What, you might ask, do these con­cepts have in com­mon? I too was igno­rant until this afternoon.

There we were, in the mon­key sec­tion of the Lon­don Zoo in Regent’s Park (although with Annabelle, Avery and Elliot around, pretty much any sec­tion qual­i­fies as the mon­key sec­tion). One of our fel­low tourists was just about to light up a cig­a­rette when the lit­tle zoo guide elf per­son stepped quickly and effi­ciently for­ward. “Sorry, madam, we do ask that you refrain from smok­ing. The mon­keys will think you’re putting food in your mouth and they will just go for your face.”

That was worth, as they say, the whole price of admission.

Truth be told, zoos alter­nately drive me crazy and bore me to tears. I sim­ply do not care how many vari­eties of an awful lot of crea­tures there are. Crea­tures in the cat­e­gory of how many there are I don’t care about include all insects, most birds and nearly all fish. Now, big cats, there I’m inter­ested. Even meerkats. But rep­tiles? But­ter­flies? Don’t care.

Glad to get that out of my sys­tem. We sent John home to take a nice nap and then pro­ceeded to mar­tyr our­selves to all this fauna, plus an unbe­liev­ably unap­peal­ing hot dog in a baguette (we’re not in Paris any­more!). Then, some­where between the chain-smoking pri­mates and the pen­guin pool, it started to rain. Which neces­si­tated vis­it­ing the parts of the zoo that are even less plea­sur­able than pri­mates and pen­guins: things indoors, behind glass, under water. Grrr.

Finally home to pop­corn, a nap for Elliot, a good gos­sip ses­sion with Alyssa who sat on the floor of my study while I looked up restau­rants for tonight. Oh, Happy Anniver­sary to us! Sev­en­teen years ago tonight, we got mar­ried at the Junior League House of Indi­anapo­lis, Indi­ana. Why? I don’t remem­ber. Wait, John wants me to point out that I remem­ber WHY I got mar­ried, I just don’t remem­ber why at the Junior League House! So noted.

Avery is going with every­one else to see “Dick Whit­ting­ton and His Cat”, a clas­sic “panto” which Alyssa was deter­mined to put every­one through before they left. Mean­while, John and I will revisit, if not our mis­spent youth, then at least one of the restau­rants where we spent a lot of it: Wodka. Lovely Pol­ish food and lovely Pol­ish vodka. Can’t wait. And… put out that cigarette.

So as we’re putting them to bed (I am ashamed to say we still sing to Avery every night before she goes to sleep; my New Year’s res­o­lu­tion is to put a plan in effect to phase out the rit­ual before she goes to col­lege). Avery says, “Last night, Annabelle tried to sing the whole of all the songs to me and she doesn’t know all the words.” “Avery!” I exclaimed. “How many of the words to [try­ing des­per­ately to think of some­thing she might have heard occa­sion­ally but not all the time] ‘Dreidl, dreidl, dreidl,’ do you know?” “Well [she says defen­sively], ‘dreidl, dreidl, dreidl…’” Explo­sions of laugh­ter as it’s clear this is as far as her mem­ory goes!

Annabelle chimes in, “I’m pretty good with your night­time songs. I’ve heard them enough. ‘Over in Kil­lar­ney…’” I thought of the dozens of sleep­overs at our house, and Annabelle’s house, over the seven or so years that they have been friends. I remem­ber that this pic­ture was taken at the Easter just after Annabelle turned four: we have always spent Easter dye­ing eggs with Annabelle, just as Avery has spent every Han­nukah light­ing can­dles and play­ing dreidl, and Annabelle has come to dec­o­rate our Christ­mas tree, and we have come to Passover din­ner (where the mat­zoh ball soup includes aspara­gus, lucky us).

John and I just looked at each other over their heads and wished simul­ta­ne­ously for them to stay for­ever as happy as they are tonight, to be as pro­tected, and to have each other to turn to, gig­gling, when­ever the need might arise…

Although as Alyssa rightly points out, if we started observ­ing the sab­bath in Lon­don when the sun really sets, only a few of us would have got out of our show­ers in time. I for­get, being a local, how early it gets dark. Of course, I love it, and start get­ting ner­vous when the sun isn’t down by the time Avery’s home­work is finished.

Speak­ing of, can I say how won­der­ful it is when she doesn’t have any? Sorry.

The crown­ing glory of the reunion of the “Kris­ten and Alyssa Show,” that sta­ple of fam­ily enter­tain­ment, was the chance for Kris­ten to eat mat­zoh ball soup. Of course, it was also vastly impor­tant to show Annabelle Avery’s school (I don’t know who yawned harder, Annabelle or Avery, although most of Avery’s energy was taken up refus­ing to walk up the steps: “I have to walk up these steps every DAY!”). But I insisted. Then we had a nice snack in Patis­serie Valerie in honor of Alyssa’s sis­ter Val, and came home to make Shab­bat din­ner. Not, as Alyssa assures me, that they do this every Fri­day night, but it was a nice coin­ci­dence that the first avail­able night to do it was… Fri­day. I can tell you right now that there’s almost no point post­ing the recipe for the soup. It’s like… it’s like hav­ing Mozart play the piano for you, and at the end you ask him where he got his sheet music. Perfection.

