Oh, a quiet day today, mak­ing turkey soup, tak­ing a walk with Anne and lit­tle Kate across the road, watch­ing Kate choose every dirty snowy pud­dle she could find. “I can’t believe it was snowy here yes­ter­day, and today, green every­where,” Anne mar­velled. We could hear the rain thun­der­ing down all night.

The stormy night suited my mood of reluc­tant good­byes to my fam­ily: my mother, father and brother: after two days of rem­i­nisc­ing, gig­gling over silly shared jokes, family-familiar quo­ta­tions from movies, “But, Har­lot, Scunny!” “I saw it in the win­dow and couldn’t resist it,” dis­cus­sions of old high school friends (“I swear he had a crush on you but your nose was always in a book!”), analy­sis of the plots (truly) of “Days of Our Lives,” watch­ing the lit­tle girls and Avery share jokes with my mother, my brother play­ing a toy gui­tar for them all, my dad watch­ing over all. He was a tremen­dous help in the kitchen on Christ­mas Day, qui­etly wash­ing dishes, super­vis­ing Jane’s help with my cheesy spinach, lis­ten­ing to all the gossip.

I find if very sad that fam­ily, and fam­ily time in our lives, is such a rar­ity. I spent the first 18 years of my life sim­ply cocooned with my fam­ily, close and extended, and that life pro­vided a sense of warmth and accep­tance that I feel again when­ever I am with my mother and father. Why must it be for two days at a time twice a year? It is not enough time, ridicu­lously not enough, to make them real­ize what they mean to me. But it’s what we have. Per­haps this year they can make it to Lon­don, and we can have the fun of show­ing them our house, Avery’s school, our lit­tle world. Until then, we’ve had our Christmas.

And it was con­trolled INSAN­ITY! Sim­ply loads of pack­ages for every­one to open, espe­cially as I feel com­pelled to wrap books sep­a­rately, to be appre­ci­ated on their own, each one, and of course I give mostly books! A pull-tab “Miffy” for baby Molly, which was grabbed by five-year-old Jane imme­di­ately. My sis­ter broke in.

“No, no, Jane, don’t break that. Let Molly break it for herself.”

There were the remote-controlled heli­copter races between John and Joel — John’s gift of the year to every­one he loves, and no mat­ter my skep­ti­cism, every­one in fact loved it! Hov­er­ing near our heads, threat­en­ing to go into the dish­washer, to cut off my knees, to ascend into the double-height kitchen ceil­ing where no one could reach it! Engine-obsessed Jane was in heaven.

Avery retreated now and then with a favorite Sher­lock Holmes book and a throw, to a remote cor­ner, but was soon fol­lowed by Jane, and then by every­one else who wanted to be with Avery and Jane! Per­haps the most peace­ful moment of the entire day: with Joel in the barn, look­ing up at the repair braces we’ve been pay­ing for and receiv­ing email pho­tographs of all autumn. The whole project looks mas­sively offi­cial and sup­port­ive and quite as if the Big Red Barn might well stand up for another 200 years. Joel and I took sev­eral deep breaths in the dark­ness of the barn and then plunged again into Kitchen Christ­mas Cen­tral, to man­age the chaos.

Chief among whose ele­ments was… the Raw Turkey! Slow-cooked was the goal. How long it would have had to cook, at 250 degrees F, I do not know, in order to be ready for din­ner, but con­sid­er­ably, painfully longer than the 5 hours allot­ted to it. Joel, who is my ace carver, approached with carv­ing knife. “Kris­ten, look at these juices…” Run­ning red and pink. Awful. Panic. “Can we all, includ­ing the mashed pota­toes and spinach, wait for another hour?” “We’ll have to!” So Joel dis­mem­bered Mr. Turkey and sep­a­rated the breasts from the ster­num and I turned up the heat (all I was capa­ble of) and we sim­ply waited.

Finally the turkey was deemed edi­ble, the mashed pota­toes had sur­vived, the very rosemary-y gravy whisked up with cream, the stuff­ing out of the oven and the apple gone in. We gath­ered around the table. Feast­ing ensued, and by the time we got to the pies with whipped cream, every­one was feel­ing slightly mad with overeat­ing and fes­tiv­ity. “Don’t lick the rein­deer!” I had to warn dear Jane, who saw the ceramic cen­ter­piece cov­ered with stray whipped cream. At this, my mother choked into her pecan pie, she who taught us all to love phrases that we feel cer­tain have never been uttered before. “Don’t lick the rein­deer!” Classic.

So the hol­i­day has come and gone again. Today we were tired. We took a walk up the meadow to John’s Dad’s Bench, sat to recover our breath, to remem­ber our time with him two years ago, to be grate­ful, regret­ful, all at the same time.

And tomor­row: into New York for shop­ping and the Nut­cracker! That’s life for you, isn’t it? Just when I think I will take a moment to wal­low in nos­tal­gia for my child­hood, in my love for my too-far-away fam­ily, tomor­row appears with its own delights. A les­son, I’m sure, to be learned in the New Year…

“Whirl­wind” doesn’t approach a descrip­tion of the last few days here in Con­necti­cut. Our arrival was like all arrivals: late, irri­tat­ing, slowed by traf­fic, a bit of anx­i­ety whet­ted by hav­ing Avery ill with a cold, asleep on the back­seat of the car from Newark… The car filled to the gills with lug­gage con­tain­ing every pre­cious Christ­mas present I could find in Lon­don for our near­est and dear­est, my mind filled with hol­i­day prep of a mag­ni­tude I could hardly imag­ine, all to be accom­plished in three short days.

But as always, we pulled up to the seren­ity of Red Gate Farm — newly painted a bright, shin­ing white! — and crunched through the snow, stag­ger­ing under our suit­cases and jet­lag, pushed open the front door, swollen with age. And into… per­fec­tion. Warmth because our neigh­bors turned on the heat, a refrig­er­a­tor full of food because our neigh­bors thought we might arrive late and need a roasted chicken, a dozen eggs, but­ter, milk. And other trea­sures! A newly pub­lished book writ­ten by our Thanks­giv­ing ten­ants, and a bag of pecans har­vested from their Okla­homa sum­mer home!

Elec­tric blan­kets switched on, a Scotch poured, Avery folded into her cozy tiny bed under the eaves, in that small­est of all pos­si­ble bedrooms.

Tues­day I awoke at my usual first-day hour of 7 a.m. and it was a good thing, because I never stopped mov­ing the entire day! A mas­sive gro­cery shop, brisket in Guin­ness and toma­toes and gar­lic put sim­mer­ing on the stove for din­ner, presents unpacked, a light­ning trip to the shop­ping cen­ter for wrap­ping paper in hun­dreds of yards, tape, rib­bons, bows. A rush to get John’s mom’s room ready and wel­com­ing: that barn-red com­forter, green glass bed­side lamp glow­ing over the pho­to­graph of John’s dad, smil­ing at us from his easy chair, clean tow­els and the best Hello! mag­a­zines I could bring from Lon­don, fresh sham­poo! And off to the air­port to get her.

And as Avery and I sat at the first red light on the way, CRASH! Our heads and tor­sos swung back and forth like those crash dum­mies. “What the…?” Rear-ended, by a hap­less young girl from San Fran­cisco, dri­ving her father’s mam­moth 4x4, “I thought the light was green!” No time to call the police, just a quick exchange of phone num­bers and my fore­stalling her “I’m SO SORRY! I’m SO SORRY!” with “Just give me your num­ber, I have to get to the air­port!” The tail­light a goner, the bumper not much bet­ter, but dri­ve­able. And to White Plains we went.

Christ­mas isn’t Christ­mas until I’ve put my arms around John’s mom. An over­whelm­ing sense of grat­i­tude at see­ing her, all in one piece, so grate­ful to have her safe and sound under my wing for the fore­see­able future. I know she’ll leave again, but for right now, she’s safe with me.

Home to dec­o­rate the two trees, left here by Farmer Rol­lie in the wood­shed: one in the front par­lor bear­ing every antique glass ball and knit­ted doll and ceramic rid­ing boot (thanks to my dar­ling Christ­massy mother!) that we could find in the cup­board under a book­shelf that serves as my Christ­mas attic. One of the leather arm­chairs didn’t mind being moved for the dura­tion, to make room for the tree. And another tree in the kitchen, dec­o­rated only with white lights and the sil­ver bells John’s mom gives us each year, engraved with some­thing sig­nif­i­cant from the past twelve months. This year: “Hello Min­now”, for our new lit­tle grey Cinquecento!

