the last day

Well, we’re in that unpleas­ant, cranky stage of leav­ing that entails mass­ing huge num­bers of books on the stair­way (“Can some­body car­ry those upstairs when you go next? AND the pair of shoes next to them, please”), rip­ping labels from pre­vi­ous jour­neys off the suit­cas­es, mon­i­tor­ing what’s in the dry­er, mak­ing beds with fresh sheets to greet us at Christ­mas, try­ing to decide between air con­di­tion­ing while we pack and the dish­wash­er. Every­one is annoyed. “But I DID tidy my room, only now it’s messy again from hav­ing shift­ed books and clothes to pack or not pack…” “Are we REAL­LY out of paper tow­els??” “I know I told you where the car key was!” and “Can you pos­si­bly eat this hard-boiled egg before we leave, or do I have to throw it away?” Throw­ing away food at this point of pre-depar­ture makes me crazy. As a result, our din­ner was bizarre: crab sal­ad with cel­ery, toma­to and moz­zarel­la and an avo­ca­do, plus corn on the cob and some stale Triscuits…

Part­way through this dubi­ous feast, Judy and Rol­lie appeared to say good­bye, give Avery a CARE pack­age for the flight (some love­ly puz­zles and choco­lates, thank you!), and sat with us, watch­ing us eat our weird din­ner, hav­ing had their much more nor­mal repast ear­li­er (“we were sure you’d have fin­ished!”). We gos­siped, told sto­ries by can­dle­light, watched Avery not eat (her appetite still not returned after her fever over the week­end). Judy and I decid­ed for SURE where the Christ­mas tree would go (def­i­nite­ly for sure) now that we’ve changed around the rooms… They took their leave, sig­nal­ing the true end to sum­mer, as much a blow as that from Anne, David and Alice’s depar­ture with Katie yes­ter­day afternoon.

This neigh­bor four­some turned up while I was sit­ting with Avery at her chick­en soup lunch yes­ter­day, and said their good­byes, so sad. “Katie will have changed so much by Christ­mas,” I mourned, hug­ging her for real, instead of just hold­ing her as I usu­al­ly do… Alice lis­tened to the ter­ri­ble “E above mid­dle C” on our incor­ri­gi­ble piano, Anne gave Avery one more hug, and they were gone… I ran across one more time to give Dave “Bread and Jam for Frances,” for Kate, and then Anne ran across one more time to return a dish to me and give a final hug, tak­ing our left­over cof­fee with her! That’s our friend­ship in a nut­shell: shared chil­dren, cof­fee, dish­es. We looked across at lit­tle Kate, bal­anc­ing her­self against the screen door across the road, shout­ing, “Bye, bye, bye…” “This is so sad,” Anne moaned. The phrase of the last cou­ple of days, every sum­mer it is repeated.

How fun­ny it is, that invis­i­ble line between one day and “the last day.” Two days ago we were hap­pi­ly host­ing our across-the-road-crowd for a gor­geous salmon din­ner, upon our return from Fire Island. We raced in from the Island, unpacked gro­ceries, checked with every­one to see if they were cool with com­ing when Avery had a fever (she would be clois­tered upstairs, but still, with a baby it’s worth ask­ing), and YES. So home I went to sprin­kle an enor­mous side of salmon with olive oil and the irre­place­able Fox Point Sea­son­ing from Pen­zey’s, quite the best way to cook most things besides brown­ies, in my hum­ble opin­ion. Only at the last minute, John at the grill dis­cov­ered that our sup­ply of propane had run out, pre­cise­ly one day too ear­ly. DRAT.

Except that we made a dis­cov­ery (as so many culi­nary adven­tures turn out). Fox Point with salmon is per­fect in the oven. Here you go.

Baked Salmon with Fox Point Seasoning
(serves six)

1 large side of salmon (about 3 pounds)
2 tbsps olive oil
2 tbsps Fox Point Seasoning

With your clean hands, smear the salmon, skin side down, flesh side up, with olive oil, then sprin­kle with Fox Point. Leave to reach room tem­per­a­ture before you slide the salmon onto a cook­ie sheet lined with alu­minum foil (super easy cleanup). Bake at 425F (210C) for 25 min­utes. SUBLIME.

