing of their grand­chil­dren’s exploits, won­der­ing togeth­er “where are all the chil­dren?”  I mar­velled at the pro­fu­sion of daisies that Amy’s gar­den firm have pro­vid­ed for Mom, adding so much to the beau­ty of our lit­tle street.

daisies

I man­aged to cap­ture my broth­er Andy in a con­tem­pla­tive mood.  It is always so love­ly, on my vis­its, to have a chance to find out what he’s been up to, to thank him for being in Mom’s cor­ner, for keep­ing her company.

handsome andy

And our next guests arrived!  Our old friend Kevin, and his star­tling­ly grownup daugh­ter, Colleen.  Hap­py to share a bowl of spicy Thai soup with us.

kevin colleen

Absolute­ly noth­ing brings the pas­sage of time to the fore­front like shar­ing a meal with a young per­son you have firm­ly age 5 or 6, and to hear her describe her pro­fes­sion­al accom­plish­ments, her trav­els, her unde­ni­ably adult life.  It was a total joy to see her with her dad, such a staunch friend to our fam­i­ly over the years.

It was so hard to say good­bye to my moth­er and broth­er, to leave a place where I’m loved for just being me.  What a per­fect vis­it, far too short, but filled with all the things I long for when we’re sep­a­rat­ed: a long-await­ed lun­cheon, moth­er-daugh­ter gos­sip, a chance to give and receive a tight hug when­ev­er I want.

In the morn­ing, Andy brought me to the air­port for the next phase of my Mid­west­ern jaunt: Iowa!

It’s been 31 years to the month since I packed up my lit­tle Hon­da Civic, my hands full of maps giv­en me by my anx­ious father, sure I’d get lost (I did), and crossed Indi­ana, Illi­nois and half of Iowa to arrive in Water­loo, at the beau­ti­ful home of my then-boyfriend, and this dear lady, my moth­er-in-law Rose­mary, friend now for my whole adult life.

rosemary

She greet­ed me in the best pos­si­ble way: with a lunch of BLTs and fresh-picked corn!

iowa lunch

As much as I love my adopt­ed home of Eng­land, and supe­ri­or as its ingre­di­ents are in many instances, noth­ing, NOTH­ING beats the Mid­west of Amer­i­ca for its ulti­mate sum­mer treat of corn on the cob.  The crisp­ness!  The sweet­ness.  Oh, it can’t be rivalled any­where in the world, I feel sure.  The lunch was a per­fect throw­back to the old days of my Iowa vis­its, when his dad would turn up for lunch in the mid­dle of his work­day in a crisp, gor­geous suit.  BLTs with the bread cut in half, so you could eat two or even three quite eas­i­ly.  What hap­py days those were.

Because much as with my Indi­ana vis­its, there is some­thing now miss­ing from my Iowa trips.  How I miss John’s dad, with his tight hug and insis­tence on car­ry­ing suit­cas­es, dri­ving us home from the air­port past wav­ing corn­fields, his father­ly demeanor plac­ing us firm­ly in the posi­tion of “the kids,” not in charge, not yet adult, not respon­si­ble.  What a for­ev­er arm-around-your-shoul­ders sense of pro­tec­tion he con­veyed, always.

Even with the emp­ty space, there is so much to love about a vis­it to Water­loo.  Not the least attrac­tion of which is the beau­ti­ful screened-in upstairs porch.  “Gosh, I sure wish we’d made this porch a foot wider,” John’s par­ents were wont to say, as soon as it was built.  No mat­ter, it is a haven of seren­i­ty on a July after­noon, and I lay back on the sofa cush­ions, lis­ten­ing to the birds in the pine trees, to the air con­di­tion­er hum­ming off and on, to the sound of a far­away lawnmower.

porch feet

I roused myself to join John’s mom at Sun­ny­side, the per­fect coun­try club where I spent so many hours and hours, first as a girl­friend on the div­ing board at the shim­mer­ing pool, then as a young moth­er chas­ing after my lit­tle girl on the immac­u­late green.

avery me sunnyside

What IS it with me and golf cours­es?  I think it’s the unchang­ing qui­etude that attracts me, year after year.

sunnyside view

It was love­ly to be reunit­ed with Den­nis and Camille, best friends of John’s par­ents for so many years.

camille nonna dennis

We rem­i­nisced over per­fect, crunchy fried shrimp, my spe­cial treat at Sun­ny­side, harken­ing back to my first vis­its there.  “Where, do you think, is the play­ground, with a mer­ry-go-round where John and I had our first pic­nic?”  I won­dered.  We had ‘Hay and straw sal­ad,’ made by you, Non­na.  Do you have any idea?”