The brisket! Heaven.

Clas­sic Win­ter Brisket
(serves 6-ish)

3 tbsps olive oil
1 flat-cut brisket
5 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 white onion, sliced thin
1 bot­tle Guin­ness
2 cups chicken stock
2 large cans Ital­ian plum toma­toes
good sprin­kle dried thyme
pinch sea salt

In a very large heavy pot, heat the olive oil and sear the brisket on both sides. Then add the gar­lic and onions and stir until slightly cooked. Add every­thing else and cook until the sauce comes to a high sim­mer, then turn heat down to main­tain a low sim­mer for at least three hours. After that, the cook­ing may be stopped at any time and restarted at any time, sim­ply reheat­ing when you’re ready to eat.

Serve with noo­dles and some­thing crunchy like slaw. Per­fect for a cold night.

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

Tomor­row I shall tell you in proper detail about what you do with the left­over brisket cook­ing juices, but for right now, one word: MINESTRONE.

Yes­ter­day I did noth­ing in the morn­ing but wrap presents, watch John’s mom wrap presents, dis­cuss wrap­ping presents with Avery and John! Secrets abound: “Avery, your present isn’t really a THING at all…” and all the elab­o­rate prepa­ra­tions for John’s mom’s present which isn’t a THING either… much whis­per­ing, shouts of “Don’t come in here!” “Can’t I come through to get to the bath­room? I really want to brush my teeth…” “NO!” And we con­cocted the tra­di­tional Christ­mas oys­ter stew, which really must rest for at least a day before serv­ing. Fresh-shucked Mary­land oys­ters, minced cel­ery, onions and gar­lic, cream and Tabasco: you can’t go wrong.

Then in the after­noon we headed off to my sis­ter Jill’s for the true fam­ily reunion! The delight of see­ing my entire fam­ily in one room! My dad’s twin­kling eyes, my mother’s crinkly, delighted smile, my brother’s shy hug. And Jill, Joel, Jane and Molly! We took a tour to see their fab­u­lous entryway-bathroom ren­o­va­tion, the house truly per­fect now. Heated floors! Bath­room draw­ers with their names burned into them! What lux­ury and style. Their house sim­ply bub­bles with wel­come and com­fort, as do they. We loaded the car with all the parcels they’ve been gra­ciously tak­ing in from the post­man for us, in the weeks run­ning up to Christ­mas. A shock­ing pile!

Jill set up a cookie-decorating sta­tion for the girls, and of course Jane dis­cov­ered that if you put a great deal of glit­ter on a cookie WITH­OUT icing it first… “Uh oh!” John and Joel tried in vain to res­ur­rect our tail­light… I fear that’s going to be a long, unpleas­ant story. “Did your neck or back hurt at all, Kris­ten?” some­one asked, and I had to admit, “Not until I talked to the insur­ance agent.”

Finally I read Jane her nap­time story and it was time to head home, try­ing to arrive before dark fell, with our plun­dered lights. Mine­strone, more wrap­ping, pre­tend­ing as always that there is no jetlag.

And tonight, the light­ing of can­dles in the hydrangea tree, a fairy­tale moment. And not a breath of breeze, so we skipped the yearly “will they or won’t they” with the can­dles. Then the tra­di­tional Christ­mas Eve with Anne, David, Con­nie, Alice and now baby Katie from across the road. The child can say “bub­ble” and “baby” and “Avery”, renew­ing her love affair with my teenager, her boon com­pan­ion of the tram­po­line over the sum­mer. We talked, as usual, all over each other, enjoy­ing lit­tle canapes of smoked dilled salmon on bli­nis with creme fraiche, watch­ing Katie run from “mama” to “dada”, nar­rat­ing her progress as she went, star­ing into the fire and say­ing dream­ily, “Pretty, pretty…” Oys­ter stew, gin­ger­bread men and brown­ies made by John’s mom, the delights of a small child up far past her bed­time who doesn’t seem to mind, good­byes on the snowy porch. Con­nie said, “It’s such a joy to see this house so fes­tive and happy, when it was dark and neglected for so long. I just wish you could be here always.” So do we, Con­nie. Sometimes!

When I am in Lon­don I dream of the peace of this place. Can­dles always flick­er­ing, fam­ily always here, friends we can never see enough of, peo­ple to cook with, gos­sip with, sur­rounded by books and old, shabby, favorite fur­ni­ture and art from the 20 years of our mar­riage. Of course Lon­don life bub­bles in its own way, revved up like a super-caffeinated drink some­times, all fizzy, glit­tery and excit­ing. But when I take a late-night walk here, down the unpaved old road, and look back to see our lit­tle white house, perched in the moon­light, Christ­mas tree lights wink­ing from inside, a blan­ket of stars over­head, fam­ily inside safe and sound, I think, “If only…”

The truth is, for me at least, the beauty of life is in the con­trasts. The quiet of Red Gate Farm finds its charm in my know­ing I’ll be back in the bus­tle of Lon­don very soon, and the fran­tic pace of Lon­don is lovely because I know I can always touch qui­etude here. I know how lucky I am.

Merry Christ­mas to you all, friends and fam­ily alike. Have a won­der­ful one.

Charles Dick­ens aside, it has really been the ulti­mate hol­i­day roller coaster chez moi these days. Let me explain.

Mon­day I awoke with a blind­ing headache. I’m not prone to headaches. I tried every­thing: John squeez­ing the back of my neck till my eye­sight went blue, a cou­ple of ibupro­fens, finally the ulti­mate: two fizzy tablets of Tylenol with codeine, in a glass of water. I first dis­cov­ered this sov­er­eign rem­edy when we were in Moscow many years ago, min­utes away from a pri­vate tour of the Krem­lin, when POWEE! One of those car­toon headaches, where light­ning bolts issue from the head of the Actual Suf­ferer. A savvy fel­low trav­eler offered me the fizzy solu­tion and ZAP — another car­toon moment. Light­ning bolts evap­o­rate. But not on Monday.

The Royal Albert Hall and its Annual Choral Soci­ety Christ­mas Con­cert waits for no man, how­ever suf­fer­ing, so off we went after an early sup­per. And for the first half I was golden. For­got the headache in favor of “Once in Royal David’s City” with the full soprano des­cant, AND the Royal Grenadier Trum­peters in those fluffy furry black hats! Their trum­pets came com­plete with the royal seal on lit­tle flags which they draped cer­e­mo­ni­ously over the heads of the choir below when they played.

I’m sorry, Amer­i­can iden­tity mine: when you’re in the RAH, full of hol­i­day green­ery, the plummy tones of the con­duc­tor telling very tame and hilar­i­ous jokes (“When I was a lit­tle boy, I vis­ited a fam­ily who said a prayer before every meal. My fam­ily didn’t do so, because my mother was a very good cook”), and those trum­pets blare at the final cho­rus of “Hark, the Her­ald Angels Sing”… you just want to be Eng­lish! At least I do. And there’s some­thing about a National Anthem that cel­e­brates not just the coun­try but its leader — “God Save the Queen” — that is heart­warm­ing. Bless her! Why couldn’t we Amer­i­cans sing “God Bless the Pres­i­dent”? I’m sure we could learn. It’s very unifying.

And in the row above us was… drum­roll… “Strictly Come Danc­ing” final­ist Chris Hollins! What could be better!

And so all was well until… I sud­denly became most rashly unwell, all of a moment, and had to dash out of the hall. Twice. By the sec­ond time I was well and truly ready for the end of the con­cert, so last verse, no encore, bob’s your uncle and we were home. Me under Avery’s puz­zled scrutiny, hud­dling under a duvet with sev­eral hun­dred hot water bot­tles and John hov­er­ing over me. Noth­ing to be done.

Mon­day night and Tues­day were a blur. Wednes­day I stag­gered above the sur­face of mis­ery to dis­cover that aside from fatigue, I felt quite well. That old chest­nut, the 24-hour bug. “Poor Mommy,” Avery said, brush­ing my brow in relief.

Until Thurs­day morn­ing when John said, “I have the worst headache.” Oh no.

Oh yes.