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We served this with cucum­ber sal­ad with sour cream, dill and lime juice, and Alyssa’s cheese-drip­ping corn on the cob, and sauteed aspara­gus. A FEAST. One final evening with them, start­ing out with din­ner on the ter­race with can­dles, then as the bugs found us, we repaired inside for Ciao Bel­la Key Lime Gra­ham Crack­er gela­to, a present from Anne and David, a superb fol­low-on from salmon. So good, so sim­ple. We sim­ply shout­ed with laugh­ter over var­i­ous sto­ries from the sum­mer, includ­ing John’s expla­na­tion of why we can no longer close the sun roof on our 10-year-old Pas­sat, now at 97,000 miles. “Mice made homes in the mech­a­nism, which means they stole insu­la­tion from every­where they could find it,” he said, “plus tak­ing all the work­ings out of the radio and the anten­na.” “Which means,” Dave said, “that all the radio will play is ‘Alvin and the Chipmunks.’ ”

The fol­low­ing day found us begin­ning to acknowl­edge that the end of sum­mer had come. John was sift­ing through piles of papers, insur­ance, bills, con­tracts, finan­cial this­es and thats. I was sift­ing through kitchen sup­plies: to save or not to save the half-used wild rice, where to store the sug­ar and flour… Avery was drift­ing around feel­ing almost-not-ill. And we were all get­ting ready for the last evening with Jill, Joel, Jane and Mol­ly. The adults in the group had asked for “those ribs in toma­to sauce that you did last year,” so I quick­ly emailed my friend Olimpia to ask for her recipe. Which I messed with a bit, because I was also in the mood for meat­balls. Gorgeous.

Olimpia’s Spare Ribs and Meat­balls in Toma­to Sauce
(serves 10 easily)

2 tbsps olive oil
24 pork spare ribs
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 small white onion, minced
1 cup red wine
1 large can toma­to sauce
1 large can peeled plum tomatoes

for meat­balls:
1 1/2 lbs ground pork
3 eggs
2/3 cups breadcrumbs
1 tbsp Ital­ian seasoning

So here’s what I did. Fol­low­ing Olimpia’s instruc­tions, I heat­ed the olive oil in a heavy, very large pot and browned the ribs all over, on all sides. Then I added the gar­lic, onion and red wine and sim­mered, uncov­ered, for 5 min­utes. Then I added all the toma­to bits and cov­ered the pot and sim­mered, NO MORE than a sim­mer, for 3 hours.

Then I mixed all the meat­ball ingre­di­ents as you would a dough (take off your rings) until it was nice and mixed, clean and con­sis­tent through­out. Form into medi­um balls (I think my mix­ture made about 15), and drop one by one into the toma­to sauce, filled with ribs. Don’t try to stir yet. Cov­er the pot and sim­mer for half an hour, at which point the meat­balls will be cooked enough for you to stir the pot. Stir it up gen­tly, mix­ing up the ribs and the meat­balls. The whole thing can sit nice­ly, cov­ered, indef­i­nite­ly until dinner.

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This with some gar­lic bread was din­ner. The Three Js and One M arrived in a gath­er­ing sort of threat­en­ing sky. It did­n’t take long for Joel to sug­gest gen­tly, as I set the table out­side, “Don’t you think that was thun­der, Kris­ten?” “DEF­I­NITE­LY NOT,” I rejoined, in no uncer­tain terms. I con­tin­ued to put out tealights, grat­ed cheese, you name it. Avery was roused from her bed of con­tin­u­ing sort of mini-ill­ness to run a course of jumps with her dar­ling cousin Jane, while Mol­ly sat on my lap and ges­tured toward what­ev­er she could see. John and Jill repaired to dis­cuss things of finan­cial moment while Joel fed Mol­ly and the sky, I am sor­ry to say, dark­ened alarm­ing­ly. “Are you sure you want to eat out­side? I’d real­ly love to see what your din­ing room is like now, we’ve nev­er used it before.” He’s too kind not to phrase it in the form of a ques­tion. “It is NOT going to rain,” I main­tained, while mak­ing sal­ad dressing.

“It’s seri­ous­ly going to rain,” Joel final­ly said, and I looked up at the sky. Avery and Jane were still jump­ing, under light that was, I had to admit, green. OK, OK, OK. Just in case, I’ll bring in the plates and nap­kins. The skies opened. It sim­ply POURED. “Aren’t you glad we’re inside?”

