every­thing soft (espe­cially me)

Well, it’s Sun­day evening, there’s a chill rain falling on the mid­night streets of Lon­don, and I feel I’ve dodged a bullet.

Thurs­day found us dri­ving a des­per­ately anx­ious Avery to have her den­tal surgery. Some­how I imag­ined this hap­pen­ing in a dentist’s office (silly me, that’s what hap­pens in Amer­ica, I think, never hav­ing been through any such thing), and since the den­tal sur­geon had told us to expect the pro­ce­dure to last a half hour, I had us home about an hour and a half later, relieved at its being over.

I had it all wrong.

We pulled up to the stated address to find our­selves at a hos­pi­tal. A real, proper hos­pi­tal. Avery’s despair deep­ened. Up to a hos­pi­tal ROOM, com­plete with bed with head and foot that moved accord­ing to a lit­tle remote con­trol, an entirely unbe­liev­able menu of food items like “Veg­etable Pakora with Raita” and “Seared Cod with Miso Sauce” (in a HOS­PI­TAL??), and per­haps most incred­i­ble, a com­plete list of wines and spir­its. At this point, while the porter (like at a door­man build­ing in New York) was point­ing out how to work the space-age bed, I was about ready to order the entire bot­tle of Smirnoff vodka and call it a day.

Hos­pi­tal gown (“The ties open at the back, dear”), dress­ing gown (only in Eng­land) and dis­pos­able slip­pers. Did they think she was stay­ing the night? I felt com­pletely shocked out of my skin. Some­how, I knew we wouldn’t be home in an hour and a half.

Three hours of wait­ing later, things went from shock­ing to com­pletely unbe­liev­able, for me, as the sur­geon and anaes­thetist (I longed for Amer­ica where it’s spelled anes­the­si­ol­o­gist and some­how sounds less scary with­out the dipthong) arrived. Dressed in clothes that looked appro­pri­ate for a round of golf (sur­geon) and an accoun­tants’ office (anaes­thetist), they announced that plans had changed and Avery would be put under a gen­eral anaesthetic.

Before I could prop­erly take this in, Avery and John were nod­ding rather calmly, both of them hav­ing been intel­li­gent enough to do research on all pos­si­ble pain relief options, long before the day. I felt com­pletely igno­rant and rug-pulled-out-from-under, but what could I say? It all seemed a fait accom­pli. Seem­ingly instantly, she was taken away, John hav­ing been voted the par­ent to accom­pany her to the “oper­at­ing the­atre” (I was des­ig­nated as “recov­ery parent”).

“Say good­bye to Mum,” the nurse intoned kindly enough, which felt like doom to me.

“Bye, Mummy,” Avery said, and with her usual demeanor of charm and impec­ca­ble man­ners to strangers, sim­ply walked away into the the­atre, John fol­low­ing her.

AUTHO­RISED PER­SON­NEL ONLY.

I was struck by what seemed to have hap­pened: my only child sim­ply taken from me, thank God with her father with her, to undergo some­thing that’s never hap­pened to me, a jour­ney down a per­ilous and unknown path, at the mercy of peo­ple I had scarcely met, let alone quizzed about their steadi­ness of hand, their mood, their lev­els of con­cen­tra­tion. What if they’d had too much cof­fee, or not enough, or fought with their girl­friends and weren’t pay­ing attention?

“Are you all right?” asked a lovely pass­ing nurse. This is Eng­lish for any num­ber of ques­tions. It rarely means what Amer­i­cans think of ask­ing “Are you all right?” which would indi­cate a pretty seri­ous con­cern for someone’s well-being. To the Eng­lish, it can mean, “Is your cof­fee milky enough?” or “Do you need help with your baby’s buggy?” in the Tube.

This Eng­lish lady, how­ever, could see that I took her ques­tion literally.

