girl­friends, girlfriends

Din­ner tonight: a mas­ter­piece of neces­si­ty and duty. Sigh. Cleaned out freez­er and thawed some salmon: check. Used up the lemon sole in the fridge: check. Res­ur­rect­ed some slight­ly iffy beet­roots and roast­ed them till they were caramel­ly and ready for a bal­sam­ic vine­gar glaze: check. Apple­sauce for Avery to accom­pa­ny the pota­to pan­cakes, using up two elder­ly apples: check.

Edi­ble, yes. Cred­it crunchy, yes. Inspir­ing? Sor­ry, no. I’m ashamed to say it, but it’s true. I sup­pose there are cooks out there, moth­ers and fathers out there, who nev­er serve an unin­spired meal that gets eat­en with­out notice­able enthu­si­asm in about 11 min­utes. But I can­not reach such heights.

Ah well, last night was more than inspired (maybe I used up my quo­ta). My dar­ling friend Foxi Rosie ful­filled her promise to vis­it us from Dorset and appeared last night like a fairy god­moth­er, bear­ing stuffed Med­jool dates, fab­u­lous wine, and a ver­i­ta­ble trea­sure trove of cheeses from Har­rods: oh my! We fed her creamy red pep­per soup with a pesto-creme fraiche driz­zle, pier­rade of sir­loin and duck, a crunchy home­made piz­za crust with olive oil and gar­lic, fresh Wye Val­ley aspara­gus roast­ed with rape­seed oil, and a sum­mer fruits sal­ad. We ate out­side in the fresh sum­mery air with can­dles and loads of laugh­ter, jokes from our writ­ing sem­i­nar in Devon and the result­ing reunion in Here­ford! Silli­ness from Avery with a dement­ed IQ test, John’s sto­ries about Gold­man inter­views and crazy busi­ness trip adven­tures. The more time I spend with Rosie the more I rec­og­nize one fun­da­men­tal fact: the laugh­ter fol­lows her. From room to room, from week­end to week­end, from email to email. She is one of life’s givers, one of the tru­ly gen­er­ous. How lucky we are to have her in our lives!

We sat under a near­ly full moon, remind­ing me of the time when I first met her, in Devon in Octo­ber, in that weath­er that we all love so much: whether ear­ly autumn or ear­ly sum­mer. Fresh evening air, encour­ag­ing us to stay out of doors as long as we can, lin­ger­ing over can­dles and conversation.

Here is Rosie in a nut­shell. She looked at the plat­ters of sir­loin and duck that I had pre­pared, admit­ted­ly a bit of an obses­sive-com­pul­sive activ­i­ty, requir­ing as it does com­plete trim­ming of all meat to absolute per­fec­tion, since the bites have noth­ing to hide behind: they are just on their own, grilled alone. “Who on earth pre­pared all this, Kris­ten, did you ask your butch­er to do it?” “No, of course, I did it myself,” I said, smil­ing, and how did she respond? Not with “oh, what a pain,” or “how on earth long did it take you to do?” No, Rosie said gen­tly, “It’s about the giv­ing, isn’t it?” One can­not invent an atti­tude like that; it flows from her heart. I think often about what a won­der­ful qual­i­ty this would be in a par­ent: no resent­ment, no cal­cu­lat­ing how much has been done and for whom. Just gen­eros­i­ty. Her lucky daughter!

It was lucky I had some­thing to aspire to, because our din­ner with Rosie came on the heels of my mis­er­able vis­it to the vet with poor, neu­rot­ic, itchy Wim­sey. I had hoped his need for month­ly injec­tions of cor­ti­sone (and their atten­dant enor­mous bills!) had been out­grown, but no, he’s got cra­zier and cra­zier in the last weeks or so. So off I went, stuff­ing him in his car­ri­er and throw­ing its strap over my long-suf­fer­ing shoul­der. As enor­mous as he is, his cries are par­tic­u­lar­ly heart-rend­ing: high-pitched and repet­i­tive, so every per­son who passed me on the pave­ment gave me a dirty look. We arrived, he had his injec­tion, I paid up. In the wait­ing room was a lady with a lit­tle girl by the hand, ready to take their young dog home. “I feel so guilty,” the moth­er said. “Cas­tra­tion; it’s so inva­sive, isn’t it?” The vet’s assis­tant said imper­turbably, “It’s much less inva­sive than female cas­tra­tion, that’s cer­tain.” The moth­er asked, “When can we expect him to feel less… desire?” “It real­ly depends on the ani­mal,” said the assis­tant, refus­ing to be drawn, and the moth­er caved. “I’ll be in with my hus­band, soon.”