And then that evening Avery slunk into our bed­room at pre­cisely bed­time (as crea­tures like this will do, in cap­tiv­ity). “I’ve bro­ken another bracket on my braces. I think it needs to be fixed tomorrow.”

Sigh. “Tomor­row” already involved a visit to school to drop off the pro­ceeds of Monday’s Lost Prop­erty sale, a stint at the LP room itself, a trip to the post office, and, as it turned out, a horse show.

I rose from my faint­ing couch to accom­plish all these things (bro­ken braces brack­ets are really no big deal, and Avery’s ortho imme­di­ately said at the same time I did, “We must stop meet­ing like this; peo­ple will begin to talk”). From there a race to get a cab to Ham­mer­smith and to take John’s place at Olympia for the Annual Horse Show, with Avery’s friend Lil­lie and her father, the MOST urbane, gen­tle, pro­tec­tive, ele­gant man I have ever met. He wore an ascot. He was the dream escort, and the two girls in com­plete heaven. I had pre­pared myself with an anti­his­t­a­mine, and for once did not sneeze my head off.

Four hours, one gourmet din­ner, a celebrity bump-into for the girls with the Duchess of Corn­wall (Camilla, to the unini­ti­ated! “hon­estly, we just acci­den­tally walked into her!” they claimed), a very nice evening of con­ver­sa­tion and a walk home in the snow later, it was finally bed­time. Poor John was down for the count.

So this morn­ing came that dreaded sound in my life: the ALARM CLOCK. I am the orig­i­nal night owl. Any one need advice, recipes, a read­ing list, flight sched­ules at mid­night? I’m your man. But patient con­ver­sa­tion at 7 a.m.? Not so much. After sup­ply­ing apple tart, salami and apple juice, the ban­ter went like this:

“Have you brushed your teeth? And your hair could use something…”

“Mommy, I have this down to a sched­ule. You don’t need to worry.”

“But today you need to pack for the party and sleep­over after school.”

“I KNOW [elab­o­rate patience]. Trust me!”

(five min­utes later)

“Did you pack your tooth­brush and tooth­paste? And don’t go on Face­book until you’ve packed your bag. Did you REALLY brush your hair? It looks…”

Believe me, I’d hate me too if I were her. She main­tained an ele­gant silence. Her lovely friend Emily could not arrive soon enough to allow her to escape from me and into the frigid snowy air, full of gos­sip and com­par­i­son of after­noon social plans. Dou­ble sigh.

Can I just ask? HOW ON EARTH do peo­ple with more than one child, a job, and no sec­ond par­ent ever sur­vive a week when they get sick? This week I would have had to do all John did for us, plus all I did for us, plus earn a liv­ing, AND vomit. I live in com­plete awe and amaze­ment at every­one who does what I do with­out any of the sup­port I have.

Of course, these peo­ple are prob­a­bly sen­si­ble enough not to be neu­rotic wrecks over mere incon­se­quen­tials, as I man­age to be. For exam­ple. This morn­ing I knew very well that Avery was going straight from school, at noon, to a birth­day party with a school friend, includ­ing a movie at a cin­ema, on a pub­lic bus, and spend­ing the night. But some­how, in the fog of week­long ill­ness and hol­i­day must-cheer, I never ascer­tained some salient details. Imag­ine the police, if Avery didn’t turn up.

“So, Kris­ten [we’d be on a first-name basis], who are these par­ents your daugh­ter was going to?”

No idea. Avery says they’re both doctors.

“And the birth­day girl, is she a close friend?”

Couldn’t pick her out of a lineup, although I hear she is REALLY good at putting eye makeup on other girls at lunchtime.

“Where do they live?”

Well, I could tell you the address on the class list, but I later found out through assid­u­ous (if belated) tele­phon­ing that this address is out­dated by 6 months.

“Did you send your daugh­ter with a phone, spend­ing money or identification?”

At this point, I would sim­ply give up and start sign­ing adop­tion forms. How could I be so care­less? I’ll tell you how. Because this year of Avery’s life seems to be all about how to Hold On and Let Go. Pay Atten­tion But Don’t Inter­fere. Be Sup­port­ive But Not Intru­sive. And I just don’t know how to go halfway. I’m very good at han­dling it ALL. And appar­ently, if today’s any exam­ple, I’m spec­tac­u­larly tal­ented at doing noth­ing. But the whole grad­ual letting-go of con­trol? Not so much.

I finally broke down and called a friend whose daugh­ter was going to the same party. “At the risk of sound­ing both a nut­ter and really irre­spon­si­ble…” I began… when the other mother broke in. “You mean where on earth are they, and who are they with? I don’t know either.”

So John and I sur­vived a quiet evening recu­per­at­ing, with some nice sim­ple sauteed lemon sole. He’s asleep and I’m def­i­nitely NOT wor­ry­ing about Avery, who has no phone or vis­i­ble means of sup­port. She has a strong scream.

And I have my man­tel full of Christ­mas cards. Isn’t it funny. Snail mail is nearly dead in our lives. I rarely use a stamp in nor­mal life. I have one friend with­out a mobile phone or email and I do ring her at home and I write to her. But real let­ters? Never any­more. Until Christ­mas. Now the rug inside the let­ter­box is full of lovely white square envelopes with for­eign stamps, and my heart leaps.

So even if I can’t keep down a meal on a given Mon­day evening, or keep track of my daugh­ter on a given Fri­day night, I can keep friend­ships of a life­time, march­ing in their green, gold and red, above my flick­er­ing fire­place. And for that moment, as I look upon them, life is safe, and good.

One a.m. after a night at the the­atre and I’m perched up in bed over a plate of lus­cious salt beef, a dol­lop of mus­tard and a half a pickle… can you tell I passed by one of my favorite lit­tle shops on the way home from Leices­ter Square this evening? I am very lucky that my greedy tabby Hermione who nor­mally snatches any­thing and every­thing off my plate has decided that Jew­ish foods are not to her lik­ing, so my snack is safe as I type.

Is it Jan­u­ary yet? I adore this time of year, as you know, and I’m cer­tainly not com­plain­ing. But there’s no doubt that the hands of the clock start spin­ning around, layer after layer of party, con­cert, din­ner, cel­e­bra­tion of every kind piles one after another, and before you know it, you’ve sched­uled three things in a row at night with a school-age child who’s com­pletely exhausted by tonight, a lovely crisp Friday.

Wednes­day began cold and fair with my lit­tle writ­ing class meet­ing here for crois­sants, a slight dis­sec­tion of my “Thanks­giv­ing chap­ter,” and a long dis­cus­sion of char­ac­ter­i­za­tion and how to get it. It was a cool exer­cise: call to mind a real per­son you know, then list every qual­ity about that per­son you can think of (or imag­ine, if you chose). We spent ten long, silent min­utes at it and what we ended up with was fas­ci­nat­ing. What hap­pens when you clear your mind and sim­ply LIST things about a per­son is that pat­terns begin to emerge, con­nec­tions between per­son­al­ity traits, sig­nif­i­cance arises from lit­tle habits and pref­er­ences. I can see how this sort of exer­cise could build an entire novel’s worth of char­ac­ters if only I could be dis­ci­plined enough to do it.

Cer­tainly it makes soli­tary things like gro­cery shop­ping or wait­ing for the bus MUCH more inter­est­ing, as every sin­gle per­son you see becomes a poten­tial col­lec­tion of qual­i­ties, likes and dis­likes, expe­ri­ences, hopes and dreams. It was great fun. Exhaust­ing, strangely, I think because it opens the mind, makes every­thing an ingre­di­ent for writ­ing. Is there any­thing more fas­ci­nat­ing than the peo­ple one knows? Yes, maybe it’s the peo­ple other peo­ple know, because all three of us in the lit­tle class came up with entirely dif­fer­ent sorts of people.

From there to the Christ­mas con­cert at school in the evening, with a delight­ful after­noon of cook­ing in between, since I was host­ing a lit­tle party after the con­cert. Roast ham, gor­geous bre­saola, Parma ham, sev­eral lus­cious cheeses brought by Annie, includ­ing my hands-down favorite, Mont d’Or, slightly stinky and per­fect with plenty of crunchy crack­ers. Just lovely. A huge salad of tiny toma­toes with cucum­ber and a great dress­ing gave some wel­come color and tex­ture to the dinner:

Tomato Cucum­ber Salad
(serves 8)

2 pounds baby plum toma­toes
1/2 hydro­ponic cucum­ber, seeds removed with a spoon
1 stalk lemon grass, about 6 inches in length
1 tbsp chilli oil
zest and juice of 1/2 lemon
lots of fresh-ground black pep­per
1 tsp Dijon mus­tard
sea salt to taste

Sim­ply halve the toma­toes, dice the cucum­ber, and shake up every­thing else in a jar and pour over. Luscious.

