Good­ness, was it just a week or so ago that I was describ­ing our sense of relax­ation, nay, even peacefulness?

Well, we’re home.

How do they do it? The powers-that-be in our Lon­don life, suck­ing the self-confidence right out of me, send­ing me back into a “what now?” state of nerves.

Don’t mis­un­der­stand: I’m happy to be home. I love hav­ing “Balder­dash and Pif­fle” turn up on the BBC, call­ing our atten­tion to the devel­op­ment of col­lo­quial Eng­lish with phrases like “a Glas­gow Kiss,” or “spiv,” or “tak­ing the mickey.” I’m thrilled too to have my trip to the local super­mar­ket turn up absolutely incred­i­bly sweet and flavour­ful toma­toes under the for­get­table moniker of “lit­tle plums,” just a fan­tas­tic qual­ity of pro­duce with no flashy head­lines. The same for the blue­ber­ries and chicken:no spe­cial label, no big price tag, but just an acci­den­tal encounter with per­fect ingre­di­ents. I’m not sure what hap­pens to a lot of Amer­i­can raw ingre­di­ents, could it be the breadth and width of the coun­try and oceans that stuff has to tra­verse? Maybe the small­ness of my adopted island means that the food­stuffs are just bet­ter, auto­mat­i­cally. I love it.

And the grey skies, with the occa­sional flash of blue between scud­ding clouds, are a pretty welcome-home.

A glo­ri­ous afternoon’s catch-up with Becky, with the easy short­hand of friend­ship where a cou­ple of sen­tences suf­fices to describe some­one, or the exchange of news about some­one else, or reports of our sum­mer activ­i­ties. Avery and Anna of course were bliss­ful to be reunited, and it was so cosy to sit in Becky’s kitchen like a lazy lout while she made pizza and pasta and fed every­one in sight: all the lit­tle girls with new hair­cuts, and lord knows in my jet­lagged state I was more than happy to be fed.

No, the nervy-making thing is… school. And not even my school, it’s my child’s school! First day today. I must have resid­ual first-day anx­i­ety from my own child­hood (lord knows I have resid­ual any-kind-of anx­i­ety for any sit­u­a­tion!), because every first-day of school of her life I’ve felt stressed. It used to be sep­a­ra­tion anx­i­ety (for me! not my hard-hearted child), then it was con­cern over all-day school (again, only me), then the move here, now, I have no idea what would make me anx­ious. I think it might be the rel­a­tive unfa­mil­iar­ity of all these other par­ents, and the sense that I really don’t have a place. Partly because the school isn’t really all that inter­ested in parental involve­ment, and partly because the cross-section of par­ents in the school, per­haps par­tic­u­larly our class, is so mind-bendingly var­ied! I feel still a bit out of my depth social­iz­ing with every nation­al­ity, reli­gion, socio-economic pro­file under the sun, with peo­ple who can speak many lan­guages flu­ently, have lived all over the world, have three chil­dren older than Avery and so have seen all these exams and processes many times before. Some­how all my own dubi­ous accom­plish­ments desert me at these times and I just stand, silly with intimidation.

At the meet­ing tonight to pre­pare us par­ents for “the hard­est five months of your daugh­ters’ lives” (surely this can­not be true! how about PhD orals, or dare I say it, preg­nancy and labor?), I felt com­pletely over­whelmed. Not just with infor­ma­tion, but with the sense that this is all way more impor­tant than I can ever really con­ceive it to be. Or (pos­si­bly) I have the right idea in think­ing school issues to be less than earth-shattering, but I’m in the tiny minor­ity? The head­mistress always scares the liv­ing day­lights out of me (can she be real?), and the unquench­able perk­i­ness (and yet stun­ningly Eng­lish com­po­sure) of the teach­ers just makes me feel like a child myself. When we got home John said, “Why do you feel that way? You’re plenty smart…” I don’t know what it is, but I always do just fade. We stood around the kitchen when we got home, ana­lyz­ing my paral­y­sis, while I chopped up some gar­lic and fried sage leaves in but­ter, to pour over ravioli.

Ravi­oli in Sage Butter

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Lunch yes­ter­day with Vin­cent at Fish­Works in Maryle­bone, much catch­ing up over sum­mer activ­i­ties. For him, a spa in Switzer­land and a trip to the south of France to visit his par­ents. Who ARE these glam­ourous peo­ple I’m sur­rounded with? I had the most sub­lime grilled scal­lops with a hol­landaise sauce, fol­lowed by a whole lit­tle seabass grilled with rose­mary under its skin. And a side of cavolo nero, which I have to say I do not love, not being a fan of leafy greens. I know, I know, they will save my life some­day, but I find them… chewy.