Let’s see: a bit of a food update: the tuna I told you about, with the com­plex mari­nade? EVEN BET­TER COLD. Such a sur­prise. I myself do not go crazy over left­over cold salmon. I eat it under duress, a sort of “don’t want to waste it, don’t want to over­cook it by reheat­ing” pres­sure. But the tuna? I would glad­ly make it next time only to CHILL it for serv­ing. Some­thing to think about.

I’m huge­ly proud of my main accom­plish­ment this week, oth­er than mere­ly the busi­ness of liv­ing: I final­ly got caught up on putting all the last year’s pho­tos into albums. I just know, or can only hope, that a vis­it from John’s moth­er is in the off­ing, and one of the dear lady’s favorite ear­ly-morn­ing games is to sit on the floor with a cup of cof­fee and go through pho­to albums. Let no one, NO ONE, take a pho­to between now and her next vis­it! I am CAUGHT UP. Here’s a moral conun­drum: why do I feel so much more guilty over NOT doing it than I feel sat­is­fied with HAV­ING done it? That’s a char­ac­ter flaw, I’m sure.

What would I, indeed, do with­out my girl­friends? I would have thought that with John home full­time I did­n’t need them so much, but that’s far from the truth. As he’s clos­et­ed with the mys­te­ri­ous busi­ness of our finances for stay­ing here, our tax­es in both coun­tries, our invest­ments and oth­er issues of which I know sore­ly lit­tle, I do find that my sweet friends make for enor­mous fun, great sound­ing boards for recipe and chap­ter ideas, huge com­fort in those moments when one’s han­dling of one’s child is a mat­ter of con­cern and confusion.

Tomor­row I shall take a tube to Vic­to­ria sta­tion, there to meet up with my friend Jo from Oxford, thence to board a train for Dul­wich, to spend some time with dear Wal­ter Sick­ert at the art gallery there. I know we will have a mar­vel­lous time, but even more to the point, I’ll have time with Jo, a per­son of bound­less good ener­gy, a laugh that is always ready to erupt, and end­less time to lis­ten to what­ev­er ails me. It’s a nice reci­procity, Jo and me: nev­er judg­men­tal, always intrigued by the choic­es, the messi­ness, the myr­i­ad con­fu­sion of adult life, no mat­ter how much time we spend at being adults. And she tries my recipes! Bless her.

Yes­ter­day I went to pick up Avery at school and there was her friend Emi­ly, ready to walk home with us. The whole pick­up rou­tine, on which I dote so pathet­i­cal­ly, is a bit of a cha­rade these days. Some­thing tells me that two girls who can walk TO school on their own are prob­a­bly per­fect­ly capa­ble of walk­ing FROM school on their own, but that crown­ing moment of 3:20, 3:30, 4 p.m., what­ev­er it is at a par­tic­u­lar school, is so ingrained in me by now that I can’t quite let it go. yet. So it was that I turned up yes­ter­day, heard a bit of per­fect­ly jus­ti­fi­able moan­ing about what­ev­er evil exams had tak­en place on that day, and then we saw Emi­ly’s moth­er Annie, ges­tur­ing from across the road. “Want a ride?”

We jumped in (an orange Mini just like ours, only cool­ly, authen­ti­cal­ly vin­tage) and crawled away through traf­fic. Through it all, I told her about John’s expe­ri­ence at the Bur­sary din­ner the night before. Bur­saries, in Eng­land, are as schol­ar­ships in Amer­i­ca: mon­ey for eco­nom­i­cal­ly dis­ad­van­taged school chil­dren. We had hoped to con­tribute. “Guess how much they want­ed us to give?” I asked rhetor­i­cal­ly, and Annie put her hand over her mouth, at the red light. “I knew it…” “A girl’s entire tuition for the whole SEV­EN YEARS of her edu­ca­tion!” I squealed. “And did John say, ‘We’re already doing that, for our own daugh­ter’?” she asked, laugh­ing. “Pret­ty much.”

