the ones we love

Well. John’s stub­ble is length­en­ing, my inter­est in make­up is dwin­dling, the num­ber of corn­cobs in my rub­bish is pil­ing up: it’s sum­mer vaca­tion. The barn is red, the goldfinch­es gold­en, Avery has been kid­napped by her best friend, the tiger lilies in the front yard are orange, the lawn guys have arrived with their earplugs and sun­tans, we’ve arrived.

We arrived, in fact, on Sat­ur­day evening to the blue skies and sun­set col­ors of a New Jer­sey Fourth of July, and to a show­er of over­whelm­ing mem­o­ries. Twen­ty years ago, as a near­ly-mar­ried girl of 24, I moved to Maple­wood, New Jer­sey to plan my wed­ding and set­tle down for a life­time of mar­ried bliss. My first step in this direc­tion was to enter the book­shop of my small town and intro­duce myself to the girl behind the counter. She was none oth­er than Livia, a per­son whose smile and meet­ing of the eyes was per­fect mag­ic. I fell in love (not at all awk­ward­ly, since my almost-mar­ried state could def­i­nite­ly encom­pass falling in love with just one more per­son), and we made fast friends with­in an instant. Livia and her moth­er, the effort­less­ly ele­gant and time­less­ly adorable Jan­ice, became our con­stant com­pan­ions for the fol­low­ing year. And then… John was trans­ferred to Lon­don. Eleven months after we’d spent all our time cement­ing our friend­ship, we were… gone.

And yet such was our mutu­al admi­ra­tion soci­ety that we have remained the most devot­ed of friends through the last 20 years. Livia came to us in Lon­don, we came to them every sum­mer when we came home from Eng­land, we spent count­less week­ends with them after we returned to live in New York. I remem­ber well the evening din­ner par­ty with them when I was just hours from giv­ing birth to Avery, and the pho­to­graph of John cradling a giant piece of quartz from Livvy’s col­lec­tion that she reck­oned was about the size our baby would be when born… her gift of a mono­grammed ster­ling sil­ver cig­a­rette case for Avery upon her birth was the most, let’s see, char­ac­ter­is­tic gift of all Avery received.

In the inter­ven­ing years, we have had marathon phone calls from Lon­don to New Jer­sey, fran­ti­cal­ly intense vis­its on our returns home, a snowy din­ner out at an Indi­an restau­rant in Tribeca, the odd snatched din­ner at their house, an unfor­get­table mil­len­ni­um house par­ty in 1999… and final­ly a ter­ri­ble, encom­pass­ing­ly lov­ing arms-open­ing ges­ture to us in the days after we escaped our expe­ri­ences of Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001. Our days there recov­er­ing from what we had been through will nev­er be forgotten.

And through it all, many, many Fourths of July togeth­er, on the park hills of South Orange with glow-in-the-dark neck­laces strung around Avery’s sweaty lit­tle girl neck, she don­ning a white dress with smock­ing of an Amer­i­can flag for YEARS until she could scarce­ly breathe in it!

And so our arrival on Sat­ur­day night was, for me, sim­ply steeped in love and mem­o­ries. Impos­si­ble to live up to and yet, because they are who they are, their wel­come to us sur­passed any­thing we had ever had before. “Noth­ing ever changes here,” Livia said placid­ly, pulling us into the white, white kitchen of the 1920s stone house. A glass of old Scotch, exchange of gifts, end­less tale-telling, then a rush out to see fire­works… and back for the dish I had so hoped I would get: Jan­ice’s pink gaz­pa­cho! Ice cold, flecked with roast­ed almonds and per­me­at­ed with the per­fume of cumin… We remem­bered the old days of try­ing to decide what Avery would call Jan­ice, when she was a tiny tot, and the agree­ment upon “Jan­ice­mom­my,” because for ages Avery could not seem to dis­tin­guish between “Jan­ice” and “Mom­my.” I could­n’t have been happier.

Can­dle­light both tall and in votives, Jan­ice’s grand­daugh­ter Anas­ta­sia there in all her 25-year-old glo­ry, inclin­ing her head grace­ful­ly when we real­ized that she was the age Avery is NOW, when Avery was born. How felic­i­tous, how delight­ful! She who taught us to sing “Over in Kil­lar­ney,” to com­fort new­born Baby Avery, and we still sing it to her every night.

