wel­come back, Sad­off style

Well, would­n’t you know that my friend Alyssa Sad­off would not let our arrival in Amer­i­ca go unher­ald­ed. We had all arranged our pic­nic lunch at Red Gate Farm for the first Sat­ur­day after our arrival, and I was more than pre­pared to bar­be­cue, what­ev­er was need­ed. No! Alyssa imme­di­ate­ly announced that the lunch would be com­ing from none oth­er, none less than… KATZ Deli, the be all and end all of Jew­ish prop­er food from New York! So she arrived our first week­end with scads of pas­tra­mi and corned beef sand­wich­es, cole slaw, pota­to latkes, apple­sauce, the whole nine yards. Thrilling! Jill, Jane and Joel came, as well as Anne and David from across the road. A beau­ti­ful after­noon, kids on the tram­po­line, pop­si­cles, Baby Jane in her wad­ing pool.

Pos­si­bly noth­ing sur­passed the hap­pi­ness, though, of our arrival that first evening in Con­necti­cut. Thanks to the gen­eros­i­ty of Reuters for our “home vis­it”, we were picked up at JFK by a love­ly car and dri­ver, and spent the ride to Red Gate Farm on the phone with our fam­i­lies, let­ting them know we’d arrived safe­ly. As we approached the farm, our hearts quick­ened, and we round­ed the lit­tle hill toward the house: lights blazed every­where from our neigh­bors’ deter­mi­na­tion to wel­come us home! Farmer Rol­lie and his wife Judy had left home­made scones, peach and blue­ber­ry jam, and Anne and David had stocked the fridge with eggs, juice, bread, hum­mous, every­thing we need­ed to set­tle in. And there were Rol­lie and Judy gifts of flow­er­ing gera­ni­ums all over the ter­race and front porch. We were offi­cial­ly HOME.

I will nev­er for­get the feel­ing of utter calm, flop­ping onto my old quilt upstairs in our bed­room, look­ing up at the dormered ceil­ings, can­dles burn­ing in the win­dows, real­iz­ing in some dim way that one CAN go home again. LOVELY.