Tis the sea­son when every evening, the three of us con­vene to ask, “What do you have on for tomor­row?”  There has been plenty to do, start­ing with a whole series of musi­cal events at Avery’s school.

For these, I arm myself with a hand­ful of tis­sues, since noth­ing brings wit­less tears to my eyes quite like the sound of girls’ voices, singing in heav­enly imper­fec­tion.  There was the “Singing Tea,” a phrase that makes my Amer­i­can rela­tions laugh.  What on earth?  How does a tea sing?  British peo­ple will under­stand that it means a con­cert of the girls who take singing lessons at school, pre­ceded by a tea.  That is, a period of stand­ing around clutch­ing cups of tea and watch­ing the girls them­selves wolf down untold pieces of cake, hav­ing skipped lunch in order to rehearse.

Sand­wiched as she was between Hay­den and Bach, Mozart and Brahms, Avery’s piece was more funny than even it nor­mally is.  “Poi­son­ing Pigeons in the Park,” of course, by the incom­pa­ra­ble Amer­i­can math­e­mati­cian and song­writer Tom Lehrer.  “My heart will be quick­enin’, with each drop of strych­nine…”  Per­fect for our intensely satir­i­cal daughter.

Then we were onto the Junior Choir singing “Cry Me a River” at the Soiree Musi­cale.  They were heav­enly.  I needed my tissues.

And then there was the week-long adven­ture of the much-anticipated school musi­cal, “Sweet Charity.”

The musi­cal was sub­lime: the dancers pro­fes­sion­ally in time with one another, the lead charm­ing, and the ensem­ble full of crazy energy.  Granted, the plot which cen­ters on “dance hall host­ess” bemoan­ing the loss of their inno­cence while they solicit clients and drink and smoke, is not one I would nat­u­rally have cho­sen for a girls’ school whose cast runs the gamut from 12–18.  But as a friend of mind pointed out, maybe it was just this sort of dar­ing sub­ject mat­ter that grabbed the inter­est of the older girls.  At one point Avery was singing and danc­ing right in front, prac­ti­cally in the laps of the audi­ence, so we fatu­ously chose those seats every evening.  It was such fun.

Finally there was the Christ­mas Carol Ser­vice in the Hall, a room of such ele­gant pro­por­tions that I always feel I’m in a Harry Pot­ter movie.

My mother asked if the girls sang tra­di­tional car­ols, and I replied, “Yes, so tra­di­tional that they sing them in LATIN.”  Sim­ply heart­break­ingly beau­ti­ful, all of them in their black con­cert clothes, shin­ing faces illu­mi­nated by hand-held lights, every one of them gor­geous in her own way.  On the brink of everything.

On top of all these events, we’ve been attend­ing far more than our share of school Christ­mas Fairs, get­ting ideas for our own Fair in a year’s time, for which John is totally respon­si­ble!  I think it is won­der­ful that a girls’ school is happy to have a father in charge.  A good exam­ple to the girls for what a hus­band and dad can be.  And nat­u­rally, we’ve been dec­o­rat­ing our own house, too.

There is of course the tree itself.

It is lovely, but I am bemoan­ing a bit the new trend in trees: some­one has bred one that doesn’t drop its nee­dles but also doesn’t smell like a Christ­mas tree.  This is our fate, this sea­son.  I have hopes for a smelly tree in Con­necti­cut.  The beau­ties of shop­ping for Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions in Eng­land far out­weigh a non-fragrant tree, though.  With our lovely friends Vin­cent and Peter we went strolling (or rather push­ing our way through chok­ing crowds) down Colum­bia Road in the East End.  What an expe­ri­ence!  We looked up at one point and saw this fellow.

Avery is offi­cially in love with the East End: Shored­itch, Hack­ney and Beth­nal Green, not the least for the mes­sages the res­i­dents leave for their read­ing public.

I espe­cially like this last one for the very expres­sive size of the font.  It’s as though the writer begins by feel­ing ter­ri­bly emphatic and annoyed with his neigh­bors, then begins to lose steam, and finally at the end seems to regret being so angry.

We repaired to Vin­cent and Peter’s cozy home where they plied us with var­i­ous tarts and quiches, among them this beauty made with red onions, black olives and sar­dines (photo cour­tesy of Avery).

And then we came home with five gor­geous (if lethally prickly) wreaths made of real holly, as only the Eng­lish can do.  They adorn the back win­dows of the kitchen.

Avery has, of course, set up her annual ice-skating pond with its lead skaters and sled­ders, giv­ing strict instruc­tions to any­one who vis­its to wash hands after touch­ing!  This year saw the addi­tion of some amaz­ing “Insta-Snow”, which works by sprin­kling water on a very tiny amount of pow­der, caus­ing it to fluff up many times its orig­i­nal size!

To keep up our strength dur­ing all these fes­tiv­i­ties, on the advice of my cook­ing friend Caz, I made these:

Sophie Grigson’s Christ­mas Sprouts

(serves 6–8 as a side dish)

675 g brus­sels sprouts

100 g smoked duck breast or bacon, cut into strip

50 g toasted chopped hazelnuts

15 g butter

1 tbsp sun­flower oil

300 ml dou­ble cream

2 tsp turmeric

dash of lemon juice

4 tbsp breadcrumbs

3 tbsp finely grated parmesan

3–4 tbsp chopped parsley

Trim the sprouts of their outer, tough leaves.  Place the sprouts into a saucepan of sim­mer­ing salted water and cook for 4–5 min­utes, until almost, but not quite, cooked. Drain thor­oughly, allow to cool slightly, then cut in half.

Place the but­ter and oil into a wide fry­ing pan over a medium heat. Add the bacon lar­dons and almonds and sauté for 3–4 min­utes, until lightly browned.

Add the sprouts and sauté for a fur­ther 2–3 min­utes, stir­ring constantly.

Add the cream and bring the mix­ture to the boil. Boil for 2–4 min­utes, until the cream has reduced to a rich sauce. Sea­son to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Remove from the heat, add the lemon juice and spoon into an oven­proof gratin dish.

Mix the bread­crumbs and parme­san cheese together in a bowl, then sprin­kle evenly over the top of the sprout mixture.

Place into the oven and bake for 18–20 min­utes, until the top is golden.

I am not a mas­sive fan of sprouts but even I really liked these.  Go easy on the bread­crumbs as you want the end result to be quite creamy.

One of John’s and my hol­i­day out­ings was a nearly com­plete bust, so let me pass on my intel­li­gence.  “Taste of Christ­mas” sounded so won­der­ful!  We have always loved “Taste of Lon­don,” a food fair at which lots of top restau­rants turn up to serve tiny por­tions of their sig­na­ture dishes.  Lovely chance to wan­der through Regent’s Park — even in the rain, as it was in June! — and eat sump­tu­ously, fac­ing far too many choices, and walk­ing away feel­ing stuffed and gluttonous.

I didn’t read the small print on “Taste of Christ­mas,” which turned out to be at the ExCel con­fer­ence cen­ter — depress­ing! — over an hour’s drive to the Dock­lands, in short, the area far, FAR East where the Olympics are going to take place!  You can imag­ine how far one must go to find land in Lon­don on which to build giant sta­di­ums.  That’s how far we drove.  And upon arrival, we dis­cov­ered only SIX restau­rants were tak­ing part and the rest was a mish­mash of unat­trac­tive Christ­mas orna­ments and mostly-useless kitchen imple­ments.  Once there, how­ever, we tried to have fun, and sam­pled all the food there was, plus we found a very excit­ing sil­i­con mat that one can place directly on the burner of an Aga stove and fry things!  Like these pep­pers, stuffed with goat’s cheese.

The only other last­ing good thing from the dis­mal fair in the mid­dle of nowhere was this salmon dish from Rhodes W1, which I’ve repli­cated as best as my taste buds can accomplish.

Olive-oil-Poached and Smoked Salmon Ter­rine with Sweet Lemon Dress­ing and Microherbs

(serves 6 as a starter)

2 cups olive oil

300 g/10.5 ounces fresh salmon fillet

200g/7 ounces cream cheese

200g/7 ounces creme fraiche

1 tsp capers

hand­ful baby cress

hand­ful baby shiso (Japan­ese coriander)

hand­ful chives

hand­ful fresh tar­ragon leaves

juice of 1/2 lemon

pinch salt

300g/10.5 ounces smoked salmon

dress­ing:

1/4 extra-virgin olive oil

juice and zest of 1/2 lemon

1 tsp clear honey

fresh ground black pepper

Bring the cups of olive oil to what can only be called a “shim­mer”.  It’s short of the tem­per­a­ture for fry­ing, but a piece of bread­crumb will move about if you drop it in.  Care­fully lower in the salmon fil­lets and cook at this tem­per­a­ture for three min­utes, then care­fully turn the fil­lets over and cook for another 3–4 min­utes until JUST cooked through.  Remove and drain on paper towels.

In a food proces­sor, com­bine the poached salmon, the cream cheese, creme fraiche, capers, HALF the quan­tity of all the herbs (reserve the other half for gar­nish­ing), the lemon juice and sea­son­ings.  Pulse until well com­bined but not a total mush.  Taste for sea­son­ings and add salt if needed.

Com­bine dress­ing ingre­di­ents and set aside.

At this point, you may decide if you’d like to serve this dish as a sit-down starter or as a fin­ger food.  If as a starter, choose a plat­ter on which you’d like to serve the ter­rine and place a piece of plas­tic wrap twice as big as the plat­ter in the cen­ter of it.  In as close as you can come to a rec­tan­gle that’s about half the size of a piece of typ­ing paper, place a layer of smoked salmon slices on the plas­tic.  Spread a layer of the poached salmon mix­ture on top.  Cover with another layer of smoked salmon, another layer of mousse, and fin­ish with a top layer of smoked salmon.  Cover with the extra plas­tic wrap and refrig­er­ate for at least four hours, or overnight. Then unwrap the ter­rine and lay it on a cut­ting board.  Care­fully, with a ser­rated knife, saw the ter­rine into per­fect strips about an inch wide.  This recipe should yield 8 strips.  Arrange on the serv­ing plat­ter.  Sprin­kle the reserved herbs over and driz­zle with dressing.

If on the other hand you’d like to serve the dish as a fin­ger food, sim­ply spoon a bit of the mousse on a baguette slice, top with a bit of smoked salmon and a sprin­kle of herbs, and driz­zle dress­ing over each portion.

Our won­der­ful neigh­bors Suzanne and John came to share this with us, to inves­ti­gate all the Christ­mas dec­o­ra­tions, and most sur­pris­ingly, to offer to give our tree a sec­ond home when we leave next week!  How won­der­ful to recy­cle our own tree, and not into pulp, but into a sec­ond family’s celebration.

Finally, as a glo­ri­ous, hard-won Christ­mas gift to myself, today I man­aged to tri­umph over a so-far impos­si­ble bell-ringing chal­lenge.  You’ve heard me rant on about “Plain Hunt on Five” which sim­ply means a method where all the bells change their order in a pre-ordained pat­tern.  Until now I absolutely could not see the pat­tern!  No mat­ter how many dif­fer­ent ways were offered to explain it, I could not see it.

Until this morn­ing!  I have had a week’s enforced absence from the Tower after pulling a mus­cle in my shoul­der, and the chal­lenges of ring­ing had assumed epic pro­por­tions, as any chal­lenge does when one is not allowed to address it!  But today all the pieces fell into place.  My teacher handed me the rope to the heav­i­est bell, the Tenor, and said, “Right, cover on Plain Hunt.  Backstroke/handstroke over the five, then the three, then the one, then the two, then the four, then all over again till we say stop.”

And it clicked!  We were ring­ing for a spe­cial ser­vice involv­ing the parish chil­dren, called “Christ­in­gle” ser­vice where the chil­dren all carry lighted can­dles tucked into oranges and walk up the cen­tral aisle.  So we had an audi­ence of par­ents, kneel­ing with their chil­dren, point­ing to the ropes and to the com­puter mon­i­tor mounted on the wall, show­ing the bells in the bel­fry, swing­ing to and fro.  “That’s what’s mak­ing the sounds!” par­ents explained.  And I was able to keep my place, not per­fectly mind you, but to keep it, and to take my place in the so-familiar tune of Plain Hunt.  Onward and upward straight after­ward, to another method called Grand­sire Dou­bles, and I could keep my place there too.

“You’ll be really help­ful to us now,” said one very advanced ringer who’s never spo­ken to me before.  “Now we can ring a lot of meth­ods we can’t ring if we don’t have 6 or 8 proper ringers.”  Joy!  I am a proper ringer now, or at least approach­ing one.  A lovely Christ­mas gift for me.  I hope very much your hol­i­day prepa­ra­tions are includ­ing some happy-making moments for you, too.

Here I sit in a stream of sun­shine com­ing through what are called the “font win­dows” of my bell-ringing church, grin­ning idi­ot­i­cally at any­one who walks in the door and might want to buy char­ity Christ­mas cards from me.  So far there are no tak­ers on this lovely late Novem­ber afternoon.

Mostly what I am doing is recu­per­at­ing from our Thanks­giv­ing rev­el­ries.  I think every fork, knife and spoon, every roast­ing tray, plat­ter and spat­ula, every pitcher, glass and plate, was pressed into ser­vice!  How deli­cious were the savoury fla­vors of gar­lic, sage, ham and turkey, the lofty spoons­ful of pota­toes cooked with sharp Ched­dar and shal­lots, the spinach with cel­ery and Gruyere.

 Is there any mar­riage more felic­i­tous than that of but­tery car­rots with Demarara sugar and black pepper?