Pas­trami and salt beef from Sel­f­ridges, rye bread, weird pick­les from the super­mar­ket, good Ger­man mus­tard, soured cream, home­made apple­sauce with one apple left unpeeled, as per Alyssa’s Nanny’s recipe. “What? When on earth did you have a nanny?” I asked, hor­ri­fied that an entire chap­ter of Alyssa lore might have been lost to me dur­ing our long years of friend­ship. “No, my NANNY. My grand­mother! Yes, I had a nanny. When my mother was doing what?” We all sim­ply tucked in and were happy. Of course the evening degen­er­ated into the children’s ren­di­tions of “Bop Till You Drop,” from High School Musi­cal, which I am afraid has thor­oughly sup­planted any lovely Christ­mas car­ols as the Song of the Hol­i­day. Ah well, every sil­ver lin­ing has its cloud.

Tell you what. I’ll ask Alyssa for the soup recipe, and then you and I col­lec­tively can try to fig­ure out what she’s left off, to keep us in her thrall. Mean­while, I have the leftovers…

Let’s see: it all started on Box­ing Day with the Big Bus Com­pany Sight­see­ing Tour of Lon­don! From there it degen­er­ated (or was ele­vated, depend­ing upon your per­spec­tive) into every tourist site in the greater Lon­don met­ro­pol­i­tan area. It’s like this: in New York, no self-respecting cit­i­zen would go to 1) the Empire State Build­ing, 2) the Statue of Lib­erty, or 3) one of those tacky horse-drawn car­riages in Cen­tral Park. Like­wise, in Lon­don, no one who lives here does any of the touristy stuff. Suf­fice to say, if you have out of town vis­i­tors (espe­cially who promise to make you mat­zoh ball soup), all such restric­tions fly out the prover­bial window.

As a con­se­quence, although I have always wanted to do the tour bus thing, and my anti-tourist hus­band would not let me… Ah ha! Alyssa comes to town and I can do exactly what I please, because SHE wants to as well! So Tues­day morn­ing found us shiv­er­ing on top of the double-decker red bus, swan­ning our way through May­fair, Fleet Street, across Tower Bridge (to the accom­pa­ni­ment of the tour guide who threw out such gems of wis­dom as point­ing out the shop who sup­plies knick­ers to the Queen, and the Angus Steak­house, “who has got back some of its pop­u­lar­ity since it put the miss­ing “G” back in its name”). At the Tower we descended and thought we’d visit the Instru­ments of Tor­ture and Doom, but the Tower was closed, since it was Box­ing Day. So off to the boat half of the tour back to the Houses of Par­lia­ment. Peri­od­i­cally John, who had taken him­self off to do other things, like stick hot nee­dles in his eye­balls, called to get an update on all the cool things he had missed. Steve passed the time on the boat ride back by look­ing at the same map we were all look­ing at and say­ing OUT LOUD all the things we were pass­ing. “That’s Black­fri­ars Bridge,” he’d announce, to which I could say only, “Oh, look, it’s Black­fri­ars Bridge on my map too.” This is the sort of brother-sisterly con­ver­sa­tion that makes get­ting me and Steve together really annoy­ing to every­one around us, but we don’t seem to mind.

Then, let’s see, I had to point out all the things Steve was pro­nounc­ing wrong, and mak­ing us look like tourists (oh, wait, we were tourists, but as Avery always says, we don’t have to look like it). “If you say one more time how close your flat is to SOUTH-WARK Cathe­dral, I’m not mak­ing bolog­nese for you,” I said severely, “say it three times quick, ‘Suth-ick, suth-ick, suth-ick.’” At that point Steve said just “ick,” so we moved on to annoy­ing each other in some other way.

Then there was the visit to the actual Tower of Lon­don itself, which I remem­ber vis­it­ing about three thou­sand times when we lived here 15 years ago, but since all my inter­nal brain energy has since been replaced by an ency­clo­pe­dic knowl­edge of pic­ture books and recipes, was new to me. And ter­ri­ble fish and chips! And sixty dif­fer­ent kinds of beers! And the only, accord­ing to Annabelle and me, bad hot dog ever invented. But there you go. Tourist traps.

