Maria and I are holiday-phobic, I suppose it’s because of our family histories. Holidays meant elaborate, long and sometimes unpleasant family gatherings and we have always wanted to spend holidays quietly and by ourselves. We have become good friends with the Gulleys, dairy farmers who live in White Creek, N.Y.

Ed and Carol are both writers now, and Ed is also an artist, and we have a lot in common, sometimes surprising to us. We are so comfortable with them, we talk so openly and easily. Maria discovered Ed’s original and striking art, and she is helping him.

Carol always invites us to her holiday family dinners, and we decided it was time to accept. Carol and I met in Cardiac Rehab, that’ show we became friends, the cardiologists would have fainted dead away if they saw the food she had assembled – buckets of clams, hamburgers, hot dogs, sausage, potato salad, bean salad,  green salad,  macaroni salad, pies and cakes.

It looked like an instant heart attack to me, but the doctors say you need to step out once in awhile, so I had a hot dog, some green salad, a thin slick of homemade cheesecake.

The family talked of tractors, haying, weather and farming, much of it in a language I did not understand, the grunt and grumble of farming, talk of tractors, hay bales, the cost of things, gossip. We were surrounded by tractors and barns.

The Gulleys are real and warm and hospitable, it is easy to feel at home there.

I know how farmers and farm family’s are by now. I am something of a strange creature to them, and they are very welcoming but it takes them awhile to warm up to me, to know what to talk about, or what to make of me and Maria. I appreciate being inside of this warm and connected farm family, they have been through a lot together and are close in ways I can barely understand.

They live in a separate world, I feel connected to it for reasons I don’t grasp. By the end, they were ragging me and Ed about being old men, having to go home and get to bed early. I was at home.

Maria and I were not blessed to be close to our families or spend much time with them, we were blessed to share the Fourth of July with the Gulleys and some of their children and grand-children.  The Gulleys are becoming like family.

Carol and Ed set up a tent for the food and set up chairs in a circle. Their cows were mooing in the background, their six dogs lolling around waiting for crumbs to fall. The food was almost frighteningly caloric and inviting. I would not last a week eating like that, but it was great on a holiday afternoon.

We stayed for an hour or so, we were happy to be invited.