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

The “Ser­vice of Lessons and Car­ols” itself was a paragon of all things Avery’s dear school rep­re­sents: hard work, the pride of girls in their accom­plish­ments, style AND sub­stance. The con­cert began with the heart-breaking (to me, for var­i­ous rea­sons) “Once in Royal David’s City”, with two beau­ti­ful girls, dressed in black, singing the first verse in can­dlelit dark­ness, the high vaulted ceil­ing of the Great Hall soar­ing over­head. Then, chill­ingly, the voices of many, many girls in the sec­ond verse soared from behind us, and we real­ized, with­out turn­ing our heads, that they were singing in the great Mar­ble entry­way out­side the Hall. In they filed, car­ry­ing can­dles, singing with that com­bi­na­tion of inno­cence and slight awk­ward­ness that makes school­girls so irre­sistibly tear-making, to me.

I was glad, per­versely, that Avery had felt she had not prac­ticed enough to take part, and so was sit­ting beside me where I could put my arm around her. What more does any­one want, at Christ­mas or any other time, than to have a daugh­ter to hold and appre­ci­ate, while beau­ti­ful music flows all around.

Impos­si­bly ele­gant and poised read­ings, in accents that would put the Royal Fam­ily to shame. Girls lit­tle and big, singing, recit­ing, praying.

It was almost a relief to have the solem­nity and beauty bro­ken by the crush of par­ents all leav­ing at the same time, so many famil­iar faces now that Avery has been there over a year. Lost Prop­erty moth­ers, famil­iar faces from the Par­ents’ Guild, from guests at our din­ner par­ties, Thanks­giv­ing, play­dates, shop­ping trips, birth­day par­ties. So lovely to feel we belong.

Of course, bad mother that I am, I hardly rec­og­nized the pass­ing of time at din­ner after the con­cert, and it came as quite a shock to my hol­i­day spirit to have some­one, a child, say plain­tively, “You know, you guys, it’s a SCHOOL night!” Reluc­tant depar­tures, clean­ing up in a leisurely way and enjoy­ing the decorations…

Thurs­day found us at the ortho­don­tist for a look at Avery’s first break­age. “You know, I don’t even think we NEED this bracket,” said he air­ily, where­upon I wanted only to ask, “How much did that bracket cost, any­way? Put it back!” She has been such a star at get­ting used to these things, it was almost a plea­sure to go to the appoint­ment just to hear she was per­fectly on track with the whole process.

Home to rush a bit through prepa­ra­tions for a din­ner guest from far­away New York, an old, old friend who with his lovely wife used to grace our din­ner table three, four times a week when we were all new­ly­weds. He took one look at Avery and said, “It’s true, you’re a teenager, I just didn’t realize…”

We feasted on Szechuan chicken with red, yel­low and orange pep­pers, and broc­coli, roasted peanuts, thick slices of fried gin­ger and hot chillis. The per­fect anti­dote to too much Christ­massy food. I’ve dec­o­rated my table with some really bor­der­line glit­tery tealights: they’re either lovely, or they’re ter­ri­bly tacky. None of us can decide.

Another late night, with gos­sip from New York, news of our old brunch haunt Bubby’s hav­ing turned 24-hours! Shock­ing! The times, the times I ran over JFK, Jr.‘s fancy busi­ness shoes with Avery’s stroller as we waited in line at Bubby’s… and real estate news (the lin­gerie store that replaced my art gallery is going strong, also shock­ing), the crowded school sit­u­a­tion. We all felt quite tearily home­sick for New York, as one does when chat­ting about the old days with some­one who’s seen many parts of the last 20 years with us, whether in New York, Lon­don or Moscow… old friends. Life may change, and old friends with it, but it’s always good to keep the ties.

I must report on “Legally Blonde: the Musi­cal”! But some­thing tells me I’ll never find the time. So all I can say is that it’s a hugely enjoy­able evening with pass­able Amer­i­can accents, all stereo­types clev­erly under­scor­ing every­thing the British already think about us, but, as Avery says, “in a good way!”

Next week, I promise, really WILL be quiet… ish.

At least, that’s what I have in mind. Last week deliv­ered the dra­mas of ortho­don­ture from hell, “to voiceover or not to voiceover,” capped off with a Fri­day after­noon at the skat­ing rink clos­eted with (actu­ally, if only I could have shut her up in a closet) the loud­est, most obnox­ious mother at the adja­cent table… oooh, I could have smoth­ered her with a roll of paper towel. Finally home in the cold rain for a truly lovely week­end appre­ci­at­ing the Christ­mas tree, a sleep­over date from one of Avery’s sweet­est friends, and a Sun­day nap, in a shaft of gen­tle late-afternoon sun­light on the sofa. Bliss.

So my hopes are that the drama has been exhausted and we can hope for peace. We’ve been play­ing ten­nis doggedly in quite too-cold sprin­kling rain, shiv­er­ing and feel­ing fool­ish, but I fig­ure we’ve burned off at least a table­spoon of mayo. I fin­ished the last of the Christ­mas cards and popped them in the post on my rainy way to school pickup, and we are now con­tem­plat­ing noth­ing more dra­matic than a carol con­cert at school on Wednes­day. Quite, quite peaceful.

But you know me, the most peace­ful thing I can think of is cook­ing, fol­lowed by eat­ing and as my favorite cook­ery writer Lau­rie Col­win says, the best pos­si­ble thing which is “talk­ing about cook­ing while eat­ing with friends.” That will be the story here at home after the carol con­cert, since my friend Annie and I have decided to bring the two fam­i­lies together for a smor­gas­bord sup­per. I must con­fess that as much as I dote on a nice meat, veg and starch din­ner nearly every night, my favorite way of eat­ing is choos­ing among lots of dif­fer­ent fla­vors, a lit­tle of this, a lit­tle of that. Could it be my Scan­di­na­vian blood com­ing through? So we’ve divvied up the bits we’ll each bring, and I’m quite excited, respon­si­ble as I shall be for “meats and fish.”

Meats… I think a small gam­mon (ham) roasted with a mix­ture of minced gar­lic, Dijon mus­tard, honey and plum sauce, then sliced really thin. And a turkey breast: they are avail­able here, won­der­fully, as small as a large chicken breast in the States, so you’re not mak­ing a com­mit­ment of hol­i­day pro­por­tions. Fish… how about hot smoked roasted salmon, cut in thick slices to serve with a dip of creme fraiche and wasabi paste? The wasabi cuts into the cream and turns it a lovely pale green, a color that seduces you into for­get­ting how HOT the dip will be!

Then, I will indulge in my lat­est food obses­sion, which tends to crop up every night at about mid­night when the tennis-playing side of my brain is hushed up by the indul­gent side. “Go on, so what if a table­spoon of this spends your entire hour of ten­nis? Life is short!” This obses­sion is just about any prod­uct from the Find­later com­pany out of Scot­land, my favorites so far being a smoked salmon pate (light and rich at the same time, creamy and not too fishy), and a duck pate with just a hint of chopped apri­cot rim­ming the dish (a bless­ing for John who abhors any com­bi­na­tion of fruit and meat, so he can avoid the fruit). These pates are sin­fully indul­gent, per­fect either on a bit of toasted baguette or that most appo­site of all crack­ers, the Bath Oliver. Order some, do! And have that mid­night snack and think of me.

If you are out and about as we were on Sun­day in Maryle­bone, our old stomp­ing grounds when Avery used to be in school there, I can highly rec­om­mend the Nat­ural Kitchen for brunch. Pass up all the over­priced (shock­ingly so, even for Lon­don!) raw ingre­di­ents on the ground floor, don’t be tempted to sit right down in the chilly win­dow. Head upstairs and be pre­pared to wait 15 min­utes or so for a table in the bustling, warm, chic and delectably-smelling first-floor din­ing room.