Mean­while we’ve been watch­ing the Christ­mas episode of our favorite show, “QI” with Stephen Fry. My favorite line? “When I was up at Oxford at Christ­mas we used to ring up Jesus Col­lege and ask, ‘Is that Jesus?’ and then sing, ‘Happy Birth­day to you…’”

And what else? The Chang­ing of the Guard, where I nearly had to hire a chi­ro­prac­tor to help me recover from car­ry­ing Annabelle on my shoul­ders (John had Avery, to be fair). Why were they play­ing show tunes? I swear, not even show tunes, at one point the band was play­ing, “Peo­ple who need peo­ple… are the luck­i­est peo­ple… in the world.…” WHY? I finally decided that because the Queen was at Bal­moral, all the Guards were just goof­ing off. From there we had lunch in Pic­cadilly, and then shop­ping at Fort­num and Mason, and then Steve and Alyssa went off to din­ner by them­selves and we hung out with Elliot. He is offi­cially the fun­ni­est child I have ever met, with really an adult sense of humor. And no, Steve, by that I don’t mean you have to pro­duce a driver’s license to think he’s funny. He’s just one of my favorite peo­ple, who hap­pens to weigh 40 pounds. He can be read to for an infi­nite amount of time, and finally suc­cumbed to “Santa Mouse” and was down for the count.

Today was a rid­ing les­son for Fifi, finally. Annabelle came along to pickup and got to hear Avery’s full-on Eng­lish accent, from when she’s been hang­ing with Eng­lish chicks. “There was a leaf-blowing machine, and the ponies were scared, but Smokey was the best pony EVAH.” Then home to feast on some of the Lin­colnshire Poacher cheese Steve kindly brought to me from Neal’s Yard Dairy, yum yum. Then we parted ways: John to haunt the neigh­bor­hood of the house he wants to buy, Steve and Elliot to the Lon­don Eye, and us girls to the Six­ties Fash­ion Exhi­bi­tion at the Vic­to­ria and Albert, where I got all nos­tal­gic look­ing through the glass doors of the National Art Library where I did so much research, these 15 years ago. What fun that was.

Whew. I’m going to take a break, see what the chil­dren are up to, and then I’ll tell you about the real rea­son for the entire Sad­off fam­ily visit: the Mat­zoh Ball Soup… I’d tell you I’m just kid­ding, but Alyssa knows the truth. Actu­ally, here’s some food (so to speak) for thought: the whole song, and con­cept, “Make new friends and keep the old, one is sil­ver and the other gold.” What does that mean, exactly? Because in the taxi on the way to the V & A, we ana­lyzed it. “Well, gold is more valu­able, so…” but that didn’t seem right, because there’s no way a new friend like Becky or Anna is less valu­able than an old friend like Alyssa or Annabelle. In the end, I think, like a jew­elry box is more sat­is­fy­ing to open if you see both shiny gold and shiny sil­ver… maybe that works? Who knows. I just feel extremely lucky to be able to show our old friends around Lon­don and see, around so many cor­ners, happy mem­o­ries that involve new friends. The best of both worlds. The glass-half-full approach. Because truth­fully, in my dark Scan­di­na­vian heart of hearts, I’m glass-half-empty. Wher­ever I go, there’s some­body to miss.

Well, when a cou­ple of things hap­pen. I’d think of ten and make a Top Ten list, but I’m too tired. For starters, it’s awfully nice when one of your old­est friends comes to visit and brings… com­pan­ion hol­i­day socks. And then your mother takes the mir­ror off the kitchen wall where she nor­mally checks her hair (awful) before school dropoff, and turns it into a hol­i­day vil­lage for the table in the sit­ting room.

Can our friends stay here for­ever with us? One of my most favoritest moments in life ever (I can’t fore­see much hap­pen­ing before I die that will change this) is sit­ting on the sofa look­ing at the Christ­mas tree, lis­ten­ing to Annabelle and Avery play “Out­rage,” the game sold at the Tower of Lon­don gift shop (along with 4 mil­lion other things your child CAN­NOT live with­out), while “A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas” music played in the back­ground, and John and Steve sat in the kitchen debat­ing the rel­a­tive mer­its of Marks and Spencer canned cock­tails (very few mer­its, as it turns out, as I can attest hav­ing reluc­tantly sam­pled the Har­vey Wall­banger, oh my it should be against the law) and tor­tur­ing Elliot, mak­ing him smell John’s socks and beg for mercy. In the back­ground sim­mered bolog­nese sauce, although I had been almost too tired to make it. “Just order Chi­nese, Kris­ten,” Alyssa advised, while the kids clam­ored, “Bolog­nese, bolog­nese…” “But it’s up to you, Mummy,” Avery allowed. To have small chil­dren beg is really com­pelling, so I caved. “You made a good choice, Kris­ten,” Elliot solemnly assured me. Alyssa sat next to me and moved but­tons and snaps on Avery’s favorite grey skirt so she can con­tinue to wear it in the New Year, and I just sat and felt happy to have every­one around me.