I am think­ing: is a sofrito the Ital­ian ver­sion of the French mire­poix? Each of them being a dice of car­rots, cel­ery and onion, with vari­a­tions of gar­lic or pep­pers? It always makes me laugh when all I have going in the kitchen is gar­lic sim­mer­ing in olive oil, and both John and Avery say, “Some­thing smells really good!” It doesn’t take much to make them happy.

Let’s see, today is a trip to Har­rods for Avery’s school shoes. Like clock­work, as soon as every­one else in Lon­don has descended on John Lewis to buy school shoes, she dis­cov­ers that hers don’t fit. So we end up some­where else. I think John and I will walk over there today and work off all that but­ter from last night. We’ve got to get set to play ten­nis here, since we got so enthu­si­as­tic over the sum­mer. Becky and Vin­cent both rec­om­mend the Har­bour Club, but I fancy out­doors, actu­ally, so we may be look­ing more at just Regent’s Park. We’ll keep you posted.

We’re back. Gor­geous grey skies, calm chilly air, cats beside them­selves with hap­pi­ness to see us. Of course Keechie’s hap­pi­ness is mostly in direct con­trast to her extreme mis­ery while we were away, mea­sured by the now-unusable state of our sofa cush­ion. I think the feline child must have gone seven weeks with­out being touched by a human hand, fright­ened to death as she is by even some­one as famil­iar as our dear Dor­rie, the house­keeper who stayed here dur­ing our sum­mer away. Well, I have my work cut out, as they say in Eng­land, replac­ing the sofa cush­ion and fix­ing what­ever is going on in Keechie’s psy­che. I’ll keep you posted.

We left behind a pear tree laden, LADEN with thou­sands of pears, and Anne promises she’ll har­vest some and send them to us FedEx. Take THAT, the push to eat locally!

But you know what made me feel the best about leav­ing Amer­ica? The one, sin­gle sign that the coun­try was in good hands and it was safe to return to Eng­land? (Keep in mind that Jon Stew­art was on vaca­tion for the week and so it had be some­thing I found on my own). The Sec­ond Avenue Deli is return­ing! Just a cou­ple of years after that icon of the Lower East Side was forced to leave after its rent increased a tril­lion fold, and I was about to cry (even thought in my heart of hearts I’m loyal to Katz), the Deli has found a new loca­tion on… Third Avenue! But it will con­tinue to be known, in that baf­fling tra­di­tion that savvy of which dis­tin­guishes real New York­ers from fak­ers, as The Sec­ond Avenue Deli. It is the job of each and every one of us who have ever loved the city (espe­cially my child who is the only bona fide born New Yorker among us) to remem­ber why, and tell every­one so. Toidy-Toid and Toid it is. So there.

Well, enough New Yorker patri­o­tism. We’re back! Unpacked, cats pet­ted, and in order to make us feel at home again, the ulti­mate early-autumn Lon­don din­ner. I love Amer­ica, but there is, sorry, NOTH­ING like British Pork. Wel­come home.

Roast Pork with Garlic

We’re home.

I’m such a basi­cally homebody-ish, untech­ni­cal per­son that it always seems quite lit­er­ally incred­i­ble to me that tonight we could share a fab­u­lous din­ner with Anne and David, can­dlelit on our pic­nic table over­look­ing our peace­ful lawn and barns, and tomor­row at this time we’ll be high above the Atlantic cour­tesy of British Air­ways wing­ing toward home, and 43-ish hours from now we’ll be cozily ensconced in our Lon­don flat, sur­rounded by kit­ties and unpacked lug­gage and look­ing for­ward to the Michael­mas term, that fresh and autum­nal term of the Eng­lish school year in which all res­o­lu­tions about home­work and play­dates, diet and exer­cise seem pos­si­ble, and the spec­tre of Christ­mas has not yet raised its head!

Avery already has a plan of play with Anna, whose mom, my dear friend Becky, called today, bring­ing the spirit of our Lon­don life into my Con­necti­cut kitchen. I found it so hard to rec­on­cile the sounds of my Amer­i­can washer and ice­maker with the sound of Becky’s voice, which con­jures up her Lon­don kitchen, our Lon­don cof­fee dates, Lon­don school func­tions. The odd thing is hav­ing such entrenched, cozy, and encom­pass­ing lives in both places.