We were not put off by the fact that every­one there besides us looked incred­i­bly, how shall I put it, rich. Just like peo­ple who’ve been out Christ­mas shop­ping and to whom the word “reces­sion” applies only to their gum­lines. Such great people-watching, and –lis­ten­ing. Avery has a pet peeve: the new ad cam­paign by Patek Philippe for their watches, with the slo­gan, “You never actu­ally own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next gen­er­a­tion,” and a photo of an actual father and son, smirk­ing into the cam­era. At the Nat­ural Kitchen, Avery looked around and said, “Every­one here looks like one of those ads.” She looked down at her own clean but per­ma­nently horse-stained jodh­purs and boots and sighed.

But all that wealth around us didn’t stop the Eggs Bene­dict from being truly sub­lime, per­fectly runny yolks, French ham and a fault­less Hol­landaise. John’s full Eng­lish was equally remark­able with Lin­colnshire sausages, spicy and tempt­ing. Avery had a ham and Emmen­thal crois­sant that was lovely too.

Some­times, how­ever, meat, veg and starch is the way to go, and when you’re in that sort of mood, where you want a din­ner that requires noth­ing more chal­leng­ing than scoop­ing up some­thing sim­ple on a fork, you can­not do any bet­ter than:

Chicken Pojarski with Caramelized Car­rots and Rice
(serves 4)

CHICKEN:
splash of olive oil
5 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 shal­lot, minced
1 tbsp paprika (sounds a lot, but trust me)
4 chicken breast fil­lets, cubed in bite-size pieces
splash of Madeira
1 cup chicken stock
1 cup creme fraiche (half-fat is fine)

CAR­ROTS:
5 tbsps but­ter
1/2 cup dark brown soft sugar
4 car­rots per per­son, sliced in rounds

RICE:
1/2 cup bas­mati rice per person

For the chicken, saute the gar­lic and shal­lot gen­tly in the oil, then add the chicken and cook on all sides briefly (not fully cooked). Set chicken aside and add the Madeira to the pan and raise the heat. Scrape all cooked bits into the liq­uid and add chicken stock. Lower heat and whisk in creme fraiche. Add chicken and its accu­mu­lated juices and poach very gen­tly for 15 min­utes. At this point you may turn off the heat and leave the dish until you are ready to eat, heat­ing it gen­tly just before serving.

About 40 min­utes before you want to eat, melt the but­ter and sugar together and sim­mer, siz­zling. Drop car­rots in and cook, stir­ring occa­sion­ally, low­er­ing the heat as necessary.

About 20 min­utes before you want to eat, steam the rice. I’ve found that the rice sticks much less to the pan if you turn the heat off for five min­utes or so before serv­ing, keep­ing the lid tightly shut.

Pile the rice in the cen­ter of the plate and ladle the chicken and sauce on top, then make a nice mound of the car­rots on the side. All you need is… a fork.

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

Eat this din­ner unashamedly in front of the telly while you watch Delia Smith’s Christ­mas pro­gramme, or if you’re all alone, carry your lap­top to the din­ing table and, for the next five days, you can lis­ten to this won­der­ful pro­gramme on BBC Radio Four with Simon Parkes, all about “The Food Mem­oir.” If, like me, you’re try­ing to write a food mem­oir your­self, you can sit back and wail a bit at the genius of the writ­ers Parkes talks to. Jeal­ousy: it’s ugly. But then I wipe away my tears and pick up my fork, and with an unwieldy bite of creamy com­fort food, all’s right with the world.

I would never have thought I had it in me.

You know Avery wants to be an actress. She spent long months on the wait list at the Sylvia Young The­atre School, which actu­ally trains chil­dren full­time, run­ning as a real school, to be singers, actors, dancers, while one imag­ines fit­ting in the odd Eng­lish and maths les­son now and then. All she wanted was a spot in the Sat­ur­day les­son. Finally one appeared. I was reminded of the old New Yorker car­toon, “Spots still avail­able in domino tour­na­ment. If nowhere else.”

So three years ago she began her weekly Sat­ur­day act­ing lessons and has enjoyed them tremen­dously. “You should have seen what we did today, one girl was sent out of the room not know­ing that her char­ac­ter had been kicked out of the apart­ment she shared with the rest of our char­ac­ters, and then had to come back and impro­vise…” inter­spersed with Antigone, pan­tomime, you name it. She loves every after­noon of it. Well, asso­ci­ated with the school is an agency, and they agreed to take her on. Many piles of paper­work, sub­mis­sions of pho­tographs, sign­ing over of all her life infor­ma­tion ensued. And since then, many audi­tions. Even call­backs. But never a job.

Until today.

I must back­track and explain the process, for my own san­ity. You must under­stand that when your child turns 13, many peo­ple step for­ward to give you advice on many things, which all boil down like a reduced veal stock, to the fol­low­ing issue: how to get your child to be more inde­pen­dent. But not [other people’s fin­gers raised here in admo­ni­tion] to assert her own inde­pen­dence too much, or request inde­pen­dence in a dis­re­spect­ful way, or achieve the inde­pen­dence first and THEN ask for it. The per­mu­ta­tions are quite, quite unbe­liev­able, and you will know I speak the truth when I say that I have heard far too much on the sub­ject. This recal­ci­trance on my part is due entirely to my desire to keep Avery wrapped up in cot­ton wool, prefer­ably curled up next to me with a good book and a leg chain, for the fore­see­able future. This I real­ize I can­not attain.

So I com­pro­mise. I try to leave her in charge of deci­sions, details, arrange­ments. In gen­eral it’s work­ing out fine (there was that inci­dent with the taxi and an ice skate which nearly gave me a heart attack, but I’m over that now).

My phone rang last week to tell me that Avery had, not an audi­tion, not a call­back, but a REAL JOB. As a voiceover for a char­ac­ter on “Bob the Builder,” a very pop­u­lar BBC show here in the UK and also as an import to the US. Cool! But let me tell you, the road from the job announce­ment to the even­tual job was dark and twisty, like a char­ac­ter on “Grey’s Anatomy.” First there was the laconic request from the agency for a “let­ter of per­mis­sion” for Avery to miss school on the day. So I typed up a let­ter to Avery’s form teacher, explain­ing the job and ask­ing that she type up a let­ter giv­ing Avery per­mis­sion to skip school. Noth­ing hap­pened. “She’s out ill,” Avery explained, “so I gave the let­ter to the sub­sti­tute.” I promptly for­got about it for another cou­ple of days. “Don’t for­get to ask for that let­ter,” I men­tioned once or twice. “I won’t.”

Finally it was Mon­day, Avery was fin­ished hav­ing her braces put on (don’t ask) and I felt it was time to move on to the next cri­sis. “You know, you’ve got to pro­duce that per­mis­sion let­ter or you can’t go on the job,” to which she replied in a pain-hazed frenzy, ‘I know, I will, I will!” and dis­ap­peared into the school. I knew the issue was not over.

Halfway through cof­fee on Tues­day with my long-suffering friend Dalia, my phone rang. It was the agent, Reb. “You know, I needed that let­ter yes­ter­day, so the coun­cil can apply for her per­mis­sion!” he wailed (this was the first I had heard about coun­cil per­mis­sion). “This is the first I’ve heard about coun­cil per­mis­sion,” I wailed back, and he said, “You have to fax it to me by this after­noon, and even then I have to go to Plan B [some much more won­der­ful child actress, his tone implied].”

Before I could reply, another call came through. Avery on a bor­rowed phone, at lunch. “My teacher says there isn’t enough infor­ma­tion about the job in the let­ter you sent, for any­one to sign it and in any case that’s not her job, it’s the pas­toral head, and this is REALLY IMPOR­TANT TO ME and what a ter­ri­ble week…” Under­stand­ably fran­tic. I ring off telling her I’ll call her back. Ring up Reb. “What more infor­ma­tion can you give me?” “What did I give you already?” “NOTH­ING!” So he comes up with the name of the pro­ducer and the address of the job. I ring off and call Avery to tell her I’m email­ing all the infor­ma­tion to school, but the call goes to voice mail. Lunch is obvi­ously over.

I sigh, feel­ing my stom­ach mus­cles clench. I know I can’t solve every­thing for her, but the day after her braces are put on, to see her face such dis­ap­point­ment through no fault of her own… I couldn’t bear it. So much for inde­pen­dence. I called the lovely school sec­re­tary and grov­elled, glad­der than ever that she and I had forged a lit­tle friend­ship over “Lost Prop­erty.” “Email me the infor­ma­tion, and I will walk it over to the pas­toral head… wait, I see her now. Send it right on.” I do so. I ring Reb to tell him the letter’s com­ing. He says he’ll ring when it comes.