More tomor­row, but all is well here. How was your holiday?

It’s finally here: Christ­mas Eve. Our friends have arrived, hugs have been exchanged more than once, the mer­est begin­nings of gos­sip relayed and received (a week will by no means exhaust Alyssa’s and my appetite for this topic), the cats have been mildely ter­ror­ized, Avery and Annabelle have lis­tened to all the music of “High School Musi­cal” more than once and sung and danced, a mam­moth lunch of ham sand­wiches with Wens­ley­dale and Red Leices­ter cheese, red onions, avo­ca­dos, toma­toes, and fresh Thai basil and cilantro pesto has been eaten. “A Christ­mas Carol” in rather unex­pected humor­ous tones has been taken in (although some audi­ence mem­bers who shall remain name­less but were severely jet-lagged, slept through the sec­ond half). Some­day, I promised, I’ll tell Alyssa how it ends.

Home to oys­ter stew, the first presents of Christ­mas Eve unwrapped, Elliot’s nap in my new plas­tic orange boa (don’t ask) enjoyed by all, and the elder Sad­offs (not very elderly to be sure) and Mas­ter Elliot have whisked them­selves off to their rented flat. Avery and Annabelle watched “Olive, the Other Rein­deer,” and then we read “Twas the Night Before Christ­mas,” “Santa Mouse,” and “Pussycat’s Christ­mas,” and they are sound asleep, tucked up with numer­ous hot water bot­tles. John and I are madly fin­ish­ing last-minute things with thou­sand of inter­lock­ing iden­ti­cal parts, while Hermione chases tis­sue paper and rib­bon. In other words, it’s the last throes of Christ­mas Eve. Cook­ies, milk and car­rots await Santa and the rein­deer on the win­dow sill.

How WON­DER­FUL it is to have our friends here.

A joy­ous and peace­ful Christ­mas to all of you and yours…

Finally, I have made it to Bor­ough Mar­ket, the place every­one I know has sent me to all year since I arrived. It needed the Sat­ur­day before Christ­mas, the busiest day of the known cal­en­dar, to get me there. But it was SO worth it.

First off, of course I had to get lost. John and I had stopped off to pick up five dozen oys­ters at Par­tridges farmer’s mar­ket in South Kens­ing­ton, first detour­ing into Par­tridges itself to laugh at $15 boxes of Chee­rios and other Amer­i­can neces­si­ties! Too funny. (Is it pos­si­bly a record to visit two mar­kets in one day?). From there he drove me to the Green Park under­ground sta­tion, instruct­ing me to take the Jubilee line straight to Lon­don Bridge. Only, I pan­icked: was it meant to be Tower Bridge? A fran­tic phone call to Twiggy, who I was meet­ing there, she didn’t pick up. Pan­icked mes­sage, call John who didn’t pick up. Finally I asked the tube atten­dant, and after a search through a map with a well-licked thumb, I was assured that Lon­don Bridge was my des­ti­na­tion. Whew. Off I went. It required another series of silly phone calls between Twiggy and me to meet up finally out­side Neal’s Yard Dairy with a mas­sive queue out­side! For cheese! Which sort of summed up the mar­ket. Long, long queues for every­thing, but so worth it. I will go back many times, I’m sure. I sam­pled every­thing! First, Twiggy offered me a sip of her hot organic apple juice, and I ended up com­man­deer­ing the rest of it, so com­fort­ing and delicious.

Then it was onto one of the few trea­sured Eng­lish tra­di­tions that I ended up not lik­ing: roasted chest­nuts. Hmm, the tex­ture of build­ing mate­r­ial, with a sweet, slick exte­rior. Plus I burned my fin­gers, which is almost impos­si­ble with my asbestos hands. I hated to dis­ap­point Twiggy, but hon­esty pre­vailed. Maybe it’s an acquired taste.

Onto an olive stand where we sam­pled a green vari­ety stuffed with car­rots, of all things. Most deli­cious, crunchy and unex­pected. Then a lovely mild Stil­ton, which I’ve always thought I didn’t like, but it was creamy and nice, so I bought a wedge from the apple-cheeked central-casting Eng­lish farmer girl (I wouldn’t have minded bring­ing her home as well, so pretty). Then an oys­ter! Just to try another pur­veyor, and it was fresh and cold. Twiggy averted her veg­e­tar­ian eyes. Then onto a Pol­ish stand with gor­geous dried salami and a condi­ment called “cow­berry sauce,” or borowka which was sweet and tart and actu­ally very good with the salami (defi­antly flaunt­ing John’s strin­gent rules pro­hibit­ing any­thing with fruit and meat together). Then we ended up at a juice stand and had hot pome­gran­ate and blue­berry juice, which Twiggy assured me would cure, or pre­vent every­thing bad. Lovely! And flax seed (did you know it was the same as “lin­seed”? I didn’t) johnny cakes! And fresh sage and but­ter­nut squash ravi­oli from The Fresh Pasta Com­pany, to die for! I bought aspara­gus and pecorino tortel­loni instead, though when I can plan to cook and eat it I do not know, with our com­pany com­ing today. And finally a lit­tle tri­an­gle of palek paneer at Mrs Bassa’s Indian Kitchen, lovely. “I was just telling Eddie last week that there were no Indian stalls at the mar­ket, and here she is! But my mother can make bet­ter,” Twiggy promised, and one of our plans for 2007 is for her to teach me some Indian cook­ery secrets. I can’t wait. My first Indian friend, and she can cook. What luck.