I had for­got­ten the clear, tangy delight of cran­ber­ries sim­mered in cin­na­mony orange juice.

 Of course I can never look at cran­ber­ries with­out think­ing of my par­ents’ first mar­ried Thanks­giv­ing.  In my fam­ily, there is noth­ing more mem­o­rable than a mem­ory of some­one else’s mem­ory, and the story of my father’s adven­ture with cran­ber­ries is leg­end.  “These don’t seem to be mov­ing in this blender,” he told my mother.  [What cran­ber­ries were doing in a blender in any case is a mys­tery to me.]  “Stir them up a bit and see what hap­pens,” she advised, not think­ing to add, “Turn the blender off first.”  They always claimed that when they moved house years later, they were still find­ing bits of mac­er­ated cran­berry behind the curtains.

That was the same ill-fated Thanks­giv­ing when my mother’s sleeve caught on her bath­room shelf full of per­fumes brought back from a sum­mer in Europe.  What a fra­grant Thanks­giv­ing it must have been, I imag­ine now.

 And then, at the last minute when their guests were arriv­ing, my father pulled the turkey out of the oven and tipped the cook­ing fat right back inside, watch­ing in dis­may as it caught on smoky fire!  I could only imag­ine, last night, peer­ing anx­iously at my own bird.

My poor par­ents, strug­gling through a new­ly­wed hol­i­day full of dis­as­ter upon dis­as­ter.   What I love about fam­ily sto­ries is how quickly they turn from tragedy to com­edy, usu­ally within an hour or two.  How happy they must have been when the last guests left and they could close the door behind them and begin turn­ing the day into a legend.

Our own turkey-cooking yes­ter­day was its usual unsci­en­tific, “let’s try this and see what hap­pens” fiasco.  Brin­ing in herbs and kosher salt and pep­per­corns, of course.

The night before, as the best of hus­bands will do on such occa­sions, John sent me a link to a story about turn­ing my expected four-hour cook­ing time into two.  Why this would be appeal­ing I do not know, since the whole day is spent in the kitchen any­way.  The rev­o­lu­tion­ary method involved flip­ping the poor bird over in all its boil­ing cook­ing liq­uid (“ow, that went right through my SOCK!” John moaned at one mem­o­rable moment) sev­eral times, which was unduly stress­ful.  Out came the ther­mome­ter.  “It’s cook­ing way too fast, turn down the heat!”  Then another stab.  “Hang on, now it’s cold inside.”

Sigh.

Oven turned up, oven down, turkey in, turkey out, cov­ered in foil, uncov­ered in order that we could snatch away bits of crisp skin to “test it.”

And then as I was sprin­kling “sugar” on my car­rots to caramelise them, it was only in the nick of time that I noticed my “sugar” was in fact… cous­cous. (It prob­a­bly would have been a great dish, car­rots and cous­cous, but not at that moment.)

In short, it was a typ­i­cal Thanks­giv­ing afternoon.

 In years past, how­ever happy our Thanks­giv­ings have been here in our adopted home­land, I have always felt a bit melan­choly, a bit home­sick for the hol­i­days of child­hood when chil­dren and guests were hang­ing around all day, watch­ing foot­ball and hav­ing a day off usual activ­i­ties.   It seemed sad to me, the first few years we were here, to have the day quite and alone while child and hus­band were at school and work, to have the din­ner at night just like any ordi­nary din­ner party.

Sud­denly last night, though, I looked around at my beloved guests – old friends and new – and real­ized that this is the new nor­mal.  I dote on the moment when Avery and her friends beat a tat­too on the front door, rush­ing in with cold cheeks, demand­ing snacks, then set­tling down to home­work before din­ner.  I really love see­ing my guests come in from the windy dark­ness, bear­ing pies and flow­ers and wine, every­one excited to have “a real Amer­i­can Thanks­giv­ing.”  Some­how every year we man­age to have peo­ple round for whom it’s their first Thanks­giv­ing, and this makes every­thing excit­ing and festive.

The girls at the far end of the table – the teenage end – read aloud a bless­ing I had con­cocted from read­ing var­i­ous friends’ lovely mes­sages about their holidays.

“We wel­come you here to our Amer­i­can hol­i­day.  We are thank­ful for Thanks­giv­ing — a time to pause and reflect on the joys and sor­rows that a full life con­tains, to appre­ci­ate the gifts of love and life, to cher­ish the mem­ory of those who are not present, to rec­og­nize our absolute grat­i­tude to friends and fam­ily who ARE present.  Today we think of the love we feel for those clos­est to us, and we hold dear all our hopes for the future and for rec­on­cil­i­a­tions to come. Thank you, Thanksgiving.”

We explained to our Eng­lish guests that it had been peo­ple just like them who bravely climbed on the Mayflower to endure the hideous jour­ney to the New World and the win­ter of sick­ness to come, dur­ing which half their num­ber died.  “They left Eng­land seek­ing greater reli­gious per­se­cu­tion than was avail­able at home,” John dead­panned, para­phras­ing Gar­ri­son Keil­lor.  It is hard to believe that our exces­sively jolly, fes­tive hol­i­day has any roots in despair and hunger.

I now feel that the sense of won­der, of appre­ci­a­tion for our Amer­i­can tra­di­tions, the grate­ful con­sump­tion of my lov­ingly pre­pared dishes, is the best Thanks­giv­ing we could ask for.  It has a dif­fer­ent qual­ity from the famil­iar child­hood hol­i­days full of fam­ily faces we saw every year on that day.  Every year here, in what have become our real lives, there is a feel­ing of new­ness to the splen­dour of the occasion.

Sit­ting here in the peace­ful church, sell­ing Christ­mas cards to absolutely no one, gaz­ing on my beloved bellcham­ber and antic­i­pat­ing the hard work that tomorrow’s prac­tice will bring, the friendly ban­ter among us as we pull our ropes in the blink­ing sun­shine com­ing through the win­dows, I am content.

Turkey Meat­ball Soup

(feeds the multitudes)

1 turkey car­cass, plus the veg­eta­bles that roasted with it in the tin

2 lbs/1 kilo ground turkey (turkey mince)

enough breadcrumb/milk mix­ture to make the meat­balls JUST stick together — per­haps 3/4 cup of each

pinch onion powder

pinch gar­lic powder

pinch dried parsley

pinch salt

4 car­rots, sliced

4 stalks cel­ery, sliced

1 cup tiny pasta stars, already cooked

Sim­mer turkey car­cass in enough cold water to cover him for as long as you can, sev­eral hours at least.  Poke at the car­cass to remove the meat from the bones when­ever you pass by.

Pass the turkey broth through a sieve into a stock pot (this is an impor­tant step: one year I poured it RIGHT DOWN THE DRAIN).

Mix the turkey mince with the milk, bread­crumbs and herbs until all is thor­oughly mixed.  Bring turkey broth to a high sim­mer and form golf-ball-sized meat­balls to drop into it, one by one.  When they float to the sur­face, add the sliced car­rots and cel­ery and sim­mer for 20 min­utes.  Add the cooked pasta and ENJOY.

Happy Thanks­giv­ing!

How wretched of me to let so much time go by with­out writ­ing.  But I am sadly sub­ject to a tummy com­plaint that hits me now and then — usu­ally when there’s some­thing I can’t “stom­ach” or I have a lot to “digest” or I’m try­ing to trust my “gut” instincts about some­thing.  In other words, every once in awhile, some sig­nif­i­cant worry that floats through my life joins forces with a coin­ci­den­tal bug or virus — that kind other peo­ple are too tough to suc­cumb to — and decides to take up res­i­dence in my tummy and make me mis­er­able.  Some­times it lasts a very long time indeed.  This time was only a week.  But what an unhappy week it was, to be sure.

All I could do in the way of phys­i­cal activ­ity was to ride my bike every day, gen­tly, with John.  The views of our bike path along the river were restorative.

It has been a beau­ti­ful autumn here in Lon­don, with unusu­ally bright, beau­ti­ful leafy color.  We often wish we were back in New Eng­land for the tra­di­tional incan­des­cent foliage, but this year in real Eng­land, we could not complain.

Over the week­end, though, giant Hoover­ing trucks trun­dled down the road into the vil­lage, which had been cov­ered with ankle-deep piles of orange leaves, and sucked them all up.  The side­walks are bare now, wait­ing for the last few crunchy bits to fall from the trees.  The wind, too, has changed from a brac­ing fresh­ness to a lash­ing damp­ness that turns hands on bicy­cle han­dle­bars into red icy paws.

The best thing for icy paws is hot soup.

Broc­coli Soup With Nut­meg and Gorgonzola

(serves 6)

2 tbsps butter

4 cloves garlic

1 large shallot

2 heads broc­coli, sep­a­rated into florets

pinch fresh nutmeg

chicken stock nearly to cover (per­haps 4 cups)

3 tbsps Gor­gonzola or other creamy blue cheese

3 tbsps creme fraiche

sea salt and lots of fresh black pepper

In a heavy saucepan, melt but­ter and add gar­lic, shal­lots and broc­coli, sprin­kle the nut­meg over and stir to coat every­thing in the but­ter.  Pour in enough chicken stock nearly to cover, but not quite.  You do not want the soup to become water.  Sim­mer for 20 min­utes, stir­ring occa­sion­ally to make sure you get all the broc­coli under the liq­uid.  When broc­coli is soft, remove from heat and puree with hand blender.  Add cheese and creme fraiche, place back on heat and stir until cheese is melted.  Sea­son, being sure to add plenty of black pep­per till soup is slightly spicy.  Serve hot.

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

My paws have been par­tic­u­larly occu­pied with adven­tures in bell-ringing!  This crazy activ­ity of mine — half sport, half musi­cal instru­ment — has been both a joy and a curse.  Some­times, as I wake up on a Sun­day morn­ing to find some­thing decent to wear, hop on my bike and turn up at my dear St Margaret’s to spend an hour pulling ropes and exhaust­ing myself, I think, “Why on earth am I putting myself through this?  I could be sit­ting qui­etly with Hello! mag­a­zine, or even sleeping.”

The rea­son I per­se­vere is partly pure stub­born­ness!  I can’t bear the thought of hav­ing put all this effort into learn­ing the craft only to drop it.  This week is the six-month anniver­sary of my first les­son, and it has taken just this long for me to feel a true mem­ber of the com­mu­nity.  Last week eight of us gath­ered to ring for a spe­cial Even­song, cel­e­brat­ing a local com­poser who had been awarded one of Eng­lish Heritage’s “blue plaques.”  The church itself was mag­i­cal in the crisp darkness.

So was the bellcham­ber, with my beloved teacher Howard bring­ing down the “spi­der” that holds all the ropes.

The band gath­ered around — me, plus seven men, muf­flers wound round their necks, blow­ing on their hands.  We rang.  The church­go­ers appeared in their Sun­day best, bring­ing chil­dren over to admire the bell-ringing.  I sud­denly felt an enor­mous pride in my being able to turn seven ringers into eight, to make us a full band, a ringer for every bell, a full octave present.  I was a needed, valu­able part of my small, cho­sen community.

Last week­end saw me at the ulti­mate crazy activ­ity: an entire day out in the Sur­rey coun­try­side, in the remote and beau­ti­ful vil­lages of Limps­field, Mer­stham and Bletch­in­g­ley, ring­ing ALL day long in training.

As dif­fi­cult as the day was, six straight hours try­ing des­per­ately to learn “Plain Hunt on Six” and “Plain Hunt on Eight,” it was an accom­plish­ment.  Sur­rounded by lovely peo­ple, gor­geous archi­tec­ture and coun­try views.

It was just my luck — I think! — that I was given the tough­est, most expe­ri­enced ringer in all the United King­dom to spend the day with, hav­ing my every move­ment scru­ti­nized, and yes, being shouted at.  He rang at the Royal Wedding!

The exhaus­tion com­ing home was tan­gi­ble.  Mus­cles I didn’t even know I had, hurt.

And up first thing in the morn­ing to ring for our beau­ti­ful Remem­brance Day services.

There is no doubt in my mind that my new voca­tion has pro­vided a very sat­is­fy­ing dis­trac­tion from my other pri­mary activ­ity: watch­ing my teenage daugh­ter grow up and away.  She cel­e­brated her 15th birth­day this month, with new head­phones, a sil­ver bracelet, piles of books.

Fif­teen is a real mile­stone.   For one thing, I remem­ber being 15 myself!  I was  my real self that year, the self I am now.  So I know that the daugh­ter I gaze upon now is the real per­son she will live with, all her life.  I like very much what I see.  She is immensely funny, a great debater, a truly lib­eral thinker, and a loyal friend who views gos­sip as a behav­ior only slightly more civ­i­lized than lit­ter­ing.  She has an envi­able sense of style, even if some­times it expresses itself through poems writ­ten in ink all over her hands.

The other side of this shiny coin is, how­ever, the grad­ual with­drawal of the lit­tle, depen­dent, hand-holding child I was used to all these years.  Of course this devel­op­ment took place grad­u­ally… one day she sim­ply brought her­self home from school alone and that was that.  She took her first taxi ride alone, her first Tube ride alone and turned up safe and sound.  Stuffed ani­mals no longer went along on sleep­overs, her book­shelves became filled with books I have not read, her Face­book page filled with peo­ple I have not met.  The sort of cringe-making school pho­tos she always hated are replaced with pro­fes­sional head­shots, taken for her act­ing agency.