No call comes.

I turn up at school, grovel some more to the secretary’s sec­re­tary who smiles sun­nily and says, “Oh, yes, that per­mis­sion letter’s been given to Avery to bring home.” OH NO! I meet Avery out­side school, grab the let­ter, race back to the office. “Could you fax this to this num­ber?” hand­ing over the grubby sheet torn out of my mys­tery novel, given me by the dis­mal Reb. She goes away with it and comes back. “That fax num­ber is not answer­ing,” she says, sym­pa­thetic with my squirm­ing anx­i­ety. “My teeth hurt so much,” Avery moans almost silently. “I’m not allowed to have med­i­cine in school, so I haven’t taken any­thing…” I can’t bear it. I ring Reb. “Why isn’t your fax machine turned on?” I ask through grit­ted teeth. “Oh, I’ll check, hang on…” Back again. “It’s on now.” B***dy hell. Finally the fax goes through. Avery swal­lows her nuro­fen, drinks water, we walk home in the gath­er­ing dusk, real­iz­ing there are no snacks she can chew, feel­ing slightly hard done by, steel­ing our­selves that the job might not now come through.

At home, I sim­ply can­not bear another phone call, so Stage Father takes over, to be told that the coun­cil per­mis­sion is miss­ing and so she can­not do the job. After all my crazy day. I feel I can hardly bear it. Avery chokes down some soup for sup­per, we are all demoralized.

Then this morn­ing, John is imbued with an extra sense of “after all that!” and rings the coun­cil him­self. And voila! Job ready! Be at Sylvia Young in an hour! Done.

Long story short, she had the time of her life. “There was a room sep­a­rated by glass from another room where a man was arrang­ing all the sound, and I was all alone in the room, wear­ing these head­phones, while one lady told me what to say, and the sto­ry­boards went up…” Sheer heaven. “I had so much FUN.” She did one ver­sion in Eng­lish, and another in Amer­i­can, pre­sum­ably for the two mar­kets in which they’ll sell the DVDs. “I played a lit­tle girl who cheered a lot, ‘yay! yay! yay!’”

As a par­ent, one learns to rise above annoy­ances and try really hard to think what one’s learned from the sit­u­a­tion. How about, “Never ever EVER get involved with show busi­ness”? I don’t think that will work. Avery had such fun. I sup­pose I learned the chan­nels of power to go through, the fact that no one on either end cares that I don’t know what I’m doing, that every­one is supremely ready to drop a piece of paper that’s ask­ing him or her to do some­thing. Every­one except the school sec­re­tary, who deserves a medal. Or a plate of brown­ies, more likely.

Up and down, up and down. Great parent-teacher con­fer­ence, awful cold, great Thanks­giv­ing, awful braces, great act­ing job. As for my career as a stage mother, I think it’s over. I’m much bet­ter as a cook for some­one who can’t chew.

Creamy Mush­room Soup
(serves 6)

2 tbsps but­ter
1/2 white onion, chopped
4 cloves gar­lic, chopped
4 cups mush­rooms, white or chest­nut, chopped
1/2 tsp dried thyme or 1 tbsp fresh leaves
splash Madeira or white port or Cal­va­dos
2–3 cups chicken stock (just to cover mush­rooms)
1/2 cup light cream

Melt but­ter in a heavy stock­pot and fry onion, gar­lic and mush­rooms till soft. Add thyme and Madeira and sim­mer high for 1 minute. Add chicken stock and sim­mer until mush­rooms are com­pletely cooked, about 10 min­utes. Puree with hand blender, add cream. Sea­son with sea salt and pepper.

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

This soup can be made with turkey stock (Thanks­giv­ing or Christ­mas left­overs?), or beef stock. I made it once with stock from roast duck bones and that was lip-smackingly lus­cious, but rare. I don’t roast ducks very often. I bet with a rich ham stock it would be lovely too.

Turn off your phone, close down the com­puter, gather your long-suffering loved ones with dis­ap­point­ments, frus­tra­tions, sore gums, home­sick­ness, any­thing, and tuck in. Pure creamy com­fort. That audi­tion can wait.

Isn’t the best part of Thanks­giv­ing the left­overs? All the stress of get­ting the din­ner itself ready at the same time is over, the tiny lit­tle voice in the back of your mind warn­ing you how long wash­ing up will take has been stilled. The guests have been fed, the can­dles have burned down and all that remains is to open the fridge, lift the foil lid, and… uncover pure gold.

The best sand­wich! Roast turkey (thank good­ness John had left a plate of the best dark meat hid­ing behind a poin­set­tia, because all the turkey we offered our guests was eaten!), a good sharp Ched­dar cheese, sour­dough bread lightly toasted, a mild red onion, mus­tard and mayo… it doesn’t get any bet­ter than that, with a lit­tle bowl of turkey soup on the side.

What I did not get left­overs of were:

Becky’s Cheesy Thanks­giv­ing Pota­toes
(serves at least 8, but more with other side dishes on offer)

3 lbs/1 ½ kilos pota­toes (Maris Piper here in Eng­land is a good choice, or a Yukon Gold in the US)
3 round shal­lots or 1 banana shal­lot, minced
2 cups/ 474 ml grated or shred­ded Ched­dar or Dou­ble Glouces­ter cheese
1 tsp gar­lic pow­der
sea salt and pep­per
3 cups/1 pint/474 ml sin­gle cream or Half and Half

Boil pota­toes until eas­ily pierced with a fork, then peel when cool. Grate them on a coarse grater and set aside.

Lighly oil or non­stick spray a deep glass or pot­tery casse­role dish, per­haps 9 inches in diam­e­ter and 5 inches or so high (mine is round, which is an appeal­ing shape). Scat­ter a layer of grated pota­toes on the bot­tom, then cover with a layer of cheese, a sprin­kling of shal­lot, a sprin­kle of gar­lic pow­der, and sea­son well. Repeat lay­er­ing until you have run out of ingre­di­ents, end­ing with cheese. Then pour the cream over the casserole.

Bake at 180C, 350F until bub­bly and the cheese begins to brown, about 45 min­utes, depend­ing on the depth of the casserole.

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

Becky, much-missed Thanks­giv­ing com­pan­ion dur­ing our first years here in Lon­don, has always claimed that these pota­toes are even bet­ter as left­overs, but as we never had any left over, I can­not ver­ify this! Just the same this year.

These pota­toes were so good that they even fea­tured as one of my guest’s “Three Things I Am Thank­ful For”! Unbe­liev­ably soft and creamy, with a crisp, golden crust, they dis­ap­peared imme­di­ately. Well, with 15 guests, 8 chil­dren among them, that’s not surprising.

What was a wel­come sur­prise was my painter friend Matthew’s unex­pected con­tri­bu­tion to the feast!

Matthew’s Apple Nut Tart
(serves 12 easily)

2 sheets puff pas­try pressed together, about 18 x 12 inches, brushed with beaten egg
apple slices to cover pas­try (about four apples)
hand­ful each: pine nuts, cashews, pecans (all toasted)
drib­ble of honey to cover all (1/3 cup?)
dust­ing of cin­na­mon sugar

Bake at 180C, 350 F for 20 minutes.

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

This tart has every­thing, John reports, each of the per­fectly sim­ple ingre­di­ents play­ing its appointed role: del­i­cate warm pas­try, soft apple, crunchy nuts, slight sweet­ness of honey and sugar. A really nice dessert for those of your guests who don’t like pump­kin pie.

Clas­sic Pump­kin Pie
(serves 8)

1 unbaked pie crust (or here in Lon­don, sweet pas­try shell) in pie plate
3/4 cup/150 grams gran­u­lated sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground gin­ger
1/2 tsp ground cloves
2 large eggs
1 can (15 ounces/425 grams pump­kin puree (in Eng­land it will be part squash, no mat­ter)
1 can (12 ounces/340 grams) evap­o­rated milk
whipped cream to top

Mix sugar, cin­na­mon, salt, gin­ger and cloves in a small bowl. Beat eggs in a large bowl. Add pump­kin and sugar-spice mix­ture, mix well. Grad­u­ally add evap­o­rated milk.