After chug­ging one more oys­ter, pick­ing up two enor­mous stalks of brus­sels sprouts, trawl­ing Kon­di­tor and Cook with their choco­late delights, and politely refus­ing a bunch of mistle­toe the size of South­wark Cathe­dral (which looms over the mar­ket like a benev­o­lent uncle), I reluc­tantly parted com­pany with Twiggy and came home.

Avery had just come home from the sta­ble, but had an agenda: to go to the eye­glasses store and get her pre­scrip­tion filled. Did you know that Boots phar­macy will pro­vide a free exam and pre­scrip­tion to chil­dren? They do. So off we went, leav­ing John with a cup of hot lemon juice with fresh-grated gin­ger and honey, to soothe his hack­ing cough. We ended up at Opti­cal Express and ordered two dar­ling pairs, which were ready by the time we fin­ished our mam­moth shop at Tesco. Avery is a new woman: “I can see EVERY­THING! I can read the lit­tle print on that street sign, and see people’s eye­lashes, and the spots in the side­walk where peo­ple have dropped gum! It’s incred­i­ble! It’s magical!”

“I’ve run out of superla­tives!” she exclaimed finally, stop­ping point blank in Oxford Street to notice that the lights above were all indi­vid­ual! Not just an incal­cu­la­ble mass of illu­mi­na­tion. It reminded me so of the first day I wore glasses, and said to my mother, “The trees have indi­vid­ual leaves! Not just up close, but far away, too!”

She set­tled down to read­ing Christ­mas books, and I hun­kered down in the kitchen with var­i­ous tasks. First up was to brine my turkey. Vin­cent gave me quite the stern lec­ture about the impor­tance of an organic turkey, at lunch yes­ter­day, but I was hav­ing none of it. I braved his con­sid­er­able and implaca­ble direc­tives and came home with my usual Dolly Par­ton of a fowl, and within min­utes he was repos­ing in a nice warm bath (had to be filled by the bath­tub tap, actu­ally! too heavy to carry the pot, full of water, down the stairs and out the bed­room door). I watched Nigella yes­ter­day put cin­na­mon, cloves, all­spice and other nasty things in her turkey brine, but not for me. No, savory is the order of the day. Into my pot went my fresh Thai green pep­per­corns, now nicely shriv­el­ing into reg­u­lar crunchy spec­i­mens, and lots of fresh sage, rose­mary, onion and cel­ery, and two lemons, juice squeezed and their lit­tle bod­ies dropped into the water.

Then I was deter­mined to take advan­tage of my trip to the dusty, dank, unim­pres­sive but entirely bril­liant Thai mar­ket I vis­ited yes­ter­day. I have looked in vain online for any infor­ma­tion about this shop, so I’ll have to check back with Vin­cent and find out exactly where it is. West­bourne Grove-ish. Even the spec­tac­u­larly surly check­out girls could not dim my enthu­si­asm. I invented a lovely sauce, and let me see if I can remem­ber exactly what I did. With it you can serve sauteed chicken or beef (I did both, actu­ally, a cut of beef I’ve never heard called an “olive steak”, rather like flank). I think you could also do steamed pota­toes and car­rots for a veg­e­tar­ian ver­sion. Here goes:

Kristen’s Thai curry
(serves four)

2 tbsps olive oil
5 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 medium onion, minced
12 leaves Thai basil, chif­fon­aded (you know, rolled up and cut in slices)
4 leaves Thai mint, chif­fon­aded
1 stalk lemon grass, first outer layer peeled off, and sliced very thin
1 soup-size can of coconut milk (thor­oughly stirred to mix as it sep­a­rates on stor­age)
2 tbsps Thai green curry paste
1/2 cup water.

Saute the gar­lic, onion, basil, mint and lemon grass in the oil until soft. Then add coconut milk, curry paste and water and sim­mer for 30 min­utes, stir­ring occa­sion­ally. Serve with sauteed chicken, beef or prawns, and with bas­mati rice.

***************

It turned out really well! Too spicy for Avery, though, who con­tented her­self with strips of beef and a mound of rice.