That will be at Look­out Park,” Camille said imme­di­ate­ly, and it was but the work of  a moment the fol­low­ing morn­ing to find it, and its atten­dant mem­o­ries of a sum­mer 31 years in the past.

merrygoround

On this wave of nos­tal­gia, we drove to near­by Cedar Falls, home of the world’s great­est cof­fee shop, Cup o’Joe, presided over by the beau­ti­ful Dawn, who remem­bered me and asked after Avery.  What makes their cof­fee so deli­cious, so inim­itable?  Dawn’s pas­sion, I think.

dawn

We wan­dered down the charm­ing Amer­i­can vil­lage street, like some­thing out of a pic­ture book.

cedar falls view

I’d for­got­ten all about RAG­BRAI, the Iowa “Reg­is­ter’s Annu­al Great Bicy­cle Ride Across Iowa,” a com­plete­ly nuts thing that some 20,000 bike rid­ers take part in every July in Iowa, rid­ing across the entire state, in any and all kinds of weath­er.  John and his fam­i­ly took part, many times — his first kiss occurred with one Eliz­a­beth, some­where in a corn­field!  The ride just hap­pened to be pass­ing through Cedar Falls the very day I was there.

ragbrai sign

Cedar Falls is a per­fect exam­ple of Amer­i­cana gone ter­ri­bly right: small inde­pen­dent shops sell­ing beau­ti­ful things, cheer­ful peo­ple.  None love­li­er than Anne, who used to own Cup o’Joe, now proud pro­pri­etor of a charm­ing vin­tage shop.

anne

I could eas­i­ly have bought a suit­case full of her things.  Per­haps an apron for Avery, pur­su­ing her first adven­tures in cook­ing, in London.

aprons

We drank our cof­fee in the warm sun­shine, tex­ting pho­tographs and mes­sages to John and Avery, in one of those won­der­ful moments when tech­nol­o­gy real­ly does add to one’s life.  We stopped in our mer­can­tile adven­tures for quite a per­fect Reuben, with­out which a trip to Amer­i­ca is not worthwhile.

reuben

We dashed, then, to the gro­cery store to fin­ish off the shop­ping that would be need­ed for our long-antic­i­pat­ed din­ner par­ty the next night, to cel­e­brate a num­ber of things: Rose­mary’s new kitchen, my cook­book, my vis­it.  What fun to plan every detail.

For our evening’s adven­ture that night, though, we jour­neyed back to Cedar Falls to observe RAG­BRAI in all its glo­ry: the tents…

ragbrai tents

The t‑shirts!

ragbrai t-shirt

The spon­sors.  What a sight!

trump

And a sight that would have aston­ished lit­tle John, back in the day.  How can so much change in so short a time?  “This would have made my meet­ing up with Eliz­a­beth a bit eas­i­er!” John laughed, when I sent him this photograph.

phone charging

We repaired to a local sports bar to achieve one oth­er culi­nary wish for my Iowa vis­it: the per­fect pork ten­der­loin.  And for con­ver­sa­tion with Den­nis, Camille and Rose­mary’s cycling friend Randy, all of us hap­py to bask in the easy famil­iar­i­ty of such an Amer­i­can evening.

