The Grill-Meister and I are empty-nesters. You’ve heard about that here before.
As such, we’re always glad when our one or more of our extended crop of millennials blazes into town to spend some time with us. Our mass of millennials includes our own: ‘the boys’, AKA The Musical Millennial and The Best Eater as they are known here, my bio son and bonus son, respectively, and The Girl Who is Always Hungry, our daughter-in-law who’s married to The Best Eater. And the extended millennial mob spans their cousins and cousins of their cousins, their friends and friends of their friends.
Basically, if any millennial has ever been here at Glover Gardens or ever had a friendly relationship with our own or our extendeds, we feel like they belong to us and want them to feel at home here at Glover Gardens and let us know when they’re in town so we can celebrate them, or celebrate with them. Here’s a selection of our millennials at Christmas, 2019, after the Epic Ugly Sweater Contest. (None of them won because their sweaters weren’t ugly enough.)
We got a call late Friday from one of the extendeds: “Aunt Kim, my boyfriend and I are coming to Houston on Saturday to visit his grandparents, and we’re wondering if we can join you for Happy Coffee on Sunday…?”
Hmmmm.
Let us think about it.
For about a half a second…
Yes!!!
Come for Happy Coffee, stay for brunch! Here’s our plan unfolding on Saturday when we reconnected…
We realized that it would be the first time we’d had anyone other than our own kids here, and The Grill-Meister’s parents, for 16+ months. Woohoo! Party time! Shine up the knickknacks, clear out the dust bunnies and put away the clutter, Glover Gardens is open for (extended family) business again! Consultations, recipe reviews and grocery store runs ensued, and on Sunday morning, we were rested, revved up and ready.
We had Happy Coffee outside at GloverHenge. Despite its fancy, whimsical moniker, GloverHenge is just a shaggy little circle of leftover rocks from when we had the pool added in 2008 (with the profit from selling my tiny 1918 house after we got married) and some lawn chairs, nestled under a live oak tree over near the greenhouse in the backyard.
GloverHenge is where we gather on weekend mornings to have Happy Coffee, a time to sip our brew in big weekend-worthy mugs, reflect on the previous day (or night) and look forward to the day we’ve been gifted. We also solve all the world’s problems, and each other’s. Happy Coffee also happens on weekdays, but inside the house, with smaller, workday-appropriate cups, and a shorter, more “what I’ve got to do at work today” conversation. But we still solve each other’s problems, and come up with great ideas. I’ll share more about Happy Coffee in another post, I think, including The Grill-Meister’s ode to Happy Coffee in his Father of the Groom speech at the wedding of the YGs (Young Glovers).
Back to the story… we were so glad to welcome and hug our extended millennial guests, a cousin of cousins and her boyfriend. We had Happy Coffee at GloverHenge and got caught up, then sashayed indoors and made brunch together. Mimosas supplanted the coffee as the beverage of choice at just the right time. We had ‘fair to middlin’ champagne’ (never the best, never the worst) to mix with the classic OJ, plus the choice of pomegranate juice or coconut water (don’t judge, it’s great for a very dry drink).
There was merriment, appreciation for our marble rolling pin, fun with puff pastry, and storytelling. Millennials made good with their cooking skills by creating the fruit salad and doing the best part of assembling the puff pastry quiche muffins.
It was MAGIC.
I didn’t think to catch any photos until we were seated in the breakfast room to dine, and noticed how beautiful the meal on my plate was. It reflected the mood of its makers.
We sat at the breakfast room table, the four of us, for a couple of hours, telling stories, sharing our hopes and dreams for the future, and reveling in post-vaccination togetherness. It was incredibly restorative.
The nest isn’t really that empty… it’s just not always full.
Life is good.
© 2021, Glover Gardens