Through it all, my pot of oys­ter stew, wait­ing for Alyssa’s fam­ily arrival today, bub­bled at the back of the stove. So excit­ing to put­ter about and pro­duce good things to eat. The stew has joined his briney brother out on what I think of as my larder, the lit­tle step out­side my bed­room door. That’s a must for any new house: some­where out­doors, even a win­dow ledge, to cool food.

So now it is Christ­mas Eve Day. We all arose early to do last-minute things to make the house fes­tive, in that sort of nervy, antic­i­pa­tory feel­ing that is part of every Christ­mas Eve Day. Thank good­ness for the fresh tree! It twin­kles mer­rily. I’ve put the var­i­ous Christ­mas cards that have crossed the Atlantic on our Chi­nese chest in the foyer, and music from “The Nut­cracker” is car­ol­ing away, Keechie has had her val­ium so as to sur­vive Annabelle and her brother Elliot, and all is in readi­ness. Last night we all had a cozy talk with my fam­ily in Indi­ana, Janie war­bling “Jin­gle Bells,” Joel ask­ing me to iden­tify var­i­ous pack­ages that had arrived at my par­ents’ house for their arrival, my mother and dad sound­ing excited and appre­cia­tive of the baby’s arrival. Avery is fever­ishly fin­ish­ing var­i­ous secret items and John is pock­et­ing a list of last-minute ingre­di­ents for our hol­i­day. This after­noon we’ll see “A Christ­mas Carol,” so I shall report on how that is. In the mean­time, every­one: Merry Christ­mas!

May I just take a moment to be grate­ful? To have a child at any time. But to have a lit­tle girl at Christ­mas time, who takes so much joy in what is under the tree that is NOT for her, who is so excited for, more than any gift, the arrival of her friend Annabelle from New York for a visit, is a thing to behold.

And I must say as well, while I’m being all sen­ti­men­tal, one of my strongest child­hood mem­o­ries of Christ­mas is of the piano recital just days after my dar­ling Grandpa Loyd died (yes, he was a Loyd with only one l, just as my grand­mother was and IS a Bet­tye with an extra e!). I remem­ber com­ing home from school just after we had spent Thanks­giv­ing with my grand­par­ents on their south­ern Indi­ana “estate”, Five Green Acres, and how we loved to visit them there. The pickle tree! The base­ment with the pool table! The stair­way we could all slide down, toward my grandfather’s study with his tree full of pipes to be smoked. For YEARS after­ward, when­ever I smelled a pipe being smoked, I though it was my grandpa.

Well, one day shortly after Thanks­giv­ing I came home from school, and instead of just open­ing up the front door, which was never locked as far as I can remem­ber, my mother opened the door her­self and stood, tall as any­body you ever saw (and she wasn’t all that tall), cry­ing. I never saw her cry, except when the boy across the street was hit by a car (he was fine, by the way). But, her father, my beloved Grandpa Loyd, had died. Some­thing super sud­den, super pain­less, just gone. And my mother was gone, then, too, to help my grand­mother pre­pare for the funeral. And there we were, us three kids, sit­ting on top of the wash­ing machine in the mid­dle of a cycle, try­ing to fig­ure out what hap­pened after the clothes came out, and my dad was there, being valiant, fold­ing clothes, and won­der­ing what to do about the piano recital?

Because of course, as par­ents with small chil­dren, you find that plans must go on. In the end, our great, old-lady friend Mrs Young from two doors down, came to take me to the piano recital. Did my sis­ter play? She would remem­ber bet­ter than I. But I played. “I’ll Be Home For Christ­mas…” My mother couldn’t be there, but there was Mrs Young, who I remem­ber vis­it­ing in a nurs­ing home on the morn­ing after my wed­ding, and my hus­band spent the whole of our after-wedding day with her lip­stick on his col­lar (imag­ine her stop­ping to put on lip­stick!). And she had been there for me at my Christ­mas recital.

I sup­pose, more than din­ners or presents or stock­ings, this is what we remem­ber for Christ­mas. And I’m grate­ful for every­one who was there, when I was a lit­tle girl.

Oh my. Can I just say that last night’s con­cert was quite the most beau­ti­ful, touch­ing and fes­tive events of our hol­i­day sea­son? And as you know quite well, it’s been packed with good things. But if you ever get a chance to hear The Choir of St George’s Chapel, Wind­sor, run, don’t walk. They were sim­ply breath­tak­ingly marvelous.