In short, the child I poured so much of myself into, spent so many seem­ingly end­less hours read­ing to, march­ing peo­ple in and out of her doll­house, arrang­ing mag­netic let­ters on the fridge to spell her own per­sonal ver­sion of “Mommy,” has meta­mor­phosed into a young lady.  I find the tran­si­tion com­pletely baf­fling, and while I know it has taken place over a num­ber of years, some­times the new Avery seems quite unbe­liev­able to me, dig­ni­fied, intel­lec­tual, a bit remote.  As much as I cher­ished every stage, they all sped by any­way, leav­ing me with an inde­pen­dent near-adult.

Now, Avery and John will roll their eyes as I say this, but… there is a very use­ful par­al­lel in this process to bell-ringing.  Stick with me here.

What makes Eng­lish bells unique is that they live on a wheel, which lives on a frame.  Euro­pean bells just live on a frame and hang down­ward all their lives, being able to chime only in a very lim­ited back-and-forth motion.  Eng­lish bells can live down­ward OR upward, as we choose.  Some churches store their bells down­ward, some upward.  Here are the bells of St Matthew’s, Beth­nal Green, Lon­don, in the down position.

Bells are safest when they are down, because grav­ity has had its way.  Bells, given their own way, would always stay down, as these Mel­rose School bells in Brew­ster, New York are.

The Eng­lish like, in every­thing they do, to push the intel­lec­tual lim­its, to make the sim­ple com­plex, to make the trans­par­ent clever.  So they devised a way to get the bell all the way UP, and keep it there, as long as we like.

Here is a bell in the up position.

When a bell is “up,” it is lean­ing rather pre­car­i­ously against its bal­ance, wait­ing to be asked to fall again.  Here is a whole bel­fry full of bells in the up position.

A bell in the “up” posi­tion is an essen­tially unsta­ble thing, a very dan­ger­ous thing, because all it wants to do is go DOWN.  If you pulled the rope of a bell you thought was down and harm­less, and instead it was up and ready to COME down, that bell would come crash­ing down uncon­trolled and then — inevitably — momen­tum would carry it back UP, and you with it, per­haps tak­ing off your fin­gers if they were stuck in the rope, or pulling your shoul­der out of its socket.  We take “up” bells very seri­ously indeed.

Now you under­stand “up” and “down” bells.

Bell-ringing is entirely about con­trol.  What the begin­ning ringer learns to do is to approach a “down” bell and take its long length of rope in hand, the rope made into tidy coils.  Then you start to pull your rope, and as the bell goes higher and higher toward the top of the frame, you let out the coils.  You grad­u­ally have less and less rope hang­ing down as the bell takes more and more of it up into the bel­fry, finally fly­ing up as high as it can go, point­ing its great mouth straight upward, and at the moment you stop pulling and “set” your bell at rest.

The whole process, tightly con­trolled, should take more than a minute.  You must put all your con­trolled strength into PULLING that rope, because depend­ing on how heavy your bell is, you could be try­ing to pull more than a TON of weight from its happy “down” posi­tion to being 180 degrees in the oppo­site direc­tion.  Bells don’t want to go up.

As I have thought of Avery grow­ing up, from a baby until her teenage years, I now see the whole process as an attempt on my part to get her from the “down” posi­tion to “up.”  How we push them to turn over when they would just as soon lie still!  “Stand up, baby!” we urge, hold­ing their lit­tle hands insis­tently when all the baby wants is to plop back down on its dia­pered bot­tom!  Then walk­ing, chew­ing instead of drink­ing, hold­ing a spoon, going to school, SHAR­ING.  All the things a lit­tle child would rather not do.  They’re hard.

How I doted on all these stages!   The hours I spent dri­ving her to bal­let, to horse­back rid­ing, the end­less evenings spent read­ing aloud from pic­ture books, then watch­ing her choose her own chap­ter books and read alone.  I got her bell “up,” in other words.  My task was bliss­fully clear.  I was to pull steadily, get her bell “up,” no mat­ter how the process went against iner­tia.  And it worked, beautifully.

But what I’ve dis­cov­ered as the mother of a teenager is that what goes up…

The bell wants to come down again, filled with all the power of grav­ity.  And now the job of the ringer is to help the bell come down safely, steadily.  You hardly pull at all, just enough to get the bell off the bal­ance, and then you watch OUT!  Because those hun­dreds of pounds are filled with all the poten­tial you’ve put in them, get­ting them up there.  You can’t let the bell fall on its own, or the rope swings wildly, smack­ing into the other peo­ple in the bel­fry, fly­ing upwards with uncon­trolled, unguided power.  It can’t con­trol itself.  You have to learn how and when to coil the ropes to keep the bell com­ing down in a steady, safe way.

You see where I’m going with this.  All that pulling, all that power you’ve invested in your child — all designed to make her a happy, inde­pen­dent per­son — come back to roost.  The child WANTS to come down, swing on her own.  And you’ve got to fig­ure out how and when to coil the ropes with just the RIGHT amount of con­trol.  Lit­tle steps down.

It’s a fact of bell-ringing that some peo­ple pre­fer to ring up, some to ring down.  Some peo­ple like the chal­lenge of get­ting a bell to do some­thing against its nature, to go up, and some like the chal­lenge of con­trol­ling a very heavy, pow­er­ful force of nature in its inevitable path.

I am a more nat­ural ringer-up.  I like the clar­ity of the task, and the fact that none of it will hap­pen with­out my try­ing really hard.  I am more intim­i­dated by the coming-down of the bell, full of its own power.

But the fact is, you can’t be a proper ringer with­out being able to do BOTH.  My church rings all its bells UP at the end of a ses­sion.  They live in the “up” posi­tion.  But when I ring at Chiswick, they ring their bells DOWN at the end of a ses­sion.  I can’t pick and choose.  What my teach­ers tell me is that even­tu­ally, I’ll be good at both.  I might always pre­fer one job over the other, but I’ll be safely capa­ble of both.  I still panic a bit, now, every time some­one tells me to “ring down.”  But I can do it.

I am lucky that my par­tic­u­lar, per­sonal “bell” is ring­ing her­self down really beau­ti­fully.  I am so proud of her.  I don’t always know when to step in and help con­trol the rope and when to let grav­ity take its course, but I’m grad­u­ally learning.

Good­ness, since we arrived home from Paris a week ago today, we have cer­tainly hit the ground run­ning.  There has been a cold, rainy day out in Green­wich for me — on a boat on the Thames, wet wind whistling — with my bell-ringing friend Alas­tair and his lovely grand­chil­dren… And a bril­liant bell-ringing ses­sion on Sat­ur­day, and the reward that after­noon of a fab­u­lously unusual lunch out in Chi­na­town with my friend Sam at  St John Hotel, the lat­est out­post of the St John empire presided over by Fer­gus Hen­der­son, the famous “nose to tail” restaurateur.

I had a pork and pigeon ter­rine to start (lus­ciously rich, with cor­ni­chons and a dense chewy bread), and Sam a mal­lard and but­ter­nut squash salad.  Then my main course was a rab­bit fil­let wrapped around rab­bit liv­ers, in a but­tery bed of car­rots and Savoy cab­bage, lus­cious.  Sam’s main course of skate and brown shrimp arrived very late and was there­fore on the house!  The delay gave him a chance to share my rab­bit, so all was well.  We can most def­i­nitely rec­om­mend St John: lovely friendly wait­staff and a pretty, sim­ple white inte­rior.  Sam came home with me for a good long gos­sip and John’s bril­liant slow-roasted pork shoul­der with a lemon-garlic-rosemary rub.  Bril­liant!  And thank you as always for the photo, Avery.

John’s Slow-Roasted Pork Shoulder

(serves at least 8)

1 3-kilo pork shoul­der, boned, rolled and tied

1 head gar­lic, cloves sep­a­rated and peeled

1/2 lemon, cut in two pieces

5 rose­mary branches, just leaves

5 thyme branches, just leaves

sea salt and fresh black pep­per, LOTS

olive oil (as nec­es­sary for proper con­sis­tency, per­haps 1/4 –1/3 cup)

Place all the mari­nade ingre­di­ents in a small food proces­sor and blitz until the lemon pieces are very small and the mix­ture is smooth.  Rub over pork joint.  Place in a foil-lined bak­ing dish and wrap foil around the joint to make as air­tight a tent as you can.  Roast at 300F/180C for five hours.  Uncover and roast at 425F/220C for 30 min­utes, then remove from oven and allow to rest for 20 min­utes.  Pour off cook­ing juices, mean­while, and pour through a gravy sep­a­ra­tor into a saucepan.  Whisk a bit of flour and cream into the juices and sim­mer to make a savoury gravy.  Carve pork in thin slices.

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

Then, because it pays to have friends in high places, we spent Sun­day in Oxford with our friend Jo who is a bril­liant guide at the incom­pa­ra­ble Bodleian Library.

What could be more inspir­ing for Avery’s uni­ver­sity plans than to tour this 17th cen­tury land­mark, where books were orig­i­nally chained to lecterns and every­one stud­ied the­ol­ogy.  An over­whelm­ing sense of his­tory, and of course most impor­tant for me, it’s where Lord Peter Wim­sey filled his head with quotations.

Avery exer­cised her new pas­sion: pho­tog­ra­phy.  She is really gifted.

Gor­geous archi­tec­ture abounded…

You couldn’t look in any direc­tion with­out see­ing some beau­ti­ful detail.

Finally of course, the half-term hol­i­day was ended and real life reared its ugly head, namely at my Lost Prop­erty cup­board at school.  What belong­ings HAVEN’T these girls lost?

I labored cheer­fully and came home to carve pump­kins with John and await Avery and her friends for a muted, teenage Hal­loween.  No more cos­tumes or trick-or-treating for them, just a cozy evening together with pizza, lots of candy and a whole slate of Amer­i­can Hal­loween movies: Char­lie Brown, of course, and Avery’s favorite “Cas­tle” episodes.  I felt a lit­tle melan­choly at being yet again in Eng­land on Hal­loween, where lit­tle dressed-up fig­ures ring­ing the door­bell are few and far between.  Still, it was Halloween.

Today is a typ­i­cal grey, misty Lon­don day, the first since I can remem­ber with no guests, no plans, no par­ties, no expo­sure to pub­lic trans­port, no hol­i­day atmos­phere.  It’s about time, just to be quiet, to let a kitty lie heav­ily across my legs, to take stock of our busy lives.

And to try to remem­ber our Parisian hol­i­day!  It was Avery’s birth­day present.  Sun­day dawned with big plans.  Notre Dame!

We went espe­cially on Sun­day morn­ing to hear the Gre­go­rian mass, and also the bells.  I can report that the bells sounded absolutely dire, off-key, rather unpleas­ant and for­get­table.  I was ter­ri­bly dis­ap­pointed until we saw a dis­play in the church announc­ing their mas­sive and expen­sive plans to over­haul all the bells in the win­ter of this year.  I looked up at the bell tower and imag­ined them ren­o­vated, chim­ing out over Paris as they did in Quasimodo’s day.

From there we crossed the pic­turesque Pont de l’Archeveche, nar­row­est of all the bridges span­ning the Seine, and home to one of the pecu­liarly Euro­pean padlock-love dis­plays.  Avery just adores these, first seen in Rome, then Venice, then Flo­rence.  Now Paris takes its place in Avery’s visual memory.

We hopped into a taxi and sped to the Boule­vard Ras­pail to visit the famous biologique, organic, food mar­ket.  We queued for the famous fried potato-cheese galettes, well deserv­ing of their reputation!

Hot, savoury and deli­cious, they gave us enough energy to peruse the long mar­ket offer­ing every food­stuff you can imag­ine.  I found it quite intim­i­dat­ing!  But beau­ti­ful and tempting.

I even­tu­ally made a deci­sion and bought a joint of freshly-rotisseried crackly pork, plus these toma­toes, a bag of spicy roquette, and two enor­mous artichauts, like exotic flow­ers when I pre­pared them!

We reluc­tantly (well, I) left the mar­ket and we walked to my beloved Musee Rodin, in whose shabby and bril­liant archives I camped out for months and months 20 years ago, doing my research.  There we ful­filled a Face­book plan that warmed my heart: I met beau­ti­ful Lind­say, the daugh­ter of my singing teacher in Indi­anapo­lis when I was Avery’s age!

How unbe­liev­able to be with the new gen­er­a­tion, smack in the mid­dle between me and my daugh­ter, and she looks just like her mother!  I felt over­whelm­ingly nos­tal­gic, for the won­der­ful hours spent singing as Lindsay’s mother taught me the ins and outs of tech­nique, 30 years ago.

We toured the gar­dens and the house.  Avery took bril­liant images of the sculp­tures so dear to my heart.

And before you get depressed (as we did) at the peel­ing paint, scarred mar­ble steps and creak­ing floor­boards, I must assure you that the Musee is under­go­ing a mas­sive ren­o­va­tion this win­ter, as well as the Notre Dame bells!  It is an idea whose time has come.  But go now, before they close for their repairs.

We saun­tered out into the sun­shine to find lunch.  Sadly our des­ti­na­tion, Cafe Max (another haunt of my years in Paris) was closed.  So we ended up at a rather quixotic and bizarre restau­rant, Home in Paris.  A mas­sive buf­fet!  Typ­i­cal brunch items like creamy scram­bled eggs, sausages and bacon, plus salmon and sole en bro­chette, on bar­be­cue sticks, and tiny steak Tartares topped with quail’s eggs!  Grilled aubergines, pep­pers and cour­gettes, fine beans… and hard-boiled eggs stuffed with — are you sit­ting down? — truf­fled may­on­naise!   And the desserts… Avery was in heaven.