“My daughter’s in there, with­out me. Her father’s there, though…”

“Ah, here he comes. It will all come out all right,” she said, and smiled with the uncon­cern of the pro­fes­sional in an arena that seems to the out­side vis­i­tor totally over­whelm­ing and frightening.

There fol­lowed the longest 40 min­utes of my life. Worse than wait­ing for a plane to take off in my worst moments of fear of fly­ing, but sim­i­lar. How could I have put the most pre­cious thing in the world in the hands of com­plete strangers who knew how to han­dle machin­ery I couldn’t even iden­tify? We tried to watch telly, we tried to chat, but even John was a bit off and con­ver­sa­tion flagged.

Finally the lovely nurse was back, smil­ing, “Would you like to come to her now?”

“You mean she’s all right?”

“But of course, a bit wob­bly per­haps, but you mustn’t worry,” this all said in a placid French accent, her whites impec­ca­ble, she sep­a­rated from me by a gulf of non-motherhood. (Of course she may be a mother, but not the one of my child who might be a bit “wobbly.”)

And I found Avery, all tubed up and cer­tainly wob­bly, although motion­less, her eye­lashes flut­ter­ing, things attached to her hands, but unmis­tak­ably still Avery behind her eye­lids, when they flut­tered open.

“I was dizzy but I couldn’t make the words work…” she said. I found her hand under the blan­kets, pris­tine and soft, and held it, feel­ing my life had been saved.

The sur­geon and anaes­thetist appeared, in scrubs now and non­cha­lant, “It’s been a plea­sure,” they said mean­ing­lessly, not seem­ing to real­ize that they had brought me to the brink of total dis­as­ter, and then decided to let me live. How on earth do they DO that every day, many times a day? Take a 13-year-old’s con­scious­ness, body and life in their hands, fix some­thing, bring her back, and sim­ply move onto the next one? As for­eign an exis­tence as I can imag­ine. All this for two tiny gold chains attached to her buried incisors, to be attached to her braces next week. As if her teeth matter.

But of course they do. Real life continues.

Some two hours, a glass of water and a straw later, plus end­less mea­sur­ings of her heart rate and blood pres­sure, she was allowed to dress in her civvies, dis­card the dreaded hos­pi­tal gown (“I’m for SURE enter­ing that con­test to redesign hos­pi­tal gowns!” she said emphat­i­cally), and shake the nurse’s hand gra­ciously. “It’s been a plea­sure to look after you today,” the nurse said.

We put Avery care­fully into the car, I feel­ing as if I was han­dling an angel that I’d almost not got­ten back. She was her nor­mal self, detail­ing every­thing she remem­bered. “How weird to think I’ve been in a room I don’t even remem­ber, and something’s hap­pened to me that I just MISSED,” she marvelled.

We arrived at home, set­tled her with the new Daisy Dal­rym­ple mys­tery books that had mirac­u­lously arrived in the post while she was away, a cash­mere throw, a warm cat. The nurse hav­ing insisted that she eat some­thing to soak up the IV med­ica­tions, I made some creamy red pep­per soup. It can be done in the blink of an eye, while the cook downs a lovely cock­tail and begins to rejoin the land of the liv­ing, the thought­less, the care­less and normal.

Creamy Red Pep­per Soup
(serves 3)

2 tbsps but­ter
3 cloves gar­lic, roughly chopped
1 shal­lot, roughly chopped
4 red bell pep­pers, roughly chopped
2 sprigs thyme, roughly chopped
long splash Marsala wine
3 cups GOOD chicken stock
1/2 –3/4 cups dou­ble cream, depend­ing on how creamy you like it
sea salt and black pep­per to taste

Melt the but­ter in a heavy saucepan and throw in gar­lic, shal­lots, pep­pers and thyme. Saute till just not raw. Add Marsala and turn up heat to burn off alco­hol for 30 sec­onds or so. Add chicken stock and sim­mer until pep­pers are cooked, about 25 min­utes. Whizz with a hand blender and put through a sieve to catch pep­per skins and thyme stems. Add cream to soup and season.