Call me igno­rant, but it never occurred to me that, when you lis­ten to a CD of Christ­mas music, the high pip­ing voices belong to… lit­tle boys! Not to sopra­nos at all, dumb me. I actu­ally felt a pang of worry that Avery would be bored, since all the singers looked to be boys. What was I think­ing? Now, I imag­ine adult choirs have to run to actual females, but if you don’t have to, don’t. And THIS from a card-carrying fem­i­nist! No, truly there is noth­ing sweeter than lit­tle boys singing, and I don’t think I ever have done, before, actu­ally live. They sang all the won­der­ful bits I love, like “Joy to the World,” and my all-time favorite, “In the Bleak Mid­win­ter,” although to a com­pletely dif­fer­ent tune than I am used to. Of course in blog­world I can­not sing this tune to you. But has any­one else heard two dif­fer­ent ver­sions? Any­way, it was lovely. And “The Holly and the Ivy,” and to Avery’s delight, “Ding Dong Mer­rily on High,” since she played the vio­lin for it at the school fes­ti­val. Just won­der­ful. When the inter­val came, we had the awful thought that it was over! But no, there was more. John turned to me and said, “I don’t think I have ever shed a tear lis­ten­ing to music, since we lis­tened to ‘Con­cert for New York,’ after the World Trade Cen­ter.” It was ter­ri­bly mov­ing. And then after the inter­val came what the con­duc­tor called wryly, “The loneli­est solo in the busi­ness,” the begin­ning verse of “Once in royal David’s city,” which our lit­tle friend Lind­say sang at the school fes­ti­val. All alone, out there on the stage in front of every­one, a lit­tle chap called Oliver sang his heart out last night, their “senior cho­ris­ter,” look­ing as if he should be in the dusty stacks of the British Library, look­ing up some arcane bit of pre-Raphaelite intel­li­gence. A dear lit­tle fel­low, and a sim­ply mag­i­cal voice. Then, also mys­te­ri­ously, there was a carol called “Angels from the realms of glory,” but I’m sorry, it was “Angels we have heard on high.” Who knows from what arcane dis­tinc­tions these vari­a­tions arise.

Then they trot­ted out a female opera singer as, one sup­poses, a sop to those who want to hear a lady sing, and she was a yawn. Unfor­tu­nately I hap­pened to men­tion to Avery that she looked like “The Opera Camel,” a ref­er­ence to a joke I had with a friend in col­lege, when we could make all sorts of camel faces. There was the “Schol­arly Camel,” the “Super­cil­ious Camel,” the “Aston­ished Camel,” and the “Patho­log­i­cally Shy Camel.” But the “Opera Camel” comes with a dark, dark his­tory. Years ago, dur­ing our first sojourn in Lon­don in the early 1990s, my dear fam­ily came to visit us at Christ­mas­time, to mark the end of my sister’s dreaded semes­ter at Essex Uni­ver­sity, or “Gotham City,” as she referred to it (suf­fice to say she spent a lot of time at our flat in Lon­don). As a spe­cial hol­i­day treat, we all went to hear Handel’s “Mes­siah.” Which would have been lovely except that as an igno­rant idiot, I thought there was the “Hal­lelu­jah Cho­rus,” and that was it, and we’d all go have a lovely din­ner. Oh ho. It lasted for HOURS. And my sis­ter and I began to get squir­relly. I made one, just ONE “Opera Camel” face at her, and after that, all bets were off. No amount of stern looks from our mother (who sadly began to do camel faces too after a bit), or angry glances from other occu­pants of our pew (shak­ing with laugh­ter) could dis­pel. Then John got it. One by one, we had to leave the chapel, to try to stop laugh­ing, but it was no good. We snick­ered and shook the pew and gig­gled until finally it was the bleep­ing “Hal­lelu­jah Cho­rus” and we could just shout and get it out of our systems.

Well, I’m ashamed to say that Avery took the “Opera Camel” face in much the same spirit. She is, how­ever, con­sid­er­ably more mature than I was at, say, 26 years of age, and came to her senses. Whew.

We emerged from the con­cert into the glow of St. Paul’s cathe­dral, and came home in a fog of appre­ci­a­tion. Plus Avery was wear­ing my favorite grey coat that makes her look so cozy, and a very fancy dress from Mor­gane le Fay that her Iowa grand­par­ents bought for her at least three years ago and which has seen her through every fes­tiv­ity in her life since. Dark blue woollen knit, swirly about the hems, with a dark-blue silk lin­ing. And a cream-colored silk blouse with a ruf­fled col­lar. With this fetch­ing ensem­ble she wore a grey felt beret with a felt rab­bit on it. Both John and I were quite silly with admi­ra­tion for her, in the tube.