“Have you noticed?” I asked.  “Every­one here but us is FRENCH.”  It turns out the restau­rant is quite a des­ti­na­tion for the locals — so sim­ple to bring your mother who eats only veg­eta­bles, your child who eats none, your teenage son who eats every­thing and can never get enough!  Lovely.

We stag­gered off down the avenue de la Motte Piquet, walk­ing and walk­ing and walk­ing until we reached…

Noth­ing pre­pares you for the sheer SCALE and mag­nif­i­cent design of the gor­geous Tour Eiffel.

Then we hopped onto a tour bateau and spent a stuffy half-hour inside, drift­ing down the Seine, until we came to our senses and stood out­side by the rail.  The Hotel de Ville, the Musee d’Orsay (closed for a strike!), the Jardins des Plantes, all passed by.  We were just happy to be together.

Home on feet that could barely func­tion, we were so tired!  And then, Mon­day in Montmartre.

One of only two orig­i­nal Metro sta­tion entrances left in Paris!  But beware: there are over 100 steps up from the train!  Puff­ing and pant­ing, we headed toward lunch at the cafe made famous by the film “Amelie,” Les Deux Moulins.  Steak tartare, Avery’s beloved croque mon­sieur, feel­ing like total tourists!  Ah well, why not.

And up, up, UP to Sacre Coeur!  Avery’s photo, of course.  She has such an eye!

Avery looked through the tele­scope also made famous by Amelie, and we were all unfairly annoyed that the Eif­fel Tower could not be seen!

I was ter­ri­bly dis­ap­pointed to find that the famous fruit and veg shop in the film was closed!

I hope this aber­ra­tion was merely a mat­ter of its being a Mon­day?  Still, it was a long uphill walk for a closed shop.

We came home for a brief toes-up and then headed out for a bit of last-minute shop­ping, find­ing the per­fect cape for Avery’s win­ter coat.  And collapse!

Finally, our last morn­ing in Paris.  I awoke feel­ing rather ill, prob­a­bly the result of too much pate and cheese and total exhaus­tion, and was tempted to slip back into bed and recover before our trip home.  “But we really want to see the Oscar Wilde tomb in the Cim­i­tiere de Pere-Lachaise,” John reminded me, and we really did.  So off we went, pick­ing up a lovely lit­tle chyr­san­the­mum plant to give to dear Oscar, and troop­ing gamely through the ceme­tery in search of our goal.

“Look up ahead!” I said, laugh­ing.  “Wouldn’t it be hilar­i­ous if, after all this, that con­struc­tion site were…”

And it was.  Poor Oscar.  Poor us!

We groaned!  “I don’t believe it!  The ONLY grave in the entire ceme­tery under wraps, and it’s Oscar’s.”  Avery left a tra­di­tional trib­ute, anyway.

Ah well, at least we found him.  And dear Chopin!

Fred?  Really?  That seems a lit­tle familiar.

We had to admit, then, that it was time to go home.  A quick lunch at our beloved apart­ment (thank you, Kath­leen and Joe!), pack­ing and clean­ing, and to the Eurostar, where I bought sev­eral bril­liant lit­tle mus­tards in duty-free, Avery milled around the makeup coun­ters, I picked up a Paris Match with the first pho­tographs of the lit­tle Sarkozy daugh­ter, and we came home.

What glo­ri­ous adven­tures.  Over­whelm­ing, really, bring­ing together mem­o­ries of the past, the joy of show­ing our child a lovely time, the drama of appre­ci­at­ing one of the world’s great­est cities.  Happy Birth­day, Avery!

We are back from the unfor­get­table delights of Paris, and I’m even now find­ing it a bit dif­fi­cult to adjust to nor­mal life!  Seem­ingly dozens of loads of laun­dry have, how­ever, helped me come down to earth.

There is no way to con­vey the magic of Paris in pho­tos, or words.  Even the sim­plest things are rather other worldly, like this view from our rented apart­ment, near to the Louvre.

It’s tempt­ing to try to describe the extra­or­di­nary charms of every­thing about Paris: the archi­tec­tural details around every cor­ner, the charm­ing blue street signs, the styl­ish girls and boys on mind-bogglingly speedy scoot­ers, the per­fectly fash­ion­able small French chil­dren speak­ing in high pip­ing voices, “Papa!  Maman!  Je voudrais du pain au choco­lat!”  Even the florist dis­plays have a for­eign, glossy poetry.

We arrived in the early after­noon, dropped off our bags at the lovely apart­ment with its spi­ral staircase.

And there began the pat­tern of our hol­i­day in Paris, each of us going along with the pas­sions of the oth­ers!  We walked and walked and walked, first pass­ing an unex­pected land­mark in my life — Dehil­lerin, the world-famous kitchen sup­ply shop, made famous by Julia Child in her memoirs.

No pho­tographs were allowed inside, so I can­not show you the unbe­liev­able sight of an entire WALL of wire whisks!  Hun­dreds of choices!  Every sort of cast-iron and cop­per and porce­lain imple­ment you can imag­ine, rows upon rows of knife sets, fish molds, madeleine trays, brightly-colored cut­ting boards, stock pots of every size in the world.  Heaven.  I didn’t buy any­thing, though.  Self-denial is my motto, as you know.

From there we hap­pened upon a very sat­is­fy­ing vin­tage cloth­ing shop called “Hippy Mar­ket,” where Avery tried on thou­sands of gar­ments, look­ing espe­cially for a new win­ter coat.  If only her arms were shorter.

She did suc­cumb, how­ever, to this evoca­tive and adorable pair of Con­verse sneak­ers upon which some past owner had writ­ten the words for “love” in many lan­guages, includ­ing Russian!

From there we trooped toward the Pom­pi­dou Cen­tre, pass­ing along the way this incred­i­ble art instal­la­tion.  A wall of words, quite simply.

The gen­eral mes­sage of the wall is a sort of pan-modern sup­port of peace, green­ness, tol­er­ance and love.  Quite beau­ti­ful, as Avery’s detailed photo shows (she is becom­ing a more gifted pho­tog­ra­pher all the time).

We arrived at the Pom­pi­dou and Avery and John decided to take a break, sit on a wall and take pho­tos of the new Con­verse.  So it was but the work of a moment for me to cross the square to “DOD,” or “Dish of the Day,” one of the most charm­ing and deli­cious del­i­catessens you will ever encounter.  I can­not seem to find a ref­er­ence to this place on the web, but trust me, it’s oppo­site the entrance to the Pom­pi­dou.  Fresh breads, fruit and veg, wine, pre­pared foods, sal­ads, and cheeses.  Oh, les fro­mages fran­caises!  I could not resist this dar­ling packet of three dif­fer­ent laits, milks, with its label, “Would you know which is which?  Sheep, goat and ewe.”

I also could not begin to resist two dif­fer­ent sorts of ril­lettes, which are ter­rines of shred­ded pre­served meats, con­fit in fact, sus­pended in… fat.  I bought goose, AND duck.  Spread on a piece of baguette… heaven!

We put aside our acquis­i­tive­ness and went into the Pom­pi­dou, mar­vel­ling at the views from the glass esca­la­tors.  Mem­o­ries of my long-ago days doing dis­ser­ta­tion research came back to me, twenty years ago, a stu­dent, alone.  So much hap­pier to wan­der through the museum with my dar­ling fam­ily!  We each chose our favorite pieces.  Avery really liked the con­cep­tual instal­la­tions of Fluxus artist George Brecht.

John absolutely fell in love with a bril­liant Japan­ese instal­la­tion of a length of cas­sette tape being per­pet­u­ally blown in a wav­ing oval by an over­head fan!  Silly me not to write down the name of the artist…

I myself fell des­per­ately in love with a text instal­la­tion — always text with me! — of metal­lic words, telling a story of two men in a bar, sus­pended around three of the four walls of one room.  Again, I stu­pidly did not take any notes of the artist!  I wel­come any intel­li­gence from any­one who finds her­self at the Pom­pi­dou any time soon.

I find it very intrigu­ing that all three of us eschewed tra­di­tional paint­ing, draw­ing or sculp­ture, even pho­tog­ra­phy was pushed aside in our enthu­si­asm for irony, humor and a decep­tive sim­plic­ity, in these installations.

Hav­ing slaked John’s thirst for archi­tec­ture and salved our cul­tural con­sciences, we turned to the more mun­dane sub­ject of what on earth to eat for din­ner, and where to buy the ingre­di­ents!  And here we came upon a slight dis­ad­van­tage of tak­ing an apart­ment in a very pop­u­lar tourist area: while there is every cafe under the sun, find­ing fresh ingre­di­ents is rather more dif­fi­cult.  But finally we came upon Super­marche G20 in the rue Eti­enne Mar­cel.  And here John uttered one of the sen­tences we col­lect in our game, “I don’t think any­one has ever said this before.”

“Kris­ten, stop fondling the kumquats.”

But who can resist their dim­pled skin?  I didn’t buy any, how­ever, restrict­ing myself to ingre­di­ents I actu­ally needed for din­ner, since we had to carry it all home.  We decided upon a dish of veal sauteed with mush­rooms and gar­lic, the sauce fin­ished with brandy and creme fraiche.  Heav­enly.  Home laden, feet aching, all of us com­pletely worn out, but reviv­ing enough after din­ner to go out for a lit­tle explore in darkness.

We came upon this menu, at the fan­tas­tic — and I mean that lit­er­ally, surely it is a fan­tasy — Restau­rant Le Grand Vefour.

Could any menu priced at 282 Euros — about $380 — pos­si­bly be described as “a plea­sure menu”?  We were gob­s­macked.  What on earth were they serv­ing?  Avery suc­cinctly said, “It would be like eat­ing coins.”  We enlarged upon this theme, imag­in­ing our con­ver­sa­tion with the gar­con.  “Yes, could I have my change in notes, please?  These coins are SO hard to chew.”

Up in the morn­ing com­pletely refreshed to ven­ture out of the apart­ment, find­ing that Sat­ur­days in our neigh­bor­hood are VERY quiet indeed.  “The peo­ple must really respect week­ends here,” John observed, with some wish­ful think­ing, remem­ber­ing the seven-day work weeks of his career.  Look what inter­est­ing graf­fiti we came upon at a build­ing site.

We all won­dered if the sen­ti­ments expressed here are approval, or disapproval?

We saun­tered toward the shop­ping street of the rue de Riv­oli in order to fur­ther our search for Avery’s coat, wan­der­ing into Zara, no luck there, then send­ing Avery off down the enor­mous escalier roulant, esca­la­tor, into the depths of Sephora, her beloved cos­met­ics shop.  Her capac­ity to shop there always amazes her par­ents, as we can­not under­stand how she can look in one more city at another set of shelves con­tain­ing makeup!  But it’s just as I am with cheese and bread, and John with the win­dows of estate agents!

John and I couldn’t quite take 45 min­utes in Avery’s mecca, how­ever, so we agreed to meet later and mean­dered toward the river, for a spot of sight­see­ing.  And there, poor John, I came upon a French… pet store.  Just look at the cha­tons, the pre­cious French kit­tens for sale.  And I mean SALE.  These kit­tens were expen­sive, com­ing in at 820 Euros each!

Poor John.  We had to go back with Avery, and there­upon for the rest of the day she and I imag­ined all the other pur­chases we would give up in order to have a Parisian kitten.

It was time for lunch, and we found our­selves out­side the gor­geous soar­ing Cafe Marly at the Lou­vre where we had seen peo­ple din­ing in lux­ury the night before.  “Let’s just do it,” we all decided rashly (after all, it would take a lot of declined lunches to buy a kit­ten).  And there we were, seated in the sun out­side, with gor­geous views of I.M. Pei’s glass dome.  It was a total DELIGHT.  Just look at my Salade Nicoise, Ver­sion 2011, with a mys­te­ri­ous sauce made of whipped tuna, avo­cado and creme fraiche.

Avery ate every snip­pet of her clas­sic Croque Mon­sieur, a com­pletely deli­cious toasted ham and cheese sand­wich.  If you want an egg added, ask for a Croque Madame!

It was hard to get up and agree to walk again!

But off we went, to the Jeu de Paume for the Diane Arbus show.

And it was WELL worth the walk, the enor­mously long queue.  Her pho­tographs are sim­ply divinely evoca­tive, trou­bling, unique.

This show led to very provoca­tive dis­cus­sions about, for one thing, how impor­tant is it to know the life story of the artist — or any details about the cre­ator what­so­ever — before you see the work?  Avery’s con­sid­ered opin­ion, and I agree, is that knowl­edge of the artist’s wishes, inten­tions, bio­graph­i­cal details CAN add to our appre­ci­a­tion of art­work which with­out that knowl­edge might be mere pic­tures.  But there can be an over-reliance on such details (cer­tainly many the­o­rists want to call them “extra­ne­ous”) that can cloud our imme­di­ate reac­tion to art­work.  I must admit that when we came to the end of the show, and read the time­line of her life — inter­est­ingly at the END of the show, not the begin­ning! — that she com­mit­ted sui­cide… I was not sur­prised.  An awe-inspiring col­lec­tion of images, and what a life.

And so from there home, stop­ping to buy ingre­di­ents for Avery’s beloved “Steak frites.”  What a joy to cook at “home.”  And to col­lapse once more, to refresh our­selves in sleep… and onto Day Three in the morning!

