For the last three weeks, we’ve hosted nonstop. Old friends, new-to-us friends, and relatives, they came from all over: Puerto Rico, Honduras, Ethiopia, upstate New York, Staten Island, Maryland, down the road, and next door. Sometimes we had multiple families and cultures simultaneously.

Just to give you a taste, two snapshots:

*One night I went to bed early. When I got up a couple hours later to go to the bathroom, my older son was stretched out on the sofa chatting with my older daughter who was fixing herself a snack. Upstairs, my younger son was still listening to books on tape, the Fresh Air boy was awake, flopping around in his bed, and my younger daughter was visiting with one of her PR friends in my older daughter’s room, all the lights ablaze.

*Another night, I got up at 1:30 to bring the dogs in because they wouldn’t stop barking and we had guests sleeping above them in the clubhouse. My sister-in-law was on the sofa, my brother-in-law in my older son’s bed (not with my older son — he was housesitting for neighbors), and one of my nieces was perched on the picnic table, visiting with one of our PR friends. (They stayed up until three.)

I’m normally a regimented person, ticking the boxes on my to-do list, but when I get hit by a people tsunami, all order flies straight out the window. I take it one day — sometimes one hour — at a time. My priority changes from accomplishing tasks to relationships: being present, having fun, relaxing, listening, and, of course, cooking. It’s exhausting, yes, but the change in routine is invigorating, too.

And, quite frankly, the timing couldn’t have been better. Thanks to the sudden onslaught of garden produce, I probably wouldn’t have gotten much writing (or anything else) done these last several weeks anyway. As it was, I got to chop cucumbers and slice nectarines, roast tomatoes and red beets, and make pesto, all while keeping tabs on the multitudes streaming in and out of my house.

Things are beginning to settle down again. The bulk of the produce is slowing, and our live-in guests have returned to their homes, or to their new (!) apartments in town. Sunday, our first day that was (mostly) just us at home, we slept in and skipped church, ate leftovers and sprawled around the living room reading books,and catching up on computery things.

Soon enough, I’ll get back to my regular writing schedule. For now, I’m savoring the calm.

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (8.16.18), Murch mania 2017, glazed lemon zucchini cake, a new friend, horses, hair, and everything else under the sun, the quotidian (8.6.12), why I am recuperating, dishes at midnight.

You guys, this kid!

Funny, smart, and curious, we fell in love with him right from the get-go. Always ready to try something new — oatmeal and blueberries, a waterslide, sleeping under the stars on the trampoline — he attacked the week head-on.

One of his goals, he told me, was to see as many animals as possible. That first morning, he came thudding down the stairs. “I need to go see the cows!” he said as he shot through the kitchen and out the door.

We didn’t get to treat him to a real, live bear, but along with the ordinary creatures that comprise our farm menagerie, he got to see a rat snake (hiding in the rafter’s in my brother’s basement), deer, assorted little fishies, the hind leg of a dead baby bunny dangling from Charlotte’s mouth), mice (also dead, thank goodness). He also got to try his hand at milking a cow. (He didn’t like the milk warm, but said it was fine chilled.)

The boys plucked a hornworm caterpillar from a tomato plant and then decided to keep it in a container. The next day they noticed maggots were crawling out through its skin. My younger son wanted to cut it open to investigate but Fresh Air boy said they needed to research it first.

Soon we were all gathered around the computer, slack-jawed, learning about parasitic wasps who lay their eggs in caterpillars and then, days later, their larvae chew their way out through the caterpillar’s skin and then the caterpillar, whose mind has been hijacked by the wasp, makes its cacoon around them and not itself.

And then they cut it open — and yep, its belly was packed full with larvae!

A great eater (highly appreciative, too!), he loved applesauce and granola, bread and strawberry jam, watermelon, milk, skittles, nectarines, waffles, chocolate cake, bacon, pizza, corn-on-the-cob. When I made him toast one morning, he told me he wanted to butter it himself this time.

“Why? Did I put too much butter on it last time?”

“No, it’s just that it’s so satisfying to spread.”

After my younger son disappeared to his room yet again, we had a whole discussion about how introverts get energy from being alone and extroverts get energy from being with people. The next morning, I asked Fresh Air boy if my younger son was up yet.

“Yeah,” he said, “but he’s still charging.”

Among all the activities we did — swimming in the neighbors’ pool, attending church, seeing my younger son’s play, making a zipline, camping out, cooking eggs over a fire and roasting marshmallows, hiking, looking at things under the microscope, card games, listened to Harry Potter on tape, making pizza and pickles, flashcard competitions, going for bike rides, playing with the neighbor kids and cousins — Blue Hole was his favorite.

We went three times, which, according to him, wasn’t nearly enough.

I think he could’ve spent his entire week there, his feet in the water and a fishing rod in his hand, and been perfectly content.

He suggested that they ought to start a Dirty Air Fund, though when I agreed and offered to send all my kids to stay with him, he backtracked right fast, ha!

Also, after I gave the kids a pep talk about street safety before they went to the neighbors’, he popped his head back in the room to say politely, “Actually, I think I probably have more experience with busy roads than you guys do.” Touché!

The last night, a bunch of Fresh Air host families gathered at one of the host homes for a potluck, waterslide, and tie-dye.

The evening was a smash-hit — the perfect way to end the week.

This same time, years previous: fried, the quotidian (8.1.16), kiss the moon, kiss the sun, babies and boobs, a birthday present for my brother, dam good blackberry pie.