back to the kitchen

We returned from a restorative interlude at the beach and at my mother's house last evening. Despite many a conversation with Mike exploring the nature of our conflicted feelings about the suburbs during our time away, it sure was nice to come home. The kids felt it, we felt it. They were reunited with their toys and cozy familiar beds, and I was swayed by the experience of walking in the door at 6 pm and realizing with pleasure that dinner was waiting for us not in the empty refrigerator but in the garden. Gorgeous squash, tomatoes, and basil over pasta made a fine homecoming meal. The suburbs do offer nice big backyards in which zucchini plants can sprawl, after all. It ain't so bad.

In fact, I'm happy to be home. All the same old quandaries about what to do with my life, how to properly balance family and work and everything else, and how to parent my mysterious children remain as unresolved as ever. But our little vacation at the beach served as a reminder of all that is good and right amidst the persistent uncertainties.

Our friends Amelia and Michael welcomed us warmly in the home they had rented overlooking wild grasses, sand, and the gentle bay beyond. We all sat back and watched our big brown kids discover the pleasures of a quiet beach, delighting in their friendships with one another that now operate independently of us -- especially Frances and Henry, whose intimacy is of late fueled by playing cards, nerdy jokes, and a passion for Harry Potter.

Something about this short trip was different. We were able to relax, because our kids are now big enough to sleep in weird places and play with friends and invent entertainments for themselves. I enjoyed their company in a new way; with a bit of distance, without duties beckoning from every corner, with only the abundant beautiful scenery and excellent conversation to tend to, I realized how much I like them.

We went to Lancaster after the beach, to see Twelfth Night and visit with my mom. We squeezed in a trip to the Homefields CSA to pick up shares for friends with Gabriel, who carefully filled bags with green and purple beans and scampered through fields of flowers (at least before he wilted in the 100 degree heat) in one ridiculously adorable scene after another.

And after all those happy away-from-home happenings it still felt good to come back here to this unexpected stopping place, this split level suburban dwelling that is slowly accumulating children's artwork, new trees and plants, and most importantly countless loaves of bread, batches of granola, and pots of fragrant dal. Because the cooking, for me, is a how I slowly nudge this place closer and closer to real-home status. After a trip, the kitchen pulls me toward it with an undeniable force. My hands itch to chop, to re-establish that this is our home.

Hence those cornmeal-sage-apricot cookies at the top of this post, made this afternoon with Frances' help for Taco Sunday. Here's the recipe; I think it originates in this cookbook. We didn't have dried apricots, so we refrigerated the dough for a couple of hours and made most of them as thumbprint cookies, filling the depression in each with apricot jam. Some we decorated with a small sage leaf.

I rarely write about cooking here; the preponderance of beautifully conceived and photographed food in the blogosphere makes it feel pointless. But forgive me the excess: the small scale harvesting and simple meals from today are somehow central to the story. In addition to the cookies, there were buckwheat pancakes, a snack of cucumbers still warm from the garden, and fantastic, simple zucchini fritters (from the current issue of Martha Stewart's Living, so I can't point you to the recipe online yet, but I'd be happy to share if anyone is interested).

Gabriel and I cut a jarful of bright red zinnias to bring to our friends' house for dinner tonight. We found fuzzy baby green melons nestled under green leaves that magically appeared in the time we'd been gone. The life that happens here - in the kitchen, at my desk, in the garden, while we amble slowly to our neighborhood pool? Sometimes it takes a vacation to help a person realize that it all amounts to something. That all the tiny moments that are easy to slide through while I worry about what comes next or what has just happened are where our life is lived. When I pause long enough to notice, it is impossible to miss how they shine, suffused with quiet meaning.

It's late, and all is still. I can still smell the frying zucchini. We're home.