I’m busy in the kitchen this sunny Lon­don morn­ing, prepar­ing for a lit­tle din­ner party tonight — my father’s first cousin is vis­it­ing! — at which I’ll serve the nation’s favorite dish.  Curry!  Next week will see Hin­dus cel­e­brat­ing Diwali, the fes­ti­val of lights, and for that rea­son all the telly chefs seem to be com­ing for­ward with their var­i­ous ver­sions of the clas­sic Indian treat.  What Amer­i­cans may find funny is that British “curry” often does not fea­ture… curry pow­der!  Curry pow­der itself is, of course, an amal­gam of many spices includ­ing turmeric, corian­der, cumin and cin­na­mon.  British cur­ries, includ­ing the one I’m mak­ing tonight, fea­ture a paste of lemon grass, chilli, gin­ger, gar­lic and oil.  I’ll start with that and then add spices as I go along.

If you can imag­ine, Avery is on school hol­i­day this week and next!  How on earth, we might well be tempted to ask, can a school sys­tem be ready for a hol­i­day just six weeks after the begin­ning of term?  Until I became the mother of essen­tially a British teenager you could never have con­vinced me that any­one could need a break in Octo­ber.  But we all do!  This par­tic­u­lar year, when Avery and her mates are buck­ling down to what are called GCSEs (the first really impor­tant exams that will occur next year, after which chil­dren can legally leave school).  Home­work lev­els have spiked and there is real pres­sure to pro­duce seri­ous work in sev­eral lan­guages, three sci­ences and (tough­est of all, to my mind) math­e­mat­ics that I can no longer even pre­tend to understand.

Added to this onslaught of work are the rehearsals for “Sweet Char­ity,” the musi­cal Avery will be in next month.  As the days grow shorter and colder, Avery seems to come home later and later, laden with books and files, starv­ing to death, and with a huge work­load before we can hope to sit down to din­ner.  It was a nice break last week to head over to Kingston to hear the Down­ton Abbey cre­ator Julian Fel­lowes talk about his career, the stratos­pheric suc­cess of DA, his future plans — a series about the Titanic next year!

He was sim­ply adorable!  For all the accu­sa­tions that he is a snob, that “Down­ton Abbey” is a snob­bish pro­gramme, I have to admit that I love it all.  I do think it’s a funny con­tra­dic­tion, Amer­i­cans’ atti­tude toward any­thing resem­bling the British aris­toc­racy.  We may well have fled Eng­land our­selves all those years ago seek­ing greater equal­ity and free­dom, but we love noth­ing more than Hello! mag­a­zine, the Royal Wed­ding, and any­one addressed as Count­ess or Lady.  So I enjoyed greatly sit­ting on the dusty floor of the Rose The­atre in the round, and lis­ten­ing to the plummy tones of Mr Fel­lowes describ­ing his life as a drama stu­dent, some 40 years ago.  “We found our­selves between the bril­liance of John Cleese and Monty Python before us, and Hugh Lau­rie and Stephen Fry who came after us.  In short, we were the bread between the jam, as it were.”

“Act­ing is like play­ing ten­nis,” he pon­tif­i­cated.  “You should always pur­sue each activ­ity with peo­ple who are bet­ter at it than YOU.”

Oh, speak­ing of ten­nis, we have had to admit that very shortly, the courts will be too damp, leafy and dan­ger­ous for us to play.  And so we have taken up a new and totally crazy sport: SQUASH.  One les­son at the Barnes Squash Club has con­vinced at least John that we should pur­sue this, so I’m going along with it.

I can under­stand that if I am going to con­tinue to cook for us, we have to find ever more clever ways of burn­ing off all the calo­ries.  But I have to admit I think I’ll always feel more com­fort­able with the sort of squash that takes but­ter and sage and gets pureed with a hand blender.

Roasted But­ter­nut Squash Soup

(serves 4)

1 large but­ter­nut squash

2 tbsps butter

6 leaves fresh sage

500 ml/2 cups chicken stock

driz­zle sin­gle cream

Cut the squash in half length­wise and dot with but­ter and sage leaves.  Roast at 220C/425F for about half an hour or until fully cooked and soft.  Scoop squash into a saucepan and cover with chicken stock.  Sim­mer for five min­utes, then puree with hand blender.  Pour into warm bowls and driz­zle with cream.

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

One of the biggest treats of this autumn has been our trip to Bor­ough Mar­ket.  It’s the way John gets me to accom­pany him on his real-estate for­ays into the East-ish End of Lon­don: the lure of every deli­cious food­stuff you can dream up, under one cor­ru­gated metal roof, high above our heads.  Stalls of pump­kins (speak­ing of squash!)…

And figs, a dis­play of which would bring my mother in law to tears.

But per­haps my favorite stall of all is Gas­tro­nom­ica, that famed Ital­ian seller of all things char­cu­terie (what’s Ital­ian for “char­cu­terie,” any­way?), dairy, cheese… and the best but­ter on the face of the earth.

I brought home a head of cau­li­flower to roast whole, and WHAT a good idea that was.  Sim­ply driz­zled with lots of olive oil and sprin­kled with a good sea salt, roasted in a hot oven for 30 minutes.

For­ti­fied by my cau­li­flower, I’ve been a good girl and done my “pool duty” at Avery’s school, a termly oblig­a­tion which entails pick­ing up the keys to the fab­u­lous old struc­ture at a house nearby, cycling through the autumn leaves over to school, open­ing up the box with its money to pay the life­guard, ask­ing mem­bers to sign in, then breath­ing in the steamy air for an hour and a half while swim­mers trun­dle up and down.  One man came in from the chilly out­side to greet me and the life­guard, who pum­meled him with ques­tions about the foot­ball match going on: Wales — vs– France.  “I can’t believe you’re root­ing for Wales, sir,” said the life­guard.  “Well, nor­mally of course I wouldn’t.  But they’re play­ing FRANCE.”  The lesser of two evils, to the Eng­lish mindset.

On Sun­day we all awoke to a foggy day which I spent mak­ing every mis­take in bell­ring­ing that it is pos­si­ble to make.  I led with the tre­ble very badly, finally learn­ing to fol­low the tenor.  It’s a nice les­son in life: to be the leader, some­times it’s nec­es­sary only to fol­low who seems to be last.  Then it was onto Chiswick where when asked to “ring down” the tre­ble bell, I acci­den­tally pulled it down in two strokes.  Was there ever a scarier moment?  “You got away with that because it was the tre­ble, a tiny bell,” Matt said.  “If you’d had a heavy bell you’d be miss­ing a hand right now.”

And this is my new hobby.  How do I get myself into these situations?

The only way to recover was with a lovely plate of lemon sole, sauteed in olive oil and topped with a dust­ing of crispy Fox Point bread­crumbs.  Ter­ri­bly suc­cess­ful to taste, but not pretty enough to pho­to­graph.  On the other hand, the side dish of juli­enned beet­root, shaped into a cake and fried in duck fat, was beau­ti­ful, with its dol­lop of sour cream.

It turns out that while juli­enned pota­toes will form a cake, beet­root will not.  And beet­root with duck fat is sim­ply gild­ing the lily, as it were.  Cook­ing is not always suc­cess­ful if you make experiments.

Avery’s been exper­i­ment­ing this break, but not with beet­root.  First she spent a day in Tot­ten­ham with her fash­ion designer men­tor Stephane St Jaymes, the bril­liant man who offered her a “Take Your Daugh­ter To Work” day last spring.  I love the out­fit she chose for her day with him this week.

I dropped her off at a photographer’s house yes­ter­day so she could be part of a shoot called “hair before and after,” and look what came home!

 So tomor­row, with her new hair­cut and ready for an adven­ture, we are off on the Eurostar to Paris for an early cel­e­bra­tion of Avery’s birth­day.  More from there!

Autumn is here, my favorite time of year. ’ Tis the sea­son, almost as much as Christ­mas, when all our activ­i­ties get ratch­eted up in inten­sity and it seems there is never a chance to take a deep breath.  In just the last four days, we have been to the Royal Albert Hall to see Idina Men­zel and Mar­vin Ham­lisch in con­cert (beyond amaz­ing, quite sim­ply the best con­cert we’ve ever been to), hosted a din­ner party for 14 (I was wor­ry­ing it was going to be 13 until one fam­ily unex­pect­edly brought their Ger­man exchange stu­dent who spoke no Eng­lish, so it was a bit dif­fi­cult to tell good news from bad), and drove to Kingston to see Jane Asher in “The Impor­tance of Being Earnest,” our favorite play of all time.

All sim­ply lovely activ­i­ties on their own, but squashed together into too few days has left me feel­ing a bit as if I’ve eaten too much foie gras over too short a period… and in need of a cup of tea.

In the midst of all this, Avery has had a mile­stone.  Those wretched braces, her reluc­tant com­pan­ions for the last two years, are GONE!  She is very happy.

And I spent two lovely morn­ings with my super-volunteer friend Fiona, who last year was kind enough to invite me to take part in one of her ele­gant and yet homely projects: The Queen Mother’s Cloth­ing Guild, which sees hun­dreds of vol­un­teers gath­er­ing together in St James’s Palace in Piccadilly.

We spent the hours sort­ing through thou­sands of donated and pur­chased new gar­ments for needy women and chil­dren.  I wasn’t allowed to take pho­tos inside the Palace, so I can only describe to you the GRANDEUR!  We folded and sorted sweat­suits in a room with ceil­ings four times as high as my own house, looked down on by TWO Joshua Reynolds heroes of the aris­toc­racy.  The room next to us was entirely cov­ered in TAPES­TRY!  The walls were hung with spi­ral­ing arrange­ments of weaponry and her­aldry… and another room adja­cent to ours was the set­ting for William’s and Kate’s engage­ment announce­ment!  It was rumoured that the happy cou­ple were IN the build­ing as we worked, pos­si­bly even had entered through the same cob­ble­stoned court­yard I had myself come through!

What an extra­or­di­nary priv­i­lege to be in such a set­ting, sur­rounded by lovely hard-working women, drag­ging enor­mous boxes of sheets and pil­low­cases from one room to another, buy­ing up aprons embla­zoned with the Guild’s logo as presents for var­i­ous deserv­ing friends at Christmas!

How amaz­ing to take our lunch break and eat our sand­wiches under a giant 25-feet-wide paint­ing depict­ing Queen Victoria’s arrival in India!  And get this: to find the ladies’ room, one had to pass through what is Prince Charles’ favorite room in which to read the paper!  Red bro­cade wall­pa­per and all.  Sim­ply amazing.

If all that grandeur were not enough, last week saw us at the 502nd birth­day party of Avery’s school, in the awe-inspiring envi­rons of St Paul’s Cathe­dral.  How won­der­ful to lis­ten to the choir singing “Lord, gra­ciously hear us,” in a des­cant writ­ten by Avery’s own music teacher, sur­rounded by the mosaic images of the Saints, with the girls and boys fil­ing past in all their young, bril­liant splen­dor.  Sadly, another event at which was strictly enjoined against tak­ing pho­tos, but here is an offi­cial one.

And I have been labor­ing hap­pily in the sup­port of my beloved church, not only bell­ring­ing madly (and with some mar­ginal suc­cess at ring­ing my first method, Plain Hunt on Five, of which I am ridicu­lously proud!) but also tak­ing part in that MOST Eng­lish of all pos­si­ble activ­i­ties: the church cof­fee morn­ing.  Here is the view of the lit­tle cof­fee shop, com­plete with crunchy autum­nal leaves.

I called John up sur­rep­ti­tiously on the day to say that I felt EXACTLY as if I were in an Agatha Christie novel, just wait­ing for the body to turn up in the scullery!  The story was this: one day in the year, on Sat­ur­day as it turns out, the cof­fee shop ladies who nor­mally sell their wares to the gen­eral pub­lic took off their aprons and headed over to the Church Hall to run the Jum­ble Sale.  We the bell­ringers stepped up to run the cof­fee shop in their absence!

I had been put in charge of ask­ing every­one to donate a cake or “bis­cuits” or fairy cakes, and had gath­ered a goodly num­ber.  I myself took a lemon-blueberry cake with driz­zle top­ping, and an apple-banana cake over which I lib­er­ally sprin­kled icing sugar (confectioner’s sugar to us Yanks) in an attempt to make it look more pro­fes­sional.  “Should these be priced at £1, or 50p?” we asked each other, slic­ing up orange-honey cake with a yogurt and pis­ta­chio icing, old-fashioned gin­ger cakes and Vic­to­ria Sponges, arrang­ing cof­fee cups and tea bags and sugar bowls.  This was the scene.

Between plat­ing cakes and mak­ing signs and arrang­ing flow­ers (Matthew came in with an offer­ing of a posy from his gar­den: “These are chamomile…”), we took turns run­ning over to the bell­ring­ing cham­ber to send our peals out over the vil­lage.  How I adore that blue door, with our bicy­cles propped against the wall which so mirac­u­lously pro­tected our beloved bells from the fire in the 1970s.  What happy mem­o­ries I have now of the six months I have been com­ing to the church to learn my art.

What fun it all was.  And no body turned up in the scullery, as far as I know.

Of course, the giant excite­ment of our autumn sea­son has been the Visit of Lau­rie and Chris­t­ian, all the way from South Africa!  Lau­rie is one of my clos­est friends ever, dat­ing back to 1983 when we were excited, ner­vous, chatty, happy fresh­men in col­lege who lived in the same dor­mi­tory for the first year and hap­pily joined the same soror­ity which meant shar­ing EVERY­THING for the whole four years of col­lege.  She hasn’t changed a BIT.  Still the same gor­geous Texas girl of our youth!