It WAS cozy. I admit it.

The last evening with our fam­i­ly. Jane sat on my lap, then leapt down to sit with Avery. We all ate more ribs and meat­balls than we could ever have pre­dict­ed. Mol­ly learned to crawl, with John as her enthu­si­as­tic coach, but the clean­li­ness of my par­lor floor was not all that could have been wished for. I con­cur with my friend Shel­ley’s expla­na­tion for the unbe­liev­able lev­el of dust in my house: it comes UP from the floor, not just DOWN from the feet that come in!

Jane repaired to a bath, in the serene atmos­phere of the guest bath­room, while we cleared up din­ner and Avery slumped some­where, try­ing to be nor­mal when she real­ly still felt like a piece of Romaine let­tuce that’s been left out too long in the air. Jill cheer­ful­ly dealt with Jane as she splashed, Joel laughed with Mol­ly in the kitchen. We all felt that we did not want to say good­bye, since it was for four whole months. Jane hugged me tight­ly, say­ing, “You smell like Red Gate Farm,” which I chose to inter­pret as some­thing like can­dle­light, good food and Her­mes. John said pro­saical­ly, “Prob­a­bly moth­balls and dust.” Prob­a­bly, but I can still dream. Off they went. Until Christ­mas. How we will miss them all, and how Mol­ly will have changed in four months when we see her again.

This sum­mer has been so much about get­ting to know Avery every day as she changes so quick­ly, shop­ping, chat­ting, exchang­ing book ideas, thoughts on fam­i­ly and friends, menu ideas. She left Lon­don as still a lit­tle girl, but will be return­ing as a young lady. I have trea­sured so much these weeks of time togeth­er! Not the least shar­ing her won­der­ful­ly inven­tive project of fos­ter­ing those kit­tens. News­flash: Lit­tle Dor­rit and Nemo were adopt­ed suc­cess­ful­ly! By the fam­i­ly who took them “just to babysit” on Thurs­day evening. The phone mes­sage said joy­ful­ly, “This is Katie. We’ve fall­en in love with both kit­tens and will keep them both. Thank you so much!” What a huge tri­umph for Avery, to take kit­tens who could hard­ly be touched a month ago, and turn them into kit­tens that a fam­i­ly could not resist for 24 hours! Bless her lit­tle kit­ten-whis­per­ing heart.

Today was all about doing “every­thing for the last time till next sum­mer,” an annu­al rit­u­al we’ve all got used to. The last trip to the library, our last ten­nis game (my strange foot thingy resolved itself a bit in time to play), the last “Days of Our Lives” lunch, the last after­noon spent fold­ing laun­dry while watch­ing “Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal,” then a phone call from Becky to catch up, to say good­bye one last time. And I ran to Judy and Rol­lie’s to drop off the left­over bar­be­cued pork from last night which I was pret­ty sure would find favor with hun­gry young farm­ers as opposed to the rub­bish heap. As I recount­ed to Judy how we were try­ing to use up refrig­er­a­tor bits and bobs, she said quick­ly, “Well, I have some bar­be­cued pork from a friend who just dropped it off, if you need it…” That’s Judy. I almost fell for it. “Well, I hap­pen to know she CAN’T COOK, so don’t eat it,” I advised.

And the last trip to the pool for Avery and me while John ran count­less last errands which required mnemon­ic devices for him to remem­ber: “Cable, post office, corn, propane…”

We swam to and fro, me in a new cute tank­i­ni donat­ed by Alyssa! How cool to have a new swim­suit on the last day of sum­mer, and pur­ple and black, no less. Thanks, friend. The sky was blue, the pines were green, the radio blared, the chlo­rine was killing. Avery and I glo­ried in the reper­toire that spells “All that it should be, all that is summer.”

Tomor­row at this time we’ll be in mid­flight to Lon­don, and all the unname­able and unsa­vory details that are Get­ting Back Home, like unpack­ing (awful!), Going Through Mail (nev­er pleas­ant!), See­ing What Went Wrong (like dead plants, or worst case sce­nario, cats who did some­thing bad some­where). The flip side will be our hap­py reunion with our kit­ties, our neigh­bor­hood, our trip to Corn­wall. More from the oth­er side of The Pond, very soon. Good­bye, summer.