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

This soup is love incar­nate. It’s like chicken soup but with­out the “sick per­son” con­no­ta­tions of chicken soup. It’s vel­vety and bright red and cel­e­bra­tory, and it makes Avery happy every time. This soup depends entirely on the qual­ity of its few ingre­di­ents: espe­cially really good stock (not from cubes) and really good cream.

This she sipped, and drank a glass of pink lemon­ade through a straw her clever father unearthed in the pantry.

And we put her to bed with hot water bot­tles, and a tis­sue paper pack­age to open, filled with lit­tle fake-pearl bracelets in funny, cheer­ful col­ors. Some­thing to open. And she was asleep, safe.

I asked her the next day how she man­aged to com­port her­self with­out pan­ick­ing. She had an expla­na­tion that stopped me in my tracks, with its sim­plic­ity and dignity.

“If you can con­trol your exte­rior closely enough, and make it pos­i­tive, then grad­u­ally it begins to affect your inte­rior, and you really begin to feel the way you’re acting.”

The next day she was COM­PLETELY FINE. No swelling, no pain. The annoy­ing anaes­thetic wore off and she was totally nor­mal. “Let’s walk to school at noon and I can say good­bye for the hol­i­day, to my friends.” Off we went, I leav­ing her to fin­ish the walk by her­self while I picked up an enor­mous quan­tity of Scot­tish salmon at our local fish­mon­gers, to be baked in a method so sim­ple it can hardly be called a recipe. But with salmon that fresh and divine, it hardly requires chew­ing either, so it’s per­fect for a semi-invalid.

Fox Point Salmon
(serves 3)

1 length of salmon serv­ing three por­tions: per­haps 1 lb in all?
olive oil to driz­zle
Fox Point Sea­son­ing to sprin­kle lavishly

Sim­ply driz­zle the oil, sprin­kle the Fox Point and bake this salmon in a very hot oven (425F, 210C) for about 20–25 min­utes, till JUST cooked through but NEVER dry. That’s IT.

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With this, it’s imper­a­tive to have:

Cheesy Spinach
(serves 3)

1 large bag washed baby spinach (1 lb)
2 tbsps but­ter
1 tbsp flour
1 tbsp cel­ery seeds
1/2 tbsp cel­ery salt (to taste, really, but mind the salti­ness)
3 cloves gar­lic
2 tbsps cream
1/4 lb sharp cheese: Ched­dar, Edam, Gruyere, Mon­terey Jack, grated

Whizz up the spinach in batches in the food proces­sor till in small pieces, but not mushy.

Melt but­ter in a large skil­let, add flour and siz­zle a bit, then add cel­ery seeds and salt and siz­zle more. Add cream and stir up into a stodgy, thick paste-like almost-sauce.

Now turn off heat, and throw in spinach and cheese. Just before you’re ready to seat, turn heat on low and stir con­stantly and watch it all mag­i­cally amal­ga­mate into a bright-green, creamy, cheesy DELIGHT.

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

Avery met up with me at the fishmonger’s car­ry­ing a giant choco­late Easter egg, an offer­ing from one of her friends. “She missed me yes­ter­day,” she said with plea­sure, and we headed home, for a peace­ful after­noon, and a din­ner of every­thing SOFT.

Over it all, my heart was soft, and grate­ful. I thought of the par­ents who were at the hos­pi­tal still, overnight, over many nights, hear­ing bad news, sur­viv­ing any sort of unimag­in­able anx­i­ety, not hav­ing to invent it as I did, because it was there in a diag­no­sis or an oper­a­tion, not some­thing sim­ple and pre­dictable and every­day as Avery had been through. And I was thankful.

It would be good to remem­ber to feel that way every day. I know very soon we’ll be back to chew­ing, and quib­bling, and being annoyed that she leaves her wet bath towel on her bed­room floor. But not today. Today every­thing is soft.