Pour into unbaked pas­try shell and baked at 210C/425F for 15 min­utes. Reduce tem­per­a­ture to 180C/350F and bake for another 40–5– min­utes, until a knife inserted in the cen­ter comes out clean. Cool for 2 hours, then serve with whipped cream.

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

I’ll admit it: I don’t even like pump­kin pie. But it’s com­pletely nec­es­sary to Thanks­giv­ing din­ner, and Avery will eat all the left­overs for break­fast, as long as they last.

We had a lovely time. Every big din­ner party should include a fam­ily of six, I think: just with one invi­ta­tion, you get a huge group! “Thank you,” said the dad, “No one every invites us all!” The girls all made turkey place­cards with their hand­prints on orange paper, and the lit­tlest girl Molly plucked ker­nels of “Indian corn” from the cob that’s dec­o­rated our front door, so each per­son would have them for the “Three Things I’m Thank­ful For.”

Some­how I man­aged to get eight side dishes to come out at the right time, and I should have made more of every­thing, because there were almost no left­overs, sadly! Cheesy spinach, caramelized car­rots, two kinds of pota­toes, two kinds of beans, and stuff­ing, all were wolfed down with chil­dren tak­ing sec­ond help­ings of all the veg­eta­bles, to their par­ents’ delight. I’ve said it before: if you add enough gar­lic and cheese to almost any­thing, chil­dren will eat it.

Well, all this means only one thing: Christ­mas is upon us. Every day the pile in the cor­ner of my bed­room gets a lit­tle higher: presents to pack up and take with us to Con­necti­cut. In just three weeks we’ll be there! “Why are all the gifts we’re tak­ing along so HEAVY?” John com­plains, and it’s true. Every­one in my fam­ily wants far too many books, but as I’m the worst offender, I shall say noth­ing. This week I must write to Farmer Rol­lie and his wife Judy to spec­ify our Christ­mas tree needs, from their tree farm. That’s one of the best feel­ings of Christ­mas, arriv­ing at Red Gate Farm to open up the big red barn and find trees and wreaths, breath­ing out their lovely resiny aroma.

Speak­ing of resin, or any­thing sticky, no such thing may enter our house as of Mon­day morn­ing when Avery… gets her braces put on. I know it’s some­thing that hap­pens to more chil­dren than not, a rite of pas­sage of sorts. I always told her I’d never insist on braces so that her teeth were per­fect, just so that they were func­tional, and so it is. Her incisors are hid­ing rebel­liously up inside her gums and so must be called to account. Wish her luck! And may tomor­row be filled with caramels for every meal.

“Drake: the Musi­cal” has receded into the mists of time, car­ry­ing along with it the mem­o­ries of such dit­ties as “It’s Rain­ing Again in Green­wich” and the cam­paign song for Sir Fran­cis run­ning for Mayor of Ply­mouth against Lord Kil­li­grew, whose famous refrain, “Thank you, Mother,” will live on in the minds of all of us who saw two, three or even four per­for­mances. It was such fun! Such a happy reminder of my own high-school days in musi­cals, that feel­ing of group effort, fel­low sup­port, admiration.

The play ended in tri­umph on Sat­ur­day night but I wasn’t even there, for two rea­sons: one, you couldn’t get a ticket for love or money, and two, I was sick as a dog. I hardly ever get sick, and so when I do, it’s with a vengeance. I spent Sat­ur­day, Sun­day and yes­ter­day in a lump of mis­ery, slug­gish­ness and tis­sues. Today I am begin­ning to feel bet­ter, which is a good thing con­sid­er­ing… Thanks­giv­ing is in less than 48 hours.

In any case, we’re all mourn­ing the pass­ing of “Drake,” and there is much Face­book activ­ity in Avery’s life as a result. But never mind: next week she has her very first pay­ing act­ing job! She’s pro­vid­ing a voiceover for “Bob the Builder,” a ter­rif­i­cally pop­u­lar tele­vi­sion series here. At least, she is if she gets per­mis­sion from school. In one of those flur­ries of notes to school, that par­tic­u­lar request is in a pile along with “Yes, we’ll be at the parent-teacher con­fer­ences” tomor­row night. I always get excited about these con­fer­ences, even when I know from long expe­ri­ence that what will hap­pen is this: each teacher will gaze at us calmly and say some­thing like, “Everything’s fine.”

Tonight was the Soiree Musi­cale at school, a lovely evening of musi­cal feats (too much flute, not enough swing band). Avery and her “Junior Madri­gal Choir” per­formed a hair-raisingly touch­ing “Ave Maria,” and can I just say? I will be so pleased when, some­day, I can lis­ten to my child sing in a con­cert with­out my break­ing down into hid­den tears. I always have to pre­tend I have some­thing in my eye, or that I must blow my nose (at least tonight I had a cold). There is some­thing about the utter inno­cence, the knowl­edge of the effort put into the per­for­mance, the touch­ing invest­ment of all these girls into their achieve­ments that makes me unbear­ably sen­ti­men­tal. I find myself think­ing, “You’ll learn to sing these lovely solos and play the sax­o­phone and write your own arrange­ments of ancient songs, and then what? You’ll wake up one day and YOU’RE the mother, sit­ting in the audi­ence, won­der­ing where it all went.” I am really in a mood!

Such was my funk­i­ness last evening when, in the throes of an annoy­ing hack­ing cough, I felt very blue. I think I can iden­tify part of my sad­ness: I’ve been work­ing for sev­eral weeks on a chap­ter for my “book” on Thanks­giv­ing. And it turns out, Thanks­giv­ing in Eng­land makes me sad. It’s an Amer­i­can hol­i­day! No mat­ter how lovely our guests, and they will be, they are Eng­lish and as such, vis­i­tors to our hol­i­day. The child­hood feel­ings of fam­ily, bick­er­ing and famil­iar and beloved as they are, will not be present. I’ll wake up on Thanks­giv­ing morn­ing with that odd feel­ing of being in charge that never fails to amaze me, no mat­ter how many (20 at least!) years I have been in charge. It’s meant to be my Aunt Mary Wayne and Uncle Kenny who host us and take care of it all. My dad should be dri­ving and my mother bick­er­ing about direc­tions to Ken­tucky, and my sis­ter and brother and I squab­bling about hav­ing enough room in the back­seat. I haven’t spent so much time think­ing about Thanks­giv­ing in years and years, and I miss every­one quite des­per­ately. But I imag­ine that I’ll come out on the other side, still feel­ing nos­tal­gic for the old days, but with my mind firmly aware that it’s my house, my hol­i­day now.

I’m mak­ing lists. Yes­ter­day John and I picked up the huge turkey and placed him in his briney bath of sea salt, pep­per­corns, fresh rose­mary, sage, cel­ery and onions. So he will repose until Thanks­giv­ing after­noon, when for the first time, I’m going to roast him upside down. So much for the Nor­man Rock­well photo oppor­tu­nity: this year his legs will be stick­ing down the wrong direc­tion, but let me tell you, that breast will be TEN­DER, not dried out. Then there will be the mashed pota­toes, the cheesy pota­toes my friend Becky has told me how to make (how we will miss her and her fam­ily on the day), green beans. John’s argu­ing with me over the beans. Should they be canned, with mush­room soup and fried onions on top? Yuck, but tra­di­tional. I’m not get­ting much sup­port for my view that they should be steamed, with a but­tery, gar­licky, lemony dress­ing. It’s tra­di­tion ver­sus a food some­one might actu­ally want to eat.

Then there’s stuff­ing made of the torn-out insides of Ital­ian bread, sauteed sausage, cel­ery, onions, gar­lic, mush­rooms, fresh sage and a glug of heavy cream… and spinach with Gruyere cheese and cel­ery salt, and pump­kin pie!

I’ll do a post-mortem after the hol­i­day itself and give you some per­fect recipes. In the mean­time, let me tell you what will make any school­girl sit up and take notice at break­fast, when “Drake” has fin­ished and the hol­i­days are just begin­ning to beckon. It’s warm, it’s fra­grant, col­or­ful, sweet and wel­com­ing. Just right for those dark morn­ings with the rain pelt­ing down the windows.

Per­fect Fruit Crum­ble
(serves about 4–6 breakfasts?)