Fol­low­ing the gaz­pa­cho was the most sub­lime cold shrimp sal­ad, whose recipe I must share with you here:

Jan­ice’s Cold Sum­mer Shrimp Salad
(serves 6 as a main course for lun­cheon or a late supper)

1 1/2 lb cooked large shrimp, tails removed, cut in thirds
1 1/2 cups cel­ery, chopped fine
1/2 red pep­per, cut fine
tiny bit of shal­lot, minced
1 cup mayonnaise
1 tbsp Worces­ter­shire sauce
squeeze of lemon juice (plus the squeezed bit stirred through the salad)
1 tsp salt
dash Tabasco

Sim­ply mix all, add the best of grate­ful friends and can­dle­light, and enjoy…

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We suc­cumbed in our own ways that evening to jet­lag, or sim­ply real­is­tic exhaus­tion: first Avery who crept off to her old accus­tomed bed­room, sleep­ing with the plushy swan she has always slept with at Jan­ice­mom­my’s house, her room lit sub­tly by the ceram­ic night­light “Gladys the Goose,” tucked away in the cor­ner of the room, dark shin­ing wood­en floors, white shelves filled with old chil­dren’s books, the shades pulled down against the ancient ivy climb­ing up the windows.

John set­tled down on his own sleep­ing porch, a screened-in room adjoin­ing my own bed­room, where he has always slept for the years we have descend­ed on the fam­i­ly… I cov­ered his sleep­ing shoul­der with a silk white eider­down, turned off his bed­side lamp, low­ered the shades…

And I myself kissed every­one good night and retired to my high four-poster, propped up by vin­tage white pil­lows in cas­es with knit­ted and cro­cheted edg­ing, look­ing at the fire­place man­tel with the carved wood­en cat, its nose embed­ded in its wood­en tail, a ceram­ic cow on a ceram­ic bit of lawn, on the table a pile of books, from “Cold Com­fort Farm” to “Pride and Prej­u­dice,” with “Crime and Pun­ish­ment” in between…”

It is a place of pure com­fort, under the best and worst of cir­cum­stances, hav­ing seen life and death and fear and lux­u­ry. That is real com­fort, I think, when where you are, and who you are with, have seen it all, and can still… com­fort you.

Off in the morn­ing to Red Gate Farm! A crazy after­noon set­tling in, unpack­ing our bits and pieces, look­ing up to see Anne, David and Kate com­ing across the road! John imme­di­ate­ly races out the front door to open the gate (the RED one), which prompt­ly falls off its hinges! “Wel­come home!” Anne shouts! And there is baby Kate, a beau­ti­ful, plushy-haired, blue-eyed lit­tle-girl ver­sion of the baby we saw at Christ­mas, pulling her­self up to Avery’s knees as she sat beneath the tree hold­ing Avery’s tree swing, star­ing her in the eyes calm­ly while unleash­ing a cease­less soft bab­ble of unin­tel­li­gi­ble… language!

A slow, ear­ly evening, then every­one to sleep to awake ear­ly to the morn­ing glo­ries of Red Gate Farm… the chip­munks, John’s birds begin­ning to return, and final­ly Beck­y’s fam­i­ly, arrived to take Avery away to Green­wich for the week! We suc­cumbed to the local bril­liant fried-food joint, Den­mo’s, for an indul­gent Amer­i­can lunch: can you imag­ine us eat­ing all this food! Shrimps, clams, chick­en, burg­ers, curly fries… and then ice cream if you can imag­ine (I could not!). It was heav­en­ly to see Becky, to catch up on gos­sip, to pass Avery off with all adjure­ments to shop for clothes, we’ll pay you back, be polite, have a fab­u­lous time, enjoy it while you can (the unspo­ken under­cur­rent of every reunion with our old Lon­don friends)…

No won­der we feel exhaust­ed by the first week of being back among our Amer­i­can ties: we haven’t even described yet the joy­ous reunion with Jill, Jane, Joel and Mol­ly! Much less Rol­lie and the horses…

More soon!