Make mine rare

Now that you’ve visited my Aunt Priscilla and Uncle Barham’s other houses (the suburban split-level with the Better Homes & Gardens-style meals and the Chesapeake Bay cottage where I enjoyed my best naps ever), it’s time for a cookout at their remaining house—a hacienda-type ranch nestled in Maryland’s toney horse country. Put on your Keds and your playsuit and let’s go!

Every 1960’s décor stereotype lives here: Soft-toned, bamboo-textured walls encase the living room while modern inset lighting showcases twin tufted sofas and color-cued fiberglass drapes. Scenic kitchen nook murals of Venice in sophisticated monochromes whisper of their upper-crust inspiration. The basement bathroom off the walk-out patio features scandalous wallpaper with (gasp) flirty, half-naked cartoon mermaids frolicking amidst seaweed, shells, and undersea creatures. (I suspect Uncle B selected that particular décor. Once a Navy man, always a Navy man.)

Dazzled yet? Let’s go outside. Watch your step on the flagstone patio—the glimmering built-in pool can be somewhat distracting. Follow the lumber-terraced steps down to a shrubbed and flowered landscape Disney might have coveted–or designed. Across the sloping, manicured acreage, a lacquer red Japanese bridge arches over a small brook. Behind you, on the shady side of the house, a secret wishing well stands sentinel in a wee, well-groomed woodland. Magical, especially for an imaginative budding author. (And by the way, you can count on seeing these settings again in one of my novels and you can say “OH, I know where THAT’S from!”)

But don’t linger on the marvelous lawn too long. Uncle Barham is manning the spatula at his massive brick BBQ and flipping the most delectable burgers you’ll ever experience…fat, juicy beef patties enriched with Lipton Onion Soup mix and a generous splash of Worcestershire sauce. His sotto voice swearing (once a Navy man…) adds a bit of spice to the proceedings and the fare. The men hover near my uncle, discussing the Senators’ game and drinking sweating cans of Pabst’s Blue Ribbon. We kids race around, pausing occasionally to slug down Orange Crush or Coke. The women set out the sides: Lay’s Ruffles (an elegance not wasted on me), Pyrex bowls of mustard potato salad and cole slaw, platters of red, red, red tomatoes that smell and taste like sunshine, unlike today’s pale pink cardboard phonies.

No matter how you like your burgers, you’ll get this one rare, my uncle’s only cookout speed. He slides your dripping burger onto a grill-toasted bun. Take it over to the wrought-iron sideboard and doll it up as you wish. The French’s mustard and Heinz ketchup are in squirt bottles with comical labels. The tangy Bermuda onion slices are housed in a hilarious (to me, anyway) ceramic onion-shaped holder with a weeping face. There’s a moment of silence as someone says a mercifully brief grace and the next sounds you hear are a communal, concentrated ecstasy and loud kudos to the chef.

Even if we could move after a meal like that, the pool is forbidden until our food is digested (see you in a week!) and the kids are invited (ordered) to take a siesta. No one need encourage the men; they’re already snoring on webbed lounges beside the pool.

One of the quieter aunties shepherds the kids to the back bedrooms. I coax her to let me have the yellow chamber with the Oriental motifs because my friend lives there. A tiny wooden Japanese doll in a bright red kimono welcomes me from the bureau top as I sink into the quiet. She whispers a sweet song I’ve never heard and we watch the flickering leaf shadows dancing on the wall together.

I’m not sure why contemplating my aunt and uncle’s houses routinely sends me to sleep, but even the thought of that little nodding doll, the Bay lapping the pier, ice-nestled melon, or a hidden wishing well makes my shoulders relax and my heartrate slow.

And isn’t that a simple, beautiful legacy of a life well-lived?

Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. Proverbs 3:17