The next day was giv­en over to par­ty prepa­ra­tions.  Thank good­ness we had a decent cookbook.

chicken recipe

There is no hap­pi­er way to spend a day, to my mind.  Chop­ping, chop­ping, chop­ping, togeth­er with Rose­mary.  How many times we have done this!  But nev­er togeth­er at her house.  It was a treat.

chicken thigh ingredients

She hap­pi­ly pulled out the best chi­na cups for my red pep­per soup.  How beau­ti­ful the table looked, when we were ready.

dinner table

Every­one arrived, feel­ing fes­tive.  Camille and Den­nis, of course, and old friends Ric and Mary, and new friends to me — I have heard about them all these many years — David and Lyn.

dinner party group

Where’s Suave Duck?” Ric imme­di­ate­ly asked, tak­ing me back three decades to his old, per­fect nick­name for John!  Who was incred­i­bly Suave, to be fair, at age 20 or so.

How won­der­ful it would have been to have John there, espe­cial­ly to explain the plans for Pot­ters Fields!  I did my best.

PF plans waterlooJohn’s love­ly sis­ter Cathy drove all the way from Min­neapo­lis to have din­ner with us, and to spend the night.  A few pre­cious hours togeth­er to catch up.

What a won­der­ful evening.  The food was deli­cious, though I say it myself, espe­cial­ly the cur­ried chick­peas with spinach and feta, and the star of the evening: Rose­mary’s plate of lemon bars, since she is the queen of del­i­cate desserts.

dennis lemon bars

A day to remem­ber, full of rem­i­nis­cent laugh­ter, warm mem­o­ries of many sum­mer vis­its, antic­i­pat­ed times togeth­er in Lon­don in the com­ing years.  Not many peo­ple are as lucky to gain such a moth­er-in-law as I have, an end­less­ly sup­port­ive lis­ten­ing ear, mak­ing me always feel much more inter­est­ing than I real­ly am.  And such fun in the many kitchens we’ve chopped in, over the years.

nonna meThe next morn­ing dawned dark and gloomy, with a promised rain storm that sent Cathy scur­ry­ing away back to her real life in Min­neso­ta.  And we turned our minds to dri­ving about, find­ing the per­fect, icon­ic Iowa barn for me to take home in my mind.  There is some­thing mag­i­cal about the white against the corn­fields, so dif­fer­ent from our red Con­necti­cut barns.

iowa barn

The corn­fields them­selves swayed with their tas­sels in the wind.

waving corn

That was my Mid­west­ern extrav­a­gan­za of Sum­mer 2015.  A trip planned in the chilly, damp spring of Lon­don, come to fruition in the hot, steamy world of Indi­ana and Iowa.  So many meals shared, so many cook­books inscribed to dear peo­ple, with­out whom it would nev­er have come about.  Long, lux­u­ri­ous con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple I see far too infre­quent­ly, but who are always ready to pick up where we left off, to main­tain the ties.

I was up in the air again, to land on the East Coast for a week of adven­tures in New York City, Con­necti­cut, and points in between.  Watch this space…

9 Responses

  1. Rosemary Curran says:

    Two things:

    Come back!
    I should have got­ten a haircut!

    As always, love you to pieces,
    John’s Mom

  2. A Work in Progress says:

    You know, you could have rent­ed a car and dri­ven from DTW to Indi­anapo­lis — it’s only about 4 hours. (Now THAT is a tru­ly Amer­i­can way of thinking… )

  3. kristen says:

    You guys are bum­ming me out! A whole love­ly post and I get com­ments about hair and rental cars? You’re slipping! :)

  4. A Work in Progress says:

    :-) I thought you would for­give me since you know it goes with­out say­ing how much I admire your writ­ing. Any thought of turn­ing this one into a mag­a­zine piece?

  5. Sheri Riley says:

    I feel so hon­ored and blessed to have been giv­en time dur­ing your trip. Please come back soon!

  6. Clare Osman says:

    Thanks for shar­ing this…loved every minute of it. So would love anoth­er invite to red gate farm!

  7. Work, I don’t know. I can’t imag­ine a mag­a­zine angle, but I’m glad you enjoyed it! Sheri, it was a total delight — if too short — and a joy to see you in Indy. Clare, we were just talk­ing about your love­ly vis­it last sum­mer, so hap­py. I miss it there already but Lon­don is pret­ty interesting.

  8. John Curran says:

    If I have to share her, thrilled that it is with our moms. What a reward­ing trip for all!

  9. You were great­ly missed, my husband!

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