There is a certain kind of holiday letter that might better be called the Annual Family Report. Its purpose is to bring the reader up to date on the most recent doings and achievements of the various members of the family being reported upon. The posterity of our friends all appear to be prolific, very active, and fertile. If one’s contemporaries tend to be grandparents with a scattering of even great-grandparents, the dramatis personae of the annual Christmas reports can easily grow to Shakespearian proportions. It soon enough can become impossible to keep your Gloucesters differentiated from your Leicesters, or be certain that your Imogens, Violas, Rosalinds and Beatrices are accurately distributed among the bourgeoning households of the second and third generations. One reads on in admiration but sometimes only with modified comprehension.
In attempting to convey some sense of the highly satisfactory family Easter we just observed, I am doubtful that I can entirely avoid something of the vibe of the annual report. But given the facts that the numbers involved were relatively limited, and that the events of the day can plausibly be carved into manageable and discreet episodes, it may prove possible.
Late on Good Friday, our younger son Luke, his wife Melanie, and their two children—John Henry (11) and Hazel (9) arrived by car from Montreal. They had not been able to leave all that early, and there had been a long line at the border crossing, and there was not a lot of Friday still left. There was of course enough time for us to ooh and aah about the kids’ notable increment in size since last sighting, but the serious visit began on Saturday. At what age do Easter eggs, especially their decoration, and the disputes attendant upon their decoration, cease to command passionate family engagement? I cannot yet answer that question, but it is obviously well over eighty. Nonetheless a multi-generational corps of decorators did at last succeed in producing a small but elegant collection of eggs approaching Romanov standards. From the point of view of weather Saturday was as at best mediocre, with prognostications for Sunday at first being not all that much better.
The miracle of Easter is of course an improbable and unexpected corporal resurrection. So was its secular echo on Hartley Avenue. All the Montrealers, in addition to the two permanent residents, were up and about by about 4:15 a.m. to prepare to attend the Easter Vigil eucharist in the Princeton University Chapel. This chapel, which cost more than a million dollars in the 1920s (when it was affectionately known as “Princeton’s million-dollar answer to materialism”), is a mini-Amiens of great beauty. The lengthy Easter service is of exceptional beauty. Save for a few rare occasions when I was temporarily resident in Europe, I have not missed one in more than thirty years. The congregation gathers in darkness outside the cathedral-like west door for the lighting of the “new fire", then solemnly processes, in the dark and in two parallel single lines, the whole length of the huge nave before mounting the chancel stairs to take up places in facing banks of unlit choirstalls of the slightly elevated chancel. More miraculous activity: here the Hartley Avenue group was joined by granddaughter Cora Louise, currently a sophomore living on campus. The service is long, solemn, and impressive, and more than an hour of it elapsed before the light appeared, but faintly at first, in the huge east window. Soon the sun would be fully risen in a cloudless sky. But by then you already knew that Easter had really arrived. We certainly knew it when we got home and rustled up the rare treat of a pancake breakfast—festively eaten, though in moderation, as we knew the real feast that awaited us in the afternoon.
At
about ten-thirty we all piled into the monster Dodge van from Montreal and
headed north toward Kingwood Township.
We took the route along the Delaware River from Trenton, which goes
through several little waterfront villages, including two sizeable ones,
Lambertville and Frenchtown, though we turn east before reaching the
latter. Most of the way is through
beautiful Hunterdon County, still amazingly rural, the seat of which,
Flemington, was presumably founded by one of my very distant relatives. It is barely more than thirty miles from our
house to the Fleming-Dixon property, but it takes about an hour to get
there. The word “property” is definitely
a faute-de-mieux. Farm, estate, mansion, and empire—though not
without accuracy—don’t capture the down-home vibe. Obviously some money exchanged hands in its
acquisition; but the real enabler was imagination. The house is a genuine colonial mansion (ca. 1790), and if Washington didn't sleep there I want to know the reason why!
By
the time we got there, the major New York delegation had already arrived: our
daughter Katy and son-in-law Zvi (daughter Katy fortunately being orthographically
distinguishable from our daughter-in-law Katie), who arrived with their
eldest daughter Sophia (whose husband Raymond was unfortunately sidelined at home
in Brooklyn with a cold). So with the
thus far unmentioned but indispensable granddaughter Ruby (daughter of the Kingwood
hosts) the dinner party of eleven was now complete. That is also the end of the incomprehensible family catalogue
Son Richard is a super chef and also a small-d democrat who imaginatively catered to the majoritarian vegetarianism of his guests. Carnivores like me simply had to suck it up, which is not hard to do if what is on the table is the festival of vegetables we found before us. These were such delicacies as galette of caramelized onion, imperial lentils, and a half dozen other succulent dishes previously known to me only from the Le Guide culinaire of Escoffier (from which my favorite untried recipe, for bear’s paw, begins thus: ‘Wrap the paw in clean mud…’).
The young kids, in the nine to eleven range, still love an egg hunt, and there was one, using the rather superior eggs we had painted on Saturday. There was also a limited bit of walking about the open woods, still leafless, but just on the verge of verdure, so to speak. There was a marvelous show of daffodils. The kids are fascinated by the huge old barn, and even more by its contents, including Richard’s burgeoning shop. But mainly it was a gab-fest sitting around on a side patio with its view down to the pond. Zvi, always interesting, was recently returned from China. The conversation was wide-ranging and mellow.
The Montrealers regaled us with tales of the life and hard times of Justin Trudeau, and the two K’s, Katy F. and Katie D., offered occasional expert opinions about the larger arts scene. I have probably said enough in earlier posts about our daughter, who is the President and CEO of the Getty Foundation in Los Angeles, one division of which is the fabulous Getty Museum. Let me now say a few words about the somewhat less well-known museum of which our esteemed daughter-in-law Katie Dixon is the current interim director. That is the Socrates Sculpture Park in Astoria, Queens, on the East River front just below the Astoria Ferry and just above the Noguchi Museum. It is one of many little-known cultural institutions that make their contributions in establishing New York City as the inexhaustible cultural resource it continues to be through thick and thin. As its name and location might suggest, the origins of the Socrates Sculpture Park are to be found among philanthropists in the large Greek-American community in Astoria. It is among several New York cultural institutions that I myself, alas, have never visited; but it is claiming an eminent place among the growing number of sculpture gardens and parks displaying monumental works of material and size more appropriate to open spaces than enclosed salons. There was a lot to hear about. By the late afternoon of this perfect day the incoming light clouds were beginning to contest the day’s sunshine, and the party broke up, replete with good food and family fellowship. Cora decided to go to the city with her parents and her elder sister, but we were still six driving back to Princeton, replete with good food and good talk and that relatively uncommon feeling of celebration rightly demanded and achieved.
