Two Down, One to Go

Another jumbled post, because I have been too busy to write and because so much has been going on. So here are a few notes, because I am sure before long I will be wondering what it was we got up to this summer.

The two and the one I refer to in the title of this blog are sets of visitors. Summer was always the prime season for guests. Not so much any more as some  family members are not as handicapped by the school calendar which made the summer months the best time to take a trip. Even so, life is complicated: I was lamenting to my son how sad I was that my sister-in-law (part of our last group of guests) had not seen Liz and her family while she was here and she had seen little of some of Kate’s children, because of their summer jobs. He replied, “Life is not full of problems. It is just full of life.”

I love guests and count myself lucky to have known so many wonderful role models in hospitality. One of my great satisfactions in life is that my children are kind, generous and welcoming souls. (Pretty means cooks, too, because entertaining always requires a lot of cooking.) And I grieve that I am finding it a little more difficult these days to roll up my sleeves and get to work in the kitchen.

It is hard for me to explain that in England there was little concept, at least when I was growing up, of inviting semi-strangers into your house for a meal. As soon as I arrived in California, I met Dick and Carol Trapp, who became my greatest role models. As I was later to find out, Classics teachers don’t bring home large paychecks, but the Trapps added a place at their table for so many, and eventually for me, as they had done for Ernie before me, and it was at their house that I first met my husband to be. This photo is a memento of Christmas 1964, the second Christmas I spent at their home.

Al and three of his sons were our first guests. Gody was working, as was my oldest grandson, Emmanuel, who earned college money this summer as a lifeguard. These visits tend to be cousin-fests and we do our best to mix and match the next generation. How times have changed: a couple of Kate’s boys also stayed one night and I woke up one morning to find Charlie, a pot of coffee already made, emptying my dishwasher!

Ernie’s sister-in-law came next, driving in from Chicago with her daughter Megan and two granddaughters. Megan and my daughter Lucy have been partners in crime from their childhood, through college and living in France. Lately Megan’s life has taken her to at least seven far off US cities, so this was a grand reunion. The idea was that their children should join the spirit of cousin-fest, but it appears that Lucy’s Joe and Megan’s Cecilia are both at the stage where “mine” is the uncontrollable mantra. Fights ensued.

 Don’t they look sweet and harmless?

We have suffered through yet another Michigan monsoon, we celebrated several birthdays, all of which I failed to commemorate, we have mourned the passing of friends and I finally went to my long awaited appointment with my ophthalmologist.  The upshot is that I am having two cataracts removed, the first this Friday when Andrew and his family arrive. Lousy timing, but as Andrew himself said, “(Life) is just full of life”.

I also turned my attention to the garden, managing to remove not only weeds and vines, but handfuls of phlox, shasta daisies and black-eyed susans, which have proliferated in alarming numbers and needed thinning with a firm hand,

Finally this guy celebrated his birthday yesterday
and Thursday will mark our fifty-first wedding anniversary.

That will do it for now. Watch this space.