Red Potato Salad Recipe

Oh, they're all gone...thank goodness. Back to normal old stress. Money worries, boy/girl stuff, school....hooray!

Nick's father and his wife came for the graduation. I didn't let them in the house. It's not as bad as it sounds. I took them out to dinner and stuff, but I couldn't open up my house to them for some reason. Well, for one thing, I hadn't cleaned it, and Joy's a clean freak. One of the big issues in our marriage was my slovenliness, and I just couldn't stand the idea of them being in my little nest exchanging glances with each other. So they never got to come in. I think it's fair: no child support, no entry over the threshhold.

Jay came through like a trooper. He hosted a picnic at his house for EVERYBODY. Ex, Nick's girlfriend, her parents, Lilly's friends and their parents. He stood at the grill, valiantly serving up burgers. We cooked an unbelievable amount of food--and I came up with a wonderful impromptu potato salad recipe:

Here it is:
5 pounds of red potatoes
2 tablespoons of minced garlic
Garlic salt
4 hard boiled eggs
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup vegetable oil (don't use olive)
1/4 cup mayonnaise
Fresh thyme--generous handful-chopped
Fresh oregano-1/4 cup--chopped
a few leaves of basil.
Cut the potatoes into quarters, leave the skins on. Boil in salted water until cooked but not mushy (10-15 minutes)
Drain the potatoes, put in a big bowl.
Chop the eggs and add to the potatoes, mix together.
Mix the oil and vinegar together with the minced garlic, whisk, pour over potatoes and eggs and toss.
Add the herbs last and toss. Sprinkle with garlic salt. You're done! Every last bit of it was consumed.

It was a little awkward, but I kept everybody liquored up. My yoga teacher, Sierra,showed up, channeling the chaotic righteous and bawdy aspects of the goddess. She's lost a lot of weight, has managed to tan to a dark caramel, and brought her own plastic bottle filled with gin and lemonade. She said "fuck" a lot, which shocked Joy and my ex, but not too much. I think Joy really had a good time. She told me she wants to become a nurse. She's recently had her breasts enlarged. She ran through the fields like a child, picking chamomile and chasing fireflies. She really seemed relaxed and happy to be here. Well, bless her. My ex sat there like the dark little child he is, embattled, controlling himself. Forever controlling himself. Emanating displeasure. I remember when that would make me just quake. Does that happen to Joy? What on earth made him so mad? What on earth has been so bad for him? Jay made only one little dig which I think went unnoticed.

But we started talking, late in the evening, all of us, about our children when they were babies--and we started talking about Nick's first pediatrician, Dr. Chastain. Patrick got up and did a perfect imitation of him, which had the table rocking in their seats with laughter. Dr. Chastain was from New Orleans, class of '35. And a wonderful doctor--hardly ever used antibiotics, believed in enemas and nasal cleansing--had his own patent on something you hooked up to your faucet. Kept Nick well, until Lilly came along and we had to go into the network in order to get the correct referrals for all her surgeries. And I realized something--I think I've mentioned that I've always had trouble remembering my children when they were little. I remember almost nothing from that period of their life, but Sunday night, it all came rushing back to me and I realized that the reason I couldn't remember was because I'd shut off my memories of the pain of my marriage. And I realized that, you know, I think I did love my husband, and losing him wasn't easy. He was mean, and after a lot of therapy, I realized that he was bad for me, and I think I thought that meant that all the warm feelings I felt for him were wrong. But they weren't. They were real. They just were. It's just what it was.
The children ran through the fields, putting fireflies in a jar, and we all sat under the stars telling stories about the children we'd reared to adulthood, linked in love. Love we'd given and made, children conceived, born and raised in love. However fragmented and imperfect. Still the same water.