Chris­t­ian is her 11-year-old boy, a total joy to have around.  Of course it doesn’t hurt that he’s drop-dead gorgeous.

From the moment of their arrival, our lives were just that much brighter than they had been before.  Lau­rie is a tall girl, with arms that hug you with her whole being.  She has never lost her Texas lilt of voice, her bub­bling way of speak­ing, her bot­tom­less enthu­si­asm for every­thing around her.  Life just sparkles when she is around.

We spent the whole first evening catch­ing up.  “It’s dif­fer­ent, though, catch­ing up in the age of Face­book and email,” Lau­rie observed.  “We know what each other’s houses and kids look like, we’ve had a chance to say we’ve moved house, or changed schools, so it’s a lot eas­ier.”  It was true: we got right down to the nitty gritty of appre­ci­at­ing each other, as we always have.

What is it about old friend­ships?  I have moved house — and indeed coun­try — so many times that I con­sider myself to be an expert at friend­ship.  New friends from new schools, new neigh­bor­hoods, new jobs, new shops, a new church: I am a con­nois­seur of friends.  They come in all shapes and sizes: the friend you see once a year to go to a food fes­ti­val and stuff your­selves with gourmet food, the friend you meet for lunch to cel­e­brate or com­mis­er­ate, the friend who is your child’s best friend’s mother, the friend who teaches you to ring a bell.  I cher­ish them all.

But there is some­thing inde­scrib­ably pre­cious about an old, old friend.  That per­son who knew you 25 pounds ago, who became part of your life when you weren’t old enough to drink but did it together any­way, who knew you before you knew your hus­band whom you feel you’ve known for­ever… that per­son who was at your wed­ding and met your baby when she was tiny, who knew your par­ents when they were the age we are now!  That friend is one you keep, you hold onto, you appre­ci­ate with all your heart and history.

For me, the essence of an old friend­ship lies in the fact that she has seen you at your best, at your worst and every­where in between, and still loves you any­way.  New friend­ships are a bit more lux­u­ri­ous: you can choose to see them only when you’re at your best, or at least pre­sentable.  But when a friend has seen you flat out in tears — the teenage “I’ll never be happy again and ONLY YOU will ever under­stand” sort of tears, and also the adult tears of real heart­break — or des­per­ately hun­gover when you both wake up together in your dorm room, or after you’ve been up for 28 straight hours study­ing for that wretched Ger­man exam (Lau­rie always thought of my Ger­man teacher as HER Ger­man teacher, that’s how sym­pa­thetic she was)… well, then, that friend holds a spe­cial spot in your life.

What adven­tures we had!  The very first day I had to love them and leave them, for my sec­ond day vol­un­teer­ing at the Queen’s Mother’s Cloth­ing Guild (that is fun to type).  So they went off to Green­wich to stand on the median line — bor­ing but nec­es­sary for Christian’s geog­ra­phy home­work! — and to take a boat down the Thames, while I folded scarves and counted t-shirts.  Then we all met up at home where I was busily mak­ing chicken meat­ball soup for Avery’s ail­ing best friend, and chicken-asparagus car­bonara for us.

How we talked and talked and talked.

 And the tourist activ­i­ties that I always get up to when vis­i­tors come… we marched poor Chris­t­ian through THREE muse­ums on Wednes­day morn­ing along!  The Sci­ence Museum (where frankly the shop was our favorite exhibit, I think!), the Nat­ural His­tory Museum, and the V&A, where we sat out­side in the spec­tac­u­lar Indian sum­mer sun­shine, beneath the impres­sive out­door sculp­ture exhibit.

If you ever find your­self in that “Museum Row” in Knights­bridge, let me tell you a lit­tle secret: the cafe in the court­yard of the V&A is a spec­tac­u­lar spot: sim­ple sand­wiches and sal­ads, lovely pas­tries and tea, and you can plop your­self down in the sun­shine around the cen­tral foun­tain and watch the world go by — at least that por­tion of the world that wants to look at Vic­to­rian cast courts and then take a break for lunch.  Oh, those cast courts!  Repli­cas of ALL the great mas­ter­pieces of the medieval-Gothic-Renaissance times in Europe, made out of plas­ter but totally con­vinc­ing as stone, mar­ble and bronze.  So impres­sive.  Fiona had joined us for lunch, and she took us on a tour of those incred­i­ble replicas.

And when you’re ready to plunge into the South Kens­ing­ton Tube, take a tiny detour and blow your cheese bud­get at La Cave a Fro­mage, sim­ply my favorite cheese shop in Lon­don, I believe, partly because they give SAM­PLES!  And they carry what is to my mind the finest of all creamy cheeses: the three-milk Robi­ola (sheep, ewe and goat milk! amazing).

We came home, dumped all our parcels and headed over to the nearby school fields where I had got per­mis­sion for us to watch a rugby prac­tice!  What a glo­ri­ous way to spend a per­fect mid-September late after­noon… sit­ting on a grassy hill, gos­sip­ing with my pre­cious friends, watch­ing young boys try to destroy each other!  Chris­t­ian found an aban­doned ball and had a run around (I’m sure no one minded when one of his enthu­si­as­tic kicks sent the ball over the fence into the road!).  Glo­ri­ous day.

We all piled into our tiny con­vert­ible and headed over to Avery’s school to pick her up and make the trans­fer of soup to her ail­ing friend (I firmly believe that my chicken soup with meat­balls should be patented for cur­ing minor ill­nesses, and even major ill­nesses shouldn’t be ruled out).  Lau­rie and I got per­mis­sion to go on a quick tour of the school, and it was fun to see the pretty 100-year-old cam­pus with new eyes: the fab­u­lously impres­sive Main Hall with its enor­mous Vic­to­rian organ, the play­ing fields stretch­ing out in the sun, the mosaics and engraved names of the “schol­ars” from 100 years of girls’ achieve­ments in the hallway.

Home for that protein-fest din­ner, pier­rade, per­fect in the slightly chilly dusk.

Thurs­day saw us shop­ping in Regent Street, find­ing Christ­mas presents for every­one on Laurie’s list.  Then we had a pic­nic, thought of just that morn­ing as we sur­veyed our trea­sures from “La Cave.”  Robi­ola, Gor­gonzola, Bre­saola and Prosci­uotto di Parma, all with a crunchy baguette, and pile of hard-boiled eggs, a clutch of tiny toma­toes.  We sat on the grass in Hanover Square and watched all the young busi­ness­peo­ple in their suits and ties, scarf­ing down sand­wiches.  They went off to a mati­nee of “War Horse,” and came home blown away, teary and touched, as we all have been after see­ing that mag­nif­i­cent play.  I offered restora­tive fried had­dock and fresh tartare sauce.

I spent Fri­day morn­ing putting my beloved church back together after a busy evening the night before.  “What hap­pened HERE?” I asked when I came in, see­ing over­turned chairs, crumbs, empty wine­glasses.  “We had the hell of a fash­ion show!” answered one of my bell­ring­ing teach­ers, and we all put our heads down to hoover, take out recy­cling, rebuild the altar, replace kneel­ers and can­dles.  I love every­thing I do in that place!

Then home for a HOT HOT after­noon, get­ting ready for our din­ner party that evening.  It was glo­ri­ous fun to have every­one pitch­ing in, putting nap­kins in sil­ver rings, pick­ing up on John’s bril­liant idea to move the enor­mous din­ing table OUT­SIDE in the gar­den!  He mowed the lawn, I cooked — chicken meat­balls in a sour cream-paprika sauce, green beans in gar­lic and lemon — Lau­rie set the table, fill­ing can­dle­sticks, choos­ing wine glasses, chat­ting all the time.  That is just about my favorite time, get­ting ready for a fab­u­lous evening, in our cozy home.

Our guests arrived and a won­der­ful evening began, find­ing out straight­away that one of our guests went to the school in South Africa where Lau­rie has put Chris­t­ian down!  They actu­ally know peo­ple in com­mon, in their lit­tle road out­side Dur­ban.  I would say how unbe­liev­able that is, but such things seem to hap­pen in our lives all the time.

Con­ver­sa­tions flowed as the teenagers at one end of the table ironed out the world’s worth of polit­i­cal issues fac­ing them, Lau­rie and I regaled the adults with silly sto­ries from our teenage years together, our friend James fell under Laurie’s spell…

And James’s wife fell under the spell of my dear friend Shauna!

It was a mag­i­cal evening when all the pieces are in place for every­one to have a good time.  “Look up at all those stars!” Sophie said.  “You never see that many stars in Lon­don, never.”

Lau­rie said seri­ously, “You must visit a place with peo­ple you love who live there, else you will never see the stars in their sky.”

I could not rest on my hostessly lau­rels, how­ever, because Sat­ur­day bell­ring­ing prac­tice waits for no man.  At the end of the prac­tice, Lau­rie and Chris­t­ian turned up for the promised begin­ning les­son I had arranged with my teachers!

And then they were off, given a ride by Laurie’s child­hood friend who hap­pens to live a mile from me!  We promised to return the visit per­haps next fall!  Wouldn’t that be excit­ing, to stay with real South Africans on a game farm?  Watch this space.

Real life has set­tled down again, I sup­pose.  How blue I felt for days after Lau­rie and Chris­t­ian left, bulging suit­cases show­ing the fruits of their shop­ping, bone-crushing hugs and end­less silly jokes.  The only con­so­la­tion for miss­ing them is know­ing how lucky I was to have them here at all.

I will leave you with a recipe I just tried for the first time last night, taken from a cook­book, “Sump­tu­ous,” that Lau­rie brought for me.  Part of her remains here, after all.  Thank you, friends, for an unfor­get­table time!

Aubergine Caviar

serves about 10 as a side dish)

2 medium aubergines/eggplants, whole

2 tbsp olive oil

3 cloves gar­lic, minced

4 salad onions, finely chopped

juice of 1 lemon

2 tbsp flat leaf pars­ley, chopped

1 cup/250 ml creme fraiche

sea salt and black pep­per to taste

Prick the aubergines all over with a fork and rub olive oil onto them.  Roast at 220C/400F for 30 min­utes.  Let cool, then cut in half and scoop the insides out into a medium bowl.  Fold in all the other ingre­di­ents.  Voila! Per­fect with slow-roasted shoul­der of lamb.

I have been enjoy­ing a lit­tle respite from remem­ber­ing, self-examination, and the dredg­ing down inside for ways to tell of our expe­ri­ences ten years ago.  I am ter­ri­bly grate­ful to all my won­der­ful read­ers who assured me that I had been able, finally, to express what I intended to express.  As unlikely as it sounds, as soon as I pressed the “pub­lish” but­ton on my beloved blog, I felt a real weight off my shoul­ders.  I flexed my mus­cles, took a deep breath, and felt com­pletely pre­pared to let go of these expe­ri­ences and mem­o­ries, and to return to the ordi­nary busi­ness of liv­ing — and being me, writ­ing about living.

Why do peo­ple want to write, any­way?  Well, I turned as one should always do in these sit­u­a­tions, for wis­dom from great writ­ers.  Fore­most among them for me is the inim­itable E.B. White, author of count­less human­ist essays, end­less arti­cles for the New Yorker mag­a­zine, and for me most impor­tantly, of “Charlotte’s Web,” pos­si­bly the great­est children’s book of all time.

E.B. White tells us two chal­leng­ing things:

“Remem­ber that writ­ing is trans­la­tion, and the opus to be trans­lated is yourself.”

“All writ­ing is both a mask and an unveiling.”

White’s words of wis­dom here sup­port a notion I believe com­pletely: every self is an opus, every ordi­nary person’s life gives us exam­ples for liv­ing our own.  The hur­dle is in the trans­la­tion, of course.  With a bad trans­la­tion, even the most fas­ci­nat­ing and illu­mi­nat­ing text (self) can appear opaque, mean­ing­less.  We put the text aside and give up on what­ever its mes­sage might have been, because the trans­la­tion left us cold.

As well, White is telling us that writ­ing is about CHOICES.  Remem­ber the old school game of “show and tell”?  Think about it.  Why are they two dif­fer­ent notions?  Because just show­ing — unveil­ing — means very lit­tle with­out being able to stand beside your cho­sen object and tell why you care, why you brought it in to school.  And if the cho­sen object is your own SELF, then the unveil­ing and the trans­la­tion become very precious.

Writ­ing down our Sep­tem­ber 11 mem­o­ries made it pos­si­ble for me to put a sort of frame around our experiences,to try for once NOT to wear a mask but to unveil every­thing.  E.B. White also famously said, “Write what you know.”  Most of the time what I know is extremely daily, pro­saic and ordi­nary, and I take a great joy in putting it into words, cher­ish­ing it all.  Writ­ing about such appalling expe­ri­ences was very dif­fer­ent — there was no joy in remem­ber­ing, but I learned that remem­ber­ing even ter­ri­ble things very well is a gift.  My hus­band and fam­ily felt relieved to have that part of our lives framed, defined, put in a box, and the lid shut firmly.

What made those mem­o­ries so hard to unveil was the empha­sis they put on how pre­cious our lives are.  It’s like the game I play on the Tube, look­ing around at every sin­gle pas­sen­ger and say­ing to myself, “That per­son is the most impor­tant per­son in the world to SOME­ONE.  I won­der who that some­one is?”  Events like Sep­tem­ber 11 under­score that cru­cial role that every sin­gle one of us plays, to some­one.  More than one per­son, maybe, if we are lucky.

But after awhile, it is very nice to make sure that box lid is firmly shut, put the box on a high shelf, and turn back to the daily round of activ­i­ties that make up our real life, deeply com­fort­ing in their lack of significance.