Judy stopped by today as we were read­ing and laz­ing out on the ter­race, to say thanks for din­ner the other night, for the return of her pieplate, a promise to hand on her cookie recipe, and to report on the funeral we observed from the ten­nis court today, the funeral of a beloved com­mu­nity fire mar­shal. Some­thing in me was so touched to have a friend who would include us in this story, to help us under­stand the town we call home for only seven weeks a year, now, let us in on what we observed from afar, watch­ing vin­tage fire engines leav­ing the church­yard, know­ing some­one impor­tant had left the town.

And then to have Anne and David here tonight, help­ing me gather thoughts on the cook­book I’m work­ing on, a reis­sue of her grandmother’s recipes. And thoughts on con­tribut­ing to the new South­bury Library for which there are still fundrais­ing paving stones and other ded­i­cat­able items avail­able. The Avery Memo­r­ial Late Returns Win­dow? The Paul Fred­er­ick­son Hand-Dryer in the Men’s Room? We can’t afford the Children’s Cir­cu­la­tion Desk ($45,000!), but we can still think big.

We are just tremen­dously lucky to have every­one we have where we have them, that’s all.

Well, leave we must. To pick up the threads of what was so absorb­ing seven weeks ago, and now seems like a dream! What will the school play be (Peter Pan being so won­der­ful last year), to be announced before Christ­mas? Will we end up in Ire­land for Octo­ber break with John’s par­ents? How will my new auto­bi­og­ra­phy writ­ing course go? What to do for Avery’s birth­day in Novem­ber? Who will be Head Girl, and Head of Curie House at King’s Col­lege Prep? When will our porter bring back our beloved Mini Cooper from her sum­mer sojourn in Kent? What sort of seats did I man­age to get for us at Saint Joan at the National The­atre? Horse of the Year Show in Birm­ing­ham beck­ons, but do we have tick­ets? So many unan­swered ques­tions need­ing our attention.

And it’s some­thing that I go back to Lon­don armed with at least two new great recipes. Our last din­ner of dill-butter shrimp with Jill, Joel and Jane was won­der­ful, but since my shrimp tonight turned out so well I’m going to priv­i­lege Joel’s clas­sic chicken dish that we have enjoyed so much chez Grove.

Parme­san Crusted Chicken Breasts

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Avery has a new best friend, who Anne kindly informed us this morn­ing is a cater­pil­lar about to become an Amer­i­can Dag­ger Moth. She has named him Mar­cus, and he comes every­where with her. “Would you watch Mar­cus for me, Mummy, while I get a book? He’s very well-behaved, so you shouldn’t have any trou­ble with him.” He came with us to ten­nis this morn­ing, and wan­dered over to meet Rol­lie who came to say good­bye. She did leave him at home while we went to the famous Rich’s Farm Ice Cream Shop in nearby Oxford, one of Anne and David’s favorite spots, which they’ve been wax­ing lyri­cal about for years now, so we finally got there. Pump­kin ice cream! Sounds absurd but it was deli­cious, totally sim­ple and rich. We all stood around in the breezy first-of-September sun­shine, under the per­fectly blue sky with just a few early autum­nal leaves float­ing about. The per­fect last activity.

Well, I can report that my first expe­ri­ence cook­ing clams was, last night, a total suc­cess. Here’s what you need to remem­ber about clams: each one cooks at a dif­fer­ent pace. So unlike mus­sels, which if they don’t open after, say, ten min­utes, are assumed to be dead and there­fore ined­i­ble, clams need to be coaxed along a bit. And since my hor­ror was to over­cook them and end up with garlic-flavored rub­ber bands, I took each lit­tle one out of the steam­ing liq­uid as soon as it opened. There were fully 10 min­utes between when the first one opened and when the last finally suc­cumbed, and it didn’t seem to have any­thing to do with size, which sur­prised me.

Lin­guini With Shrimp and Clams

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Well, I don’t love clams, but I tried one to assure myself that they were deli­cious, and they were. The shrimp were lus­cious and fun to peel (be sure to pro­vide body bowls for your guests to dump their shells), and each strand of lin­guini coated with but­tery sauce. With a lit­tle toasted focac­cia on the side, and a tomato-mozzarella salad after (and Anne and David brought lus­cious berries and ice cream), it was the per­fect end-of-summer meal.

Next post: LONDON!