How on earth could any­one donate so much? But it’s cer­tain­ly food for thought, how to con­tribute what we can, to give anoth­er girl the oppor­tu­ni­ty Avery has at this mar­vel­lous school. Hav­ing a laugh with Annie, and the girls, in the tiny con­fines of that beloved car, made me smile.

Then today with Sara, Avery’s friend Mel­lie’s mum, who was tak­ing her turn at the school swim­ming pool to sit at recep­tion. It’s such a cozy task: you get to greet all the girls as they come in, and more often than girls, the Old Girls from the school and all their rela­tions, each of whom, believe it or not, has a life pass to the pool as long as the child actu­al­ly grad­u­ates from the school. I could­n’t resist sit­ting for far too long with Sara, when I meant just to drop Avery and Emi­ly off. Sara has four girls under 12, and as such is sur­prised by, flum­moxed by, noth­ing. And every­thing. She’s a hilar­i­ous com­bi­na­tion, or con­tra­dic­tion, of com­plete com­pe­tence and a joy­ful accep­tance of how much she can­not, sim­ply can­not, get done. “I was just in the mid­dle of remem­ber­ing that I had for­got­ten the Fifth Year moth­ers’ tea for Izzy, when I got a call ask­ing me how Recep­tion Duty had gone at Hen­ny’s school, which I’d also for­got­ten!” And yet her daugh­ter in Avery’s year, Mel­lie, is a paragon of delight­ful­ness, respon­si­bil­i­ty, matu­ri­ty. As you’d have to be, the eldest of four. I’ll nev­er for­get their tini­est sleep­ing on a pile of coats, at the Christ­mas Fair, under my feet.

Sara and I gos­siped about the class, the school, and she was full of career advice for me. “Why not hire your­self out plan­ning fam­i­ly menus, a month at a time? With lists of ingre­di­ents, and sug­ges­tions for veg­e­tar­i­an options? Why not hire your­self out cook­ing brunch­es for eight?” I sup­pose the ener­gy that gets you four daugh­ters also trans­lates into all sorts of oth­er ener­gy! She makes me laugh. I had to drag myself away to pre­pare my bor­ing din­ner, I can tell you.

And how about the joys of fam­i­ly? My dear par­ents, and musi­cal broth­er, have con­spired to bring my child­hood back to me. An enor­mous­ly heavy box of my piano sheet music has arrived, bring­ing back count­less dear mem­o­ries to me. How my moth­er played: Chopin, Schu­mann, Rach­mani­noff. How my father played, every song with the cadence of a church hymn. My broth­er’s effort­less, genet­ic genius. I was noth­ing but a ded­i­cat­ed prac­ticer, but I did prac­tice. And now look­ing through the music: “Show Tunes From Today’s Favorites” (“today” being 1973), I’m vis­it­ed with an enor­mous nos­tal­gia. How I adored being able to play the theme from “Bri­an’s Song” (sob), or “Aun­tie Mame” (was­n’t that Bar­bra Streisand?). I can pic­ture the books, in their orig­i­nal home under the vel­vet-cov­ered piano stool. Now they are here in my Lon­don kitchen and I am hav­ing the time of my life, tak­ing a moment while pas­ta is boil­ing or Avery’s at a break study­ing French verbs with me, to play a piece or two. Thanks, you guys at home. What a treat.

Tomor­row will bring a new adven­ture: dear friends have giv­en us bal­let tick­ets to the Roy­al Opera House, and we’re send­ing Avery alone with her friend Lille, who has actu­al­ly danced there, to attend, just the two of them. Lille’s moth­er has arranged a plate of sand­wich­es at the bar, for them to munch on dur­ing the inter­val. We must fig­ure out where to meet, when. Per­haps give them a mobile phone to check in? I’m a bit ner­vous, but these sorts of mile­stones need to hap­pen. I’ll let you know how it goes…