In other words, what I really like writ­ing about is what the Vic­to­rian nov­el­ist George Mered­ith called “see­ing divin­ity in what the world deems gross mate­r­ial sub­stance.”  How I love gross mate­r­ial sub­stance, how I revel in it!  Gross mate­r­ial sub­stance might present itself as medieval church where I ring, and the weight of its glo­ri­ous bells…

or the raw ingre­di­ents which when I put them together form a sup­per of scal­lops, beets and goat cheese…

or the achingly beau­ti­ful autum­nal leaves climb­ing up the Geor­gian wall where I lean my bicycle…

All these bits of the world do seem divine to me, and I love chron­i­cling them.

Not to men­tion the peo­ple who pop in and out of my imag­ined nar­ra­tive: the daugh­ter and hus­band whose crises of ortho­don­ture and taxes form lit­tle hur­dles to hop over, or crash into…  And the lovely peo­ple at my church who have given so much time in order to make out of me a respectable bell­ringer!  I did a really good job at ring­ing in “rounds” last week­end and Trinny, one of my lovely instruc­tors said to Howard, my most devoted teacher, “Kris­ten did really well at that, Howard!  Give her a lit­tle praise!” to which Howard answered, “She is noth­ing now but one of the name­less, face­less rab­ble to me,” grin­ning at me a bit with a twin­kle in his eye.  What an honor that is to me, to be part of the rab­ble.  We pull our ropes, and the lovely tones float over the vil­lage, and I sud­denly notice the lit­tle fig­ures in the leaded glass win­dow above my head!

Look closely!  The lit­tle shapes at the bot­tom of the win­dow are BELL­RINGERS!  And if you count over left to right, the eighth lit­tle fel­low is dan­gling at the end of his rope high above the bellcham­ber!  Some­one with a sense of humor cre­ated this win­dow, know­ing how some­times bell­ring­ing can be deadly seri­ous, lit­er­ally heavy, and we all need a lit­tle light­en­ing of the spir­its.  That light­ness is cer­tainly some­thing sup­plied by our young ringers, every one of them a beauty inside and out.

Life was made more deli­cious by lunch out with my friend Elspeth at Sonny’s in the High Street.  How admire the food at that lovely cafe.  It is my goal this week­end to repro­duce the dish I had there: per­fect sashimi of yel­low­tail tuna rolled in black sesame seeds, accom­pa­nied by lit­tle dol­lops of avo­cado mousse, tiny piles of indi­vid­ual grape­fruit beads, and a scat­ter­ing of shiso, a new ingre­di­ent for me, which the wait­ress explained was “Japan­ese corian­der,” in Amer­ica “Japan­ese cilantro.”  Del­i­cate and gorgeous.

To work off all this lovely food, John and I have been doggedly rid­ing our bikes and play­ing our crazy ver­sion of ten­nis.  “Use the WHOLE court!” we chor­tle, jump­ing for balls that go high over our heads.

One morn­ing we hopped on our bikes and rode to hell and gone, try­ing to find the All Saints Church, Ful­ham where I was to ring bells that night!  We rode and rode and rode, until finally we came to a bridge.  “Well, this isn’t Put­ney Bridge where the church is,” I com­plained.  “No, I think it’s… Bat­tersea!”  We were miles out of our way, so we turned around and rode past the Wandsworth Bridge as well, laugh­ing at our­selves, and finally came upon the church where I was lucky enough to be a vis­it­ing ringer that evening.  Gorgeous.

The fun of being a decent-ish ringer is that now I can be itin­er­ant!  I can wan­der, wher­ever I am invited.  And the fun of Ful­ham was that we rang on what are called “sim­u­la­tors,” which means I wear head­phones that play the sound of bells ring­ing in rounds, only the sound of my bell is left out!  So I have to man­age to ring in JUST the spot where the silence falls.  Then there is a shame­ful ses­sion with Edmund, my Ful­ham teacher, who shows me on the com­puter screen an exact record of my efforts, and how far off the mark they are!  Great fun.

With all my ring­ing activ­i­ties, Avery is just as occu­pied — much more so! — with rehearsals for the school musi­cal, “Sweet Char­ity.”  She came home last week rav­ing about the les­son the drama teacher had given them that day.  “You know, it looks totally dif­fer­ent to smoke mar­i­juana than an ordi­nary cig­a­rette,” Avery assured us, per­haps not notic­ing our looks of mild dis­may.  “So she showed us exactly how it should look.”  “From per­sonal expe­ri­ence, I assume?” I asked faintly.  “I guess so,” Avery said, uncon­cerned.  Her father gave an elab­o­rate mimed demon­stra­tion, derived I fear more from trashy B-movies than any very exten­sive real-life knowledge.

All a mother could do was to cook, really.  I had been hard at work the day before mak­ing some emer­gency chicken soup for one of Avery’s friends who was ail­ing, and some­thing inspired me to make… chicken meat­balls.  So much more fun than just lit­tle pieces of chicken breast float­ing in the broth!  And it required noth­ing more than John’s sug­ges­tion the fol­low­ing evening, sim­ply “Pojarski?” to cat­a­pult those lit­tle meat­balls into a sub­lime new dish.  Give it a try.

Chicken Meatl­balls in Pojarski Sauce

(serves 8)

for the meatballs:

about 2 lbs/1 kg  chicken breasts (about 8 small half-breasts), bone­less and skinless

1 1/2/350 ml cup milk

1 1/2 cup/80g Panko breadcrumbs

1 tbsp Fox Point (or other savory) seasoning

good grind fresh black pepper

for the sauce:

3 tbsps butter

1 tbsp flour (more later if needed to thicken sauce)

6 cloves gar­lic, minced

1 shal­lot, minced

1 1/2 tbsp paprika

about 1/3 cup/90ml brandy

1 cup/275ml chicken stock

1 cup/275 ml sour cream

good grind fresh black pepper

Trim the chicken breasts com­pletely of any fat, gris­tle, ten­dons.  They must be supremely per­fect for this dish.  Now place them in your Mag­imix or Cuisi­nart and pulse care­fully until the chicken is finely ground.  Not mushy, but finely chopped.

Mix the milk, bread­crumbs and sea­son­ings in a medium bowl, then add the chicken.  With clean hands, squish together all these ingre­di­ents until you can see that the chicken is thor­oughly mixed with the bread­crumbs and the sea­son­ings are well-distributed.  The mix­ture should be as wet as you can rea­son­ably han­dle.  Add more milk if nec­es­sary to achieve this very frag­ile, wet mix­ture.  Set mix­ture aside.

Now make the sauce, because you will poach the meat­balls in it.  In a large (at least 12 inches) shal­low fry­ing pan or paella pan, melt the but­ter, add the flour and cook, stir­ring con­stantly, for a minute.  Then add the gar­lic and shal­lots and saute until soft.  Sprin­kle on the paprika and cook for a minute or so.  Deglaze the pan with the brandy and cook for two min­utes rather high, stir­ring as the brandy evap­o­rates.  Add the chicken stock and sour cream and begin stir­ring with a wire whisk.  Sim­mer and sea­son with black pep­per to taste.  Be care­ful of the sea­son­ing as this sauce (and the meat­balls) can be decep­tively salty depend­ing on the sea­son­ings with the chicken and the fla­vors of the stock.

When the sauce is thor­oughly mixed and hot, care­fully make meat­balls the size of golf­balls and drop them gen­tly into the sim­mer­ing sauce.  Try to main­tain a sin­gle layer, but if you can­not, poach the first layer for sev­eral min­utes until the meat­balls can be moved care­fully, then fit in the extra meat­balls.  Poach at a low sim­mer for about five min­utes, then turn each meat­ball care­fully, coat­ing them in the sauce. Poach a fur­ther five min­utes.  Taste to make sure chicken is thor­oughly cooked.  At this point you may take the pan off the heat and leave it for the fla­vors to develop.  Heat through when you are ready to eat.  Serve with noodles.

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

HEAV­ENLY!

These meat­balls are light, fluffy, del­i­cate.  The sauce is the def­i­n­i­tion of savory, rich, old-fashioned.

It was just as well that I was for­ti­fied with this lovely dish, because my next bell­ring­ing out­ing was a dis­as­ter.  I tried a method called Plain Hunt on Five, which involves the bells actu­ally switch­ing places in their order.  Beyond me!  I got con­fused, the bell began to fall, I pan­icked, made the near-fatal mis­take of look­ing UP into the bel­fry, the bell really fell and I for­got how to raise it.  Too scary!

After res­cu­ing me, my teach­ers explained kindly.  “When you’re rid­ing a bike, if you’re really good at the skills, then when you get lost you can retrace your steps.  Or if a pedes­trian wan­ders into your path, you can swerve to avoid him.  But if you’re just begin­ning at rid­ing the bike, if you get lost or swerve, you might fall off in the heat of the moment, and lose track of all your skills because they aren’t auto­matic yet.”  Truer words were never spo­ken.  I’m just not an auto­matic ringer yet.  Thank good­ness for those funny lit­tle win­dow fel­lows, to cheer me up.

These lovely win­dows were put in around 1983 after arson fire of 1976 destroyed all but the orig­i­nal 1215 bits of the chapel, and the tower.  Can you imag­ine, 1215!  We are bandy­ing around ideas on how to cel­e­brate our 800th birth­day in three years’ time.  Imagine.

The bril­liant thing about learn­ing a new skill, and doing a new and very SPE­CIFIC thing, is the lovely free­dom of being shouted at and crit­i­cized but ONLY for the thing one is doing!  Just the wrong han­dling of your bell at that moment in ONE par­tic­u­lar way.  No hard feel­ings!  No accu­sa­tions of “being a bad ringer”.  Just a mis­taken action, at a par­tic­u­lar moment, eas­ily fixed, eas­ily for­got­ten.  No baggage.

Wouldn’t life be bet­ter if we could take crit­i­cism for every­thing that way… “That thing you just said to me, oh hus­band mine, I will take that as merely crit­i­cism of one par­tic­u­lar aspect of my wife­li­ness, not a con­dem­na­tion of the whole enter­prise!”  I’d like to emu­late my ring­ing teach­ers and learn not to start crit­i­cisms with “You always…” or “You never…”  Just “don’t do THAT!”

My father, the bril­liant child psy­chol­o­gist… what an invalu­able resource he was when Avery was a baby.  I remem­ber he offered me the fol­low­ing advice when I was a very young mother. “Be sure that what you say to your child is ONLY what you mean to say to her about exactly what is hap­pen­ing right then, not all mixed up with how mad you got at work, or how annoyed you are with your hus­band, or bad traf­fic or any­thing else.  Just talk to her about the one spe­cific thing.  And then it’s over, and you both move on.”  How wise and lov­ing he was.

And so life has calmed down once again.  This week­end will bring an anniver­sary party for old friends, a house­warm­ing party for other old friends, for which I shall enjoy shop­ping for gifts.  A hair­cut for Avery, a spot of gar­den­ing for me, our joint fam­ily project look­ing after the next door cat (coal-black, called “Snowy”) while our neigh­bors are on hol­i­day, a deli­cious Sat­ur­day sup­per of lamb chops.  “Gross mate­r­ial sub­stance,” in other words.  How lovely and divine it all is.

What did we learn from Sep­tem­ber 11?

I learned that noth­ing, whether it is bad or good, lasts for­ever.  After the events of the day, that tru­ism seemed to apply only to good things: sky­scrap­ers, happy kinder­garten, safety, security.

But as the months went by, I learned that the bad bits do not last for­ever, either.  As a lovely Scot­tish writer put it, “Grief is a won­der­ful thing in a way, because after a bit you can put it down, by the side of the road, and walk on.”  I learned to do that, but it was slow-going and with many steps back­ward along the way.  I learned that in many ways, I was made of The Wrong Stuff.  I could not be far­ther from the per­son­al­ity of a hero who runs into a burn­ing build­ing or a mayor who goes to 343 firemen’s funer­als, or Abby the Kinder­garten Teacher who spent seven hours a day with 45 five-year-olds and was still smil­ing at 3 p.m.  I just was not made of The Right Stuff.

I empathized with the edi­to­r­ial writer of the New York Times who mused whether she would rather die smoth­ered in a tun­nel or falling from a bridge.  I wor­ried a great deal about vehi­cles parked in my street with no imme­di­ately iden­ti­fi­able owner.  The whole “if you see some­thing, say some­thing” motto of New York City found a will­ing col­lab­o­ra­tor in me, and my local precinct of New York’s Bravest got heartily sick of my phone calls.  I’m sure I was on a “loony neigh­bor” list with the box next to my name firmly ticked.  In ink.

I took a lot of fit­ful naps and became obses­sively famil­iar with the topog­ra­phy of Afghanistan.  I was irri­ta­ble and snap­pish.  I was not inspi­ra­tional or uplift­ing or even one iota optimistic.

But the thing was, life was relent­less.  Cop­ing with Avery’s needs got me up in the morn­ing and kept me going dur­ing the day.  It was impos­si­ble not to get excited when the class­room chicks hatched, and even though there wasn’t a place to sit down, the kinder­garten room was a mag­net for many of us par­ents.  Abby’s unfail­ing, gen­tle smile was always filled with love and patience, for all of us.  We par­ents often felt as much under her wing as the chil­dren did.

And then, in Feb­ru­ary, it hap­pened.  Our beloved PS 234 was given back to us.

