Worth It

Two of my favorite things about visiting my family in Boone are the wonderful spa-like showers I take at Kate's place and the impromptu social gatherings held in her lawn or her landlord's back terrace. The water in Kate's tiled shower is hot and has perfect strong pressure and there's always a citrus-lime-scented body wash or scrub that makes the cleansing ritual a perfect experience. I never want to step out of the nourishing steam onto the cold, hard floor tiles, but that just motivates me to dry off and get dressed quicker so I can emerge into her cozy living room kept warm by a blazing wood stove.

The other thing I love (and this also happens at Kate's) are the social gatherings that take place between her friends, our family, Kate's landlord J, and his friends. There's overlap in J's and Kate's circle as J is my dad's best friend in Boone. It makes sense that if we're celebrating a birthday outdoors in her patch of grass (that J actually owns) J is welcome to join in. As are his friends and believe me, J has a lot of friends that steadily stream in and out of his side of the house. Some days J's random friends join us as there is always an extra piece of cake or slice of watermelon to share. Friday, we were the ones that gathered on J's terrace, all bundled up amidst a snow flurry here and there to enjoy fresh raw, steamed, and fried oysters and homemade potato chips. J's friend A walked up as my dad, sister and family were standing around drinking beer, adding hot sauce and slurping oysters out of the shells. That's the way it always happens. Someone extra walks up and instantly there's a party. They thought they were just getting J but they get all of us and we have a widened audience on which to perform all of our family banter. This time J said to A, "Oh, you got my message?" A said, "No, what message?" It turns out that with two bushels of fresh oysters from NC's coast harvested on Wed., J was spreading the word to come on out and help him eat them up. But J's friends should know they don't need a special invitation--when J's home, there will be good food, something good to drink and good company--oysters or not.

Standing in the cold watching my kids try their first oysters (and deciding they weren't yum), listening to Kate and my dad catch up and joke--something they hadn't done for over a year-- David reliving a taste of the ocean from the time we first met (when he ate a lot of raw oysters), and watching J do his outdoor cooking magic--it was unlike any day after Thanksgiving I've ever had---and it was one of the best.