6 nec­tarines or small peaches
2 dozen straw­ber­ries, hulled and halved
1 cup whole­meal flour
1 cup Demer­era sugar
1 tsp ground cin­na­mon
1/2 tsp each: ground cloves, ground nut­meg
125g/1/2 cup cold butter

Cut up all the fruit and lay it in a glass dish about 9 x 5 inches. Then place flour, sugar and spices in a Cuisi­nart, turn it on, and grad­u­ally add, in small cubes, the cold but­ter. Let the mix­ture whizz until it has the con­sis­tency of a rough, crumbly dough.

Scat­ter the crumbly dough over the fruit and bake at 180C/350F for 40 min­utes or until the fruit bub­bles and the top is brown.

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

Onward and upward then, past nos­tal­gia for musi­cals, past doses of Day Nurse and Night Nurse for colds, past gro­cery lists and table-setting strate­gies. It’s time to assume the man­tle of adult­hood and be thankful.

It’s hap­pened at last: “Drake: the Musi­cal” has been staged not once, but twice in the small lives we all inhabit here in our lit­tle cor­ner of Lon­don. And con­trary to our rather churl­ish expec­ta­tion, fed by our children’s vile atti­tudes (which have changed remark­ably since per­form­ing), the musi­cal was FABULOUS.

Granted, I will go to my grave won­der­ing why on earth any­one thought that Sir Fran­cis Drake (“Frankie” to his many admir­ers onstage) was a com­pelling fig­ure for a musi­cal lead. He was a lad­dish rake of the first order, noth­ing more than a pirate! (“A pri­va­teer,” his 11-year-old por­trayer insists). Added to that skep­ti­cism may be put the ques­tion­able wis­dom of 13-year-olds putting on a musi­cal that deals with, let’s see, ram­pant anti-Spanish pro­pa­ganda (I’m not Eng­lish, so I can frown at the laugh­ter in the audi­ence at all the slurs!), randy sea­far­ing pirates, and much ado about mem­bers of the drunken aris­toc­racy. Lines like, “If I’m Knight of the Garter, can I say whose garter it should be?” and “I’ll show you to the ladies in wait­ing,” fol­lowed by, “They don’t have to wait no longer!” You get my drift.

Still and all, the pro­duc­tion man­aged to be com­pletely charm­ing. The kids have worked unex­pect­edly hard, it’s clear. I guess I fell into the old trap of believ­ing a child’s descrip­tion of any ongo­ing expe­ri­ence, espe­cially when you gather a whole bunch of them together and THEN try to get a grain of truth from their tales of woe. How ter­ri­ble the songs/dance/speeches were going to be (they were mar­velous and almost fault­less), how hor­ren­dous the makeup (pretty much stan­dard), how per­ilous the sets (noth­ing col­lapsed). In gen­eral, they warned us about how embar­rass­ing the whole expe­ri­ence would be, and yet, all the per­form­ers seemed happy to have us turn up, fill the house, and clap wildly. They were WONDERFUL.

“Tarry a tick, old chap!” was typ­i­cal of the ban­ter, as was, “Her Majesty’s a bit tetchy today, and who can blame her?” “Love a duck!” exclaimed one girl upon see­ing a beau­ti­ful neck­lace, where­upon an eaves­drop­ping Lord said, “Duck? Duck? Ah, Drake… a highly unsuit­able expres­sion, given the cir­cum­stances…” I chuck­led even more at these Wodehouse-esque, out­dated expres­sions. I do love liv­ing here.

The atmos­phere of a boys’ school itself strikes amaz­ing feel­ings of inad­e­quacy in me, the aver­age son-less Amer­i­can who did not grow up sur­rounded by chil­dren in knee britches, match­ing jack­ets, neck­ties and bean­ies. With kneesocks and lit­tle briefcase-y satchels. And loads of match­ing stair-step broth­ers. These boys are called things like Hor­a­tio and Simon, and the huge blowups of them in the pas­sages, play­ing rug­ger and the like with con­cen­trated expres­sions of aris­to­cratic com­pet­i­tive­ness only under­score the huge cul­tural gap between peo­ple like us and peo­ple who take this sort of thing for granted. Large groups of boys who go to a boys’ school are a breed apart: they really do say things like, “Jolly good!” and “I say…” They wres­tle and push and shove and mock-bite like any boys in Amer­ica, but they do it with per­fect hair­cuts and gor­geous accents like David Cameron’s, and I for one am besot­ted. Will Avery end up with some­one like that, and I’ll feel infe­rior for every fam­ily hol­i­day for the rest of my life? She seems per­fectly at home in the setting.

Tomor­row is an evening off. A break from the makeup removal at nearly 10 p.m., the rehash­ing of “Did you hear when Elizabeth’s micro­phone stopped work­ing dur­ing her duet with Drake?” and whose fluff­ing of lines caused tears (never let them see you sweat, I advise). Then another per­for­mance on Fri­day night, and another on Sat­ur­day, then never to be seen again.

I’ve learned sev­eral things from the whole process of “Drake: the Musi­cal.” One, boys at this age are nice. They’re pre­sentable and tal­ented and cute, and I wish Avery had more of a chance to know them. Two, I should not pay too much atten­tion to moan­ing and com­plain­ing and pre­dic­tions of dis­as­ter, because these chil­dren work too hard at every­thing for any one thing not to be done well, and this was truly a thing for them to be proud of.

Most impor­tant, I’ve learned that I will greatly miss the late-afternoon strolls across the orna­men­tal bridge to the boys’ school as the sun sets, with one, two or three girls at my side, not quite ready to walk them­selves across the Thames to rehearsal. There are so many land­mark “last times” I never thought to notice: the last time I was asked to chap­er­one a school trip? Didn’t make a note of it. The last time Avery reached out nat­u­rally to hold my hand cross­ing a street? The last time I read out loud to her before she went to sleep? What WAS I pay­ing atten­tion to that these things passed by with­out a whimper?

But I will miss these walks to rehearsal, because the next time she has to go across the river for some­thing with her friends, she’ll undoubt­edly go on her own, and the delight­ful con­ver­sa­tion about fash­ion, makeup, who likes who, even the dreaded moan­ing about home­work, will all hap­pen like that tree in the for­est. Will any of it hap­pen if I’m not there to listen?

The short answer is, yes. The cliche that chil­dren only get more won­der­ful as they get older is true, which is meant to make up for the fact that you spend more and more time with­out them, and the times you hold their hands are fewer and far­ther between. The fact is, the lit­tle ver­sions of Avery from the past that she’s left behind in my mem­ory are just as pow­er­ful as her present self: they’re sepia, fuzzy, little-girl ver­sions of the bright blue, vel­vet Drake-costumed girl I see today. I trea­sure them all.

So onward and upward to final per­for­mances of “Drake.” I hope I live to see “Joe Biden: the Musi­cal.” In the mean­time, Avery has a call-back audi­tion tomor­row after­noon for, get this, an anti-alcohol pub­lic adver­tise­ment. Talk about grow­ing up quickly! It’s odd when your child acts for a com­mer­cial dis­cour­ag­ing her against doing some­thing it had not, so far, occurred to her to do. The per­fect anti­dote to all those mugs of ale aboard the Golden Hinde with Frankie! Now I can rest easy. And we can all come home to:

Home­made Tomato Soup
(serves 8)

2 tbsps olive oil
1 tbsp but­ter
6 cloves gar­lic, roughly chopped
1 white onion, roughly chopped
2 pounds fresh plum toma­toes, quar­tered
3 cups chicken stock
hand­ful fresh rose­mary stalks, leaves removed and roughly chopped
1/2 cup sin­gle (light) cream

zest of 1 lemon
1/2 cup sour cream
fresh ground black pepper

Prep is sim­plic­ity itself. Heat olive oil and but­ter in a large saucepan and add gar­lic and onion to wilt slightly. Add toma­toes and stock and rose­mary, sim­mer for 1/2 hour or until toma­toes soft. Puree with a hand blender and put through a sieve into another saucepan. Add light cream. When serv­ing, sprin­kle each bowl with a bit of lemon zest, a dol­lop of sour cream and a grind of pep­per. Done, dusted, PERFECT.

*******

There is noth­ing more per­fect than this soup. Inex­pen­sive beyond belief, almost effort­less, ele­gant and com­fort­ing. With a grilled-cheese sand­wich, this is the per­fect after-Drake sup­per. With a mug of ale, of course. Hip, hip, hooray!