The Fed­eral Emer­gency Man­age­ment Admin­is­tra­tion had occu­pied the school since the evening of Sep­tem­ber 11.  On the school’s web­site there was a cal­en­dar with a smi­ley face stuck to every day the school had been open that year.  It stopped at Sep­tem­ber 10.  Who knows what state the school build­ing was in when the last of those offi­cial boots walked out the door.  We kinder­garten par­ents were not included in what must have been a mas­sive parental effort to make the school wel­com­ing again.

What I do remem­ber is the open week­end before the offi­cial reopen­ing on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 4.  With char­ac­ter­is­tic sen­si­tiv­ity, the school’s admin­is­tra­tors sim­ply opened the doors, all week­end, and let us all re-acquaint our­selves with the school in our own time, in our own ways.  All Avery wanted to do was run around “the yard,” the seem­ingly unap­peal­ing, sim­ple con­crete open area which had been the scene of such panic and chaos months before.  In the months and years ahead, “the yard” would be the scene instead of hours of chalk-drawing, whis­pered con­fi­dences, kick­ball and even a lit­tle child­hood romance…  Around and around she ran, exor­cis­ing ghosts.

There were huge trucks parked out­side the front door of the school, loaded with fresh school sup­plies, juice boxes, prob­a­bly even a ham­ster or two.  It was very, very excit­ing, and also heart­break­ing in a way.  Start­ing over is always a chal­lenge, and we had started over so many times that year.

We went inside and for some rea­son were the only peo­ple there.  The soli­tude and silence were just what we needed to absorb the mem­o­ries of the past, to rec­on­cile the hope and inno­cence of Sep­tem­ber 10 with the expe­ri­ences of Sep­tem­ber 11, the adjust­ments, tears, losses and gains of the inter­ven­ing five months.  The quiet hall­ways were lined, poet­i­cally, touch­ingly, with the dozens of Amer­i­can flags made of every mate­r­ial you can imag­ine, from coun­tries all over the world, sent to us to cheer us up on arrival.  “Wel­come home!” they said in many lan­guages.  “You’ve got your school back!  Hip hip  hooray!”

Avery stood gaz­ing up at one of the dozens of quilts that had been sent to us, read­ing the heart­felt, empa­thetic mes­sages from chil­dren we would never meet.  “I know it’s been hard for you, but it will get bet­ter.”  “The whole world is think­ing of you.”  “We had a hur­ri­cane in our town once and three peo­ple died, so I know how you feel.”

It was stun­ning and hum­bling to think of all the effort, all over the world, that strangers had made to cre­ate gifts for our chil­dren (and for us), to hang in our school.  I thought of all the school­teach­ers who felt help­less, imag­in­ing what they would do if their school were taken from them, and it must have felt so good to be able to do some­thing, to give us some­thing.  They were such inter­est­ing dona­tions: not com­mer­cial or mon­e­tary or valu­able.  They were sim­ply out­pour­ings of sym­pa­thy, and we needed them.

Of course there was one tan­gi­ble gift that became part of Avery’s life and has fol­lowed her every­where.  Abby Bear.

Abby Bear — dozens of Abby Bears — were sent to us by a school in Alabama, and dis­trib­uted to all the kinder­gart­ners.  She has moved with us across an ocean, and to three Lon­don homes.  Some­thing tells me she’ll be mak­ing the trip to uni­ver­sity in four years’ time.

On our way home from the quiet tour of our school, I asked Avery, “What do you remem­ber from that day, Sep­tem­ber 11?  Do you remem­ber any­thing special?”

Long pause.

“Well, I remem­ber that I was the last one in through the red door.  And then, there was a very loud noise, and all the pigeons flew in the same direction.”

So we went back.  That Mon­day in Feb­ru­ary, a cold and bit­ter day, there were many odd things to notice.  Cheer­lead­ers!  A march­ing band from the local high school!  Hun­dreds of reporters, among them a lovely writer from Peo­ple Mag­a­zine who included us in his story.  The chan­cel­lor or com­mis­sioner or what­ever he is called, of Edu­ca­tion turned up, the pres­i­dent of the PTA at whom I had so unhelp­fully cursed on Sep­tem­ber 11, made a speech.  Finally our beloved Anna Switzer, the most for­mi­da­ble and yet warm-hearted prin­ci­pal any school will ever know, wel­comed us.

I don’t remem­ber any­thing any­one said because I was too busy try­ing not to cry.  Unsuc­cess­fully.  Every­thing to do with Avery always makes me want to cry, but it was a bit more so that day even than usual.  I looked at Anna Switzer and won­dered how she had sur­vived the last five months: the worry, the pres­sure, the con­tro­versy over the air qual­ity — should we or should we not return? — on top of the usual prob­lems any school has, like never enough money for any­thing.  Anna was inde­fati­ga­ble.  When she dis­cov­ered that Avery, a lowly kinder­gart­ner, used hand­ker­chiefs instead of tis­sues, she gave her one.  “I col­lect them,” she explained.  Avery has it still.  Per­haps it was in her pocket that day.

Through­out the speeches, I felt myself dis­in­te­grat­ing a bit inside.  Here was the day we had all been wait­ing for!  Why wasn’t I com­pletely happy?  I think there was a lot of anger under­neath my gen­eral worry and fear, anger that made it hard to get to the cel­e­bra­tory bit.  How mon­strous it was that we should be forced into this sit­u­a­tion at all.  How unac­cept­able that we should have to stand there, feel­ing tear­ful and grate­ful and thank­ful and SPE­CIAL.  Why should John have to spell out “PS 234″ in raisin toast for Avery’s birth­day?  I was sud­denly in the mood to throw a bowl of cereal at her in the morn­ing and get back to being casual, and ordinary.

But we got through the cer­e­mony.  Abby gath­ered up her charges, in all their human vari­ety and small stature.  That kinder­garten class was her first ever job.

Finally they went into the school, through the red door.  Avery was gone.  School was open.  And noth­ing bad happened.

We sol­diered on.  I dis­cov­ered what it was like to be part of the PS 234 com­mu­nity.  The PTA — a much more bossy and vocal group than our Eng­lish school’s “Par­ents Guild” — ran the place.  We raised tens of thou­sands of dol­lars to pro­vide our school with a library, where I worked from Day One, labelling each and every book with a bar­code so the col­lec­tion could be com­put­er­ized, for the first time.  This was the view from the win­dow of the library.

Only if you had been there before Sep­tem­ber 11 would you know that you shouldn’t be able to see any sky from this win­dow.  There should be only the build­ings, as far, really, as the eye could see.  These trail­ers and trucks down below housed emer­gency work­ers well into the sum­mer that year.

Dur­ing the days I spent bar­cod­ing books, there were sur­real moments.  An announce­ment over the loud­speaker.  “The kinder­garten trip to Staten Island has been can­celled due to a bomb threat at the Statue of Lib­erty.  Pickup at nor­mal time today.”  There was Laura Bush’s visit to read to the chil­dren, a visit com­plete with escorts from the National Guard, car­ry­ing rifles and auto­matic weapons into our school.

But in gen­eral, some­thing like nor­mal life pre­vailed.  We held the annual Spring Auc­tion which raised money for the art and music depart­ments.  I became the head of the Book Sale which took place every semes­ter in the very hall­way where we all had stood, won­der­ing what to do, on Sep­tem­ber 11.  In that same hall­way, I read with chil­dren who were hav­ing trou­ble keep­ing up.  (Actu­ally mostly what I did was lis­ten to child­ish chat­ter as the kids would much rather gos­sip than read aloud.)  I was class mother, so I went on count­less school trips to arbore­tums, zoos, muse­ums.  Grad­u­ally our mem­o­ries of the school as a place of hor­ror and uncer­tainty became replaced with cozy, messy, shouty mem­o­ries of kids with sticky hands.  Avery became used to see­ing me at school, in school, nearly every day.  It was the only way I could think of to cope.  It was a bit of a cheat really: I was in the­ory “leav­ing her at school,” because I left her in the school­yard and kissed her good­bye.  But I was there.

One day John told me some­thing he hadn’t wanted to tell me before.  He had been invited to a finan­cial infor­ma­tion ser­vices break­fast at “Win­dows on the World,” the restau­rant at the top of the World Trade Cen­ter, on the morn­ing of Sep­tem­ber 11.  He had decided he was too busy to go.  Every­one there died.

These adjust­ments and expe­ri­ences and mem­o­ries had unex­pected effects on me, per­haps on all of us.  I had my first and only ever bor­der­line sui­ci­dal thoughts.  Not that I really wanted to be dead, but some­times the over­whelm­ing pre­cious­ness of being alive, and the lin­ger­ing fear of how much we all had to lose, over­whelmed me.  I imag­ined, briefly, how much eas­ier it would be just to throw it all away myself, take the bull by the horns, just give in, give up.  At times like that I decided to think it was a nor­mal stage of griev­ing, and I retreated under a duvet with a pile of cats, an old famil­iar video on the tele­vi­sion, and waited out the day until it was time to pick Avery up at school.  See­ing her again always made the unspeak­able fears retreat, for a time.

Sum­mer came.  We all went back to play­ing in the park across the street from the school, where one scary evening in win­ter a team in Haz­mat suits had come to vac­uum up the sand­box.  That’s how crazy life was in the months after we went back to school.  Some city offi­cial would wake up in the mid­dle of the night and say to him­self, “Oh my God!  That sand­box!  There could be ANY­THING in it.  Quick, get rid of it.  Maybe no one will notice us there.”  And we’d wake up to a brand­new, cleanly filled sand­box for the first time in liv­ing mem­ory, when for sure neigh­bor­hood chil­dren had been squat­ting there and doing who knows what for years.

That same offi­cial, respond­ing to the pleas of still-upset par­ents, installed some sort of magic air-measuring bal­loon at the top of the school­yard.  Every once in awhile, there would be no “yard,” what we called “recess,” because some num­ber mea­sur­ing some­thing had been too high, that morn­ing.  Now, in hind­sight, I think so many of these “offi­cial” mea­sure­ments and actions were a sort of “pay no atten­tion to the man behind the cur­tain,” as we all vaguely hoped some Wiz­ard was look­ing after us.

There were, once again, birth­day par­ties in the park, how­ever.  Ice cream and cake wait for no man.

On the last day of school that year, the hugs and kisses were fer­vent.  We said good­bye to Abby who with her per­sonal brand of emo­tional glue had held us all together, indi­vid­u­ally and as a group, since Sep­tem­ber 11.  The new school year would be a fresh start, another “first day of school.”

Every year we observe the anniver­sary, in small ways.  We watch the names being read on tele­vi­sion.  Alyssa called me the first year.  “They were on the Cs, and I had to go to the gro­cery.  When I got back, they were only on the Ms.”  Every year I speak in an email to Jen, the mother I stood with on the cor­ner when the plane went over.  I speak to Kath­leen, Cici’s mom, with whom I shared the whole ter­ri­ble day.  Every year I speak to my friend at Can­tor Fitzger­ald, a lit­tle about Sep­tem­ber 11, a lit­tle about art.  Here in Eng­land we go to the beau­ti­ful memo­r­ial to the 67 British vic­tims, in Grosvenor Square where the Amer­i­can Embassy looms.

Every year we ask Avery what she remem­bers and some­where along the line, the mem­o­ries (as few as they were) went from real mem­o­ries to only sto­ries being told about what she remem­bers being told she remembers.

This spring, out of the blue, the phone rang here in Lon­don as we were still unpack­ing boxes from our lat­est move.  “Hi, this is Doug, from that Cana­dian news­pa­per who inter­viewed you and Avery in Novem­ber, after Sep­tem­ber 11.  Do you remem­ber?  You showed me the hat you bought for Avery from the Afghan store in New York, dur­ing the first part of the war.  Do you remember?”

Sud­denly I did.  I told him I’d call him back, scram­bled to my feet, ran up to Avery’s room at the top of the house, rooted through her closet, and finally found it.

I called him back and he asked many ques­tions about how we had coped in the years since that day.  Avery over­heard my half of the con­ver­sa­tion and came into the room after I had hung up.  “Do you guys real­ize that I know less about Sep­tem­ber 11 than any­one else my age?  I was the only one who was there, and I don’t know any­thing about it!  It’s prob­a­bly the most inter­est­ing, sig­nif­i­cant thing that will ever hap­pen in my life, and I was left out of the whole thing.”

(My friend Eliz­a­beth smiled wisely when I told her this story.  “We hope it’s not the more inter­est­ing, sig­nif­i­cant thing what will ever hap­pen to her.”  I smiled more grimly and said, “Maybe we don’t.  Maybe that’s as inter­est­ing as it needs to get.”)

“You were four years old!” I said, imme­di­ately defen­sive.  “You didn’t have any busi­ness know­ing any­thing about it.  You were a baby!”

We talked about the day, what had hap­pened to her.  “I remem­ber the school was REALLY crowded!”  And of course she remem­bers Abby.

“Go ahead and find out any­thing you like,” we said finally.  Avery is an invet­er­ate news house, addicted to the BBC and vocif­er­ously well-informed about all cur­rent events, much more so than I.

We will never know if it was the right thing to do, to pro­tect and shel­ter her.  Chil­dren are resilient, every­one always tells me.  Peo­ple in gen­eral are resilient.  One thing I cer­tainly learned from Sep­tem­ber 11 and the days and months and years after­ward is a sort of mod­i­fied Niet­zsche tru­ism: “That which does not kill you does not nec­es­sar­ily make you stronger, but you are still alive.  Get on with it.”

We con­tinue to try.  On this anniver­sary my great­est hope is to remem­ber, then put the mem­o­ries down by the side of the road, and walk on.

(click here to read of what hap­pened to us on the day of the events)