This morn­ing she tripped off to her eye doc­tor appoint­ment with John while I slept in like a lazy slob. What on EARTH am I going to do when he even­tu­ally gets a job? I have got sin­fully accus­tomed to hav­ing a sec­ond par­ent in the house. And I must say that late last night, after Avery had gone to sleep and we were hav­ing a restora­tive shared scram­bled egg in the kitchen, we dis­cussed the incred­i­ble lux­ury of a two-parent house­hold at all. We’re look­ing to buy a house in North Kens­ing­ton, cur­rently lived in by a lovely Irish lady called Sally and her lit­tle boy William. And that’s all. How incred­i­bly brave of her to man­age on her own, with­out the adult to talk to at the end of the day, to share errands, han­dle half (or more, in the case of my hus­band) the moral dilem­mas and behav­ioral con­cerns. I wanted to take the two of them in to live with us! Hey, if we are able to buy her house, you never know! Seri­ously, though. A thing to be grate­ful for at any sea­son, but espe­cially now: a sec­ond par­ent. And we real­ized: this is the first Christ­mas ever that John has been able to do any­thing about the hol­i­day. Which was always fine, because I love any­thing to do with Christ­mas prepa­ra­tions, and his­tor­i­cally he has been very Scroogey. But now I won­der how much was Scrooge and how much was just sheer exhaus­tion. I remem­ber the child­hood feel­ing of my dad being able to relax. It was always like an extra Christ­mas present, hav­ing him be the self he prob­a­bly always would have been with­out the pres­sure of being head of house­hold. At Christ­mas­time he got to have fun, and be funny, and play jokes and have me sit on his lap in the fire­light (which, dear read­ers, I did through­out col­lege). What old fash­ioned lives we still lead, some of us, at-home moth­ers with work­ing hus­bands. And what a treat to get out from under the man­tle, this one Christ­mas, and play a dif­fer­ent role.

Any­way, Avery needs glasses, it turns out! Never one to be con­ven­tional, her left eye is near-sighted, her right eye far-sighted. Not to worry, mod­ern tech­nol­ogy will fig­ure this out. From her eye exam she went to her class­mate Kimia’s for a play­date, and I? I swanned off to a Thai gro­cery store with my friend Vin­cent, since I never really been to such a thing. Vin­cent spe­cial­izes in three things: one, know­ing all the cool things to do, two, intro­duc­ing them to his friends, and three, sit­ting back and lov­ing watch­ing his friends like what he likes. It goes for Thai gro­ceries, favorite restau­rants, other friends. It’s one of the nicest things about him, his gen­eros­ity about what he loves. We had FUN. And I bought lots of exotic things like kaf­fir lime leaves, Thai basil, three dif­fer­ent kinds of pick­led cab­bage for John to try (hav­ing a child­hood friend from Viet­nam who instilled in him a life­long love of kim­chi). Noo­dles, green curry paste, lemon grass, you name it. Tomor­row night is, I’m think­ing, Thai night.

From there, we ended up hav­ing a totally unex­pected lunch out (at least, unex­pected for me, but Vin­cent had of course booked) at The Provi­dores in the Maryle­bone High Street. Sec­ond direc­tion for you to run, not walk, should have the oppor­tu­nity: a lunch to die for. First, “can I take all those pack­ages for you?” mean­ing, “can I stop you from enter­ing my uber-cool restau­rant with all those tacky Thai gro­cery bags?” Although to be fair, she also took our bags from Skandium, the sub­lime Swedish design store, and Brora, the Scot­tish cash­mere shop (I can­not divulge, for obvi­ous rea­sons, any­thing that was acquired anywhere).

The food sounds inde­scrib­ably pre­ten­tious when I think how to describe it, when what it really is is imag­i­na­tive New Zealand fare. Which includes… kan­ga­roo. Don’t fret! I did not indulge. Too… pouchy for me. Or some­thing. But I did have a won­der­ful bowl of some­thing called laksa, which is an Indian-ish soup with a coconut milk base. This par­tic­u­lar bowl hap­pened to be filled with crab, black car­damom, and galan­gal root, with a fried crab dumpling (to die for), lime-leaf-marinated squid (never did like eat­ing rub­ber bands, so Vin­cent got mine) and green tea noo­dles. Sounds ridicu­lous? Per­fect, Some noo­dles and the crab to eat with chop­sticks, and a nice ster­ling spoon to get the coconut milk, unbe­liev­ably rich and creamy. To fol­low I had… foie gras, pan-fried with roasted pineap­ple and, I have to say, an oily corian­der pikelet (a sort of potato rosti, a non-Jewish latke). Tell the truth, I always say! What was great was great, but the pikelet was oily. There you have it.

Vincent’s friend Pete joined us later on, and we lin­gered, oh did we linger. How won­der­ful to aban­don any idea of what you thought you would do between sort of 1 and 3, and just sit, and eat and chat. Total lux­ury. Presents were exchanged, and I came home to see if John was still among the liv­ing, and I must say, even with the glo­ri­ous restau­rant lunch, the lin­ger­ing aroma of home­made chicken soup was pretty amaz­ing. Last bits of present wrap­ping, now, and so the clock to Christ­mas winds down.