the magic of music (not to men­tion squash)

The past week or so has been an exer­cise in tak­ing my own advice: sim­ply putting aside the imag­in­ings of what I ought to be accom­plish­ing, in favor of the here and now of my rather needy fam­ily of late.

Avery’s day off school descended into that most dis­mal of all ail­ments, the com­mon cold. Not enough of an ill­ness to jus­tify stay­ing home (although if John weren’t breath­ing down my neck, I’d always rather she stayed home when the slight­est runny nose strikes), but enough to make life mis­er­able for the dura­tion. Achy, no appetite to speak of (which strikes ter­ror in my feeding-people heart), cranky and apa­thetic. One of Avery’s favorite jokes? “Are you igno­rant, or just apa­thetic? I don’t know and I don’t care.”

Then John’s tooth flared up again and he spent a mis­er­able week­end antic­i­pat­ing a root canal, which took place yes­ter­day. Then last evening, while I vol­un­teered at a school drinks party, John took Avery to the maxillo-facial sur­geon (can that be right?) for a con­sul­ta­tion on her upcom­ing surgery to bring down her incisors, to be met with her braces and pulled into place.

Ouch.

The poor guys. All I can do is make chicken soup and other soft, warm foods, and feel sorry for them both.

In the mean­time, I man­aged to meet up with my new blog designer here, over an enor­mous dish of mac­a­roni and cheese and a mam­moth salad of beet leaves, rocket, olives, toma­toes, arti­choke hearts. The plans that young man has for my efforts! Have you ever heard of SEO? Nei­ther had I, but it stands for “Search Engine Opti­miza­tion,” or how to get Google to pay more atten­tion to me. For instance, if I write about our trip to Venice, he has strate­gies for get­ting my blog to come up early in people’s Google searches for “Venice,” and the same for creamy sweet­corn and rocket soup. And he has won­der­ful ideas for randomly-appearing recipe hot links to pop up every time you log on, and a dif­fer­ent ban­ner photo for every post. And a logo! There will be a whole series of dead­lines, test dri­ves, opin­ion polls (you can weigh in if you like!), before finally going live with the New And Improved Kris­ten in Lon­don on… May 20.

That’s all very well for me, in the dull month of March, to keep me occu­pied. And John’s had more than enough to con­tend with vis­it­ing den­tists. Our entire house­hold has been livened up in a very minor way by our acqui­si­tion of a “toastie machine,” which makes any­thing between two slices of bread a hot, chewy, glo­ri­ous meal: buf­falo moz­zarella, bre­saola, rocket and home­made pesto, as you see. Some­thing to keep us entertained.

But dear Avery? Read­ers, I can hardly con­vey to you her frus­tra­tion with the piano. She hates the songs she’s been given to learn at school, her lessons occur dur­ing other lessons at school, so she must leave, miss the home­work assign­ment and rush to meet up with her teacher for a scant 20 min­utes or so of instruc­tion. Then she for­gets a les­son, then her teacher is called away and can­cels. You can imagine.

So the poor dear sits on the vel­vet bench, music propped dis­con­so­lately in front of her, bang­ing away as I cook din­ner. “But Avery, that’s meant to be an F sharp, I’m sure.” “I like it this way.” Dear me. Moments of silence fall between songs as she gath­ers her men­tal strength to con­tinue. The whole instru­ment seems to encap­su­late every­thing frus­trat­ing about edu­ca­tion: being at other people’s mercy, hav­ing to do what THEY say, hav­ing to fol­low all the stu­pid rules when YOUR way sounds just as nice. My sis­ter and I have agreed that to play the piano at least on a basic level, or at least to read music com­pe­tently, seems to us a skill akin to read­ing or sub­tract­ing. So I insist that Avery con­tinue, just for a bit.

So, the anti­dote for all this musi­cal mis­ery? Not, as I would have thought, immer­sion in Face­book or video games or tele­vi­sion. No, in a dis­play of the sort of wis­dom that makes me look at her in awe, she picked up, as you see, an old gui­tar, loaned to her by one of my friends, and began to impro­vise. Strum­ming away in the dimly lighted study, by her­self, she looked for all the world like the next Joan Baez. Even what she was wear­ing, and fall of her hair, seemed an image of seren­ity from bygone days. How beau­ti­ful the sound was, how it took me back to my child­hood with my brother’s incred­i­ble tal­ent play­ing itself out every day from his guitars…

How peace­ful the house sud­denly was, one sort of music act­ing as a cure for another. She played from “High School Musi­cal,” unrec­og­niz­able from its awful pop incar­na­tion, just softly thrum­ming chords. The cats set­tled down near her, can­dles flick­ered on the table, and my din­ner veg­etable bub­bled away in the oven. Quite per­fect, and so unex­pected! A cure for anx­i­ety: gui­tar and but­ter­nut squash.

Baked But­ter­nut Squash with Sage
(serves 4)

2 small­ish but­ter­nut squashes
4 tbsps but­ter
4 tbsps brown sugar
driz­zle olive oil
16 sage leaves
sprin­kle sea salt

Heat oven to 400F, 200C. Line a cookie sheet or bak­ing sheet with foil. Cut each but­ter­nut squash in half length­ways and scoop out the seeds. In the cav­ity left behind the seeds, place 1 tbsp but­ter and 1 tbsp brown sugar. Driz­zle with olive oil, place 4 sage leaves on each squash half and sprin­kle with salt. Bake for at least 40 min­utes or until very soft. Lift out care­fully because the squash may col­lapse, and mind the very hot butter-sugar mix­ture. Spoon the melted sugar but­ter over the whole half squash and serve hot or warm.

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Speak­ing of music, we are on our way to a charm­ing Eng­lish school insti­tu­tion known as “The Singing Tea.” Just what it says on the tin (also one of my favorite Eng­lish expres­sions), it’s a teatime con­cert of per­for­mances by girls who are tak­ing singing lessons at school. You turn up in time for a cup of tea, or a glass of elder­flower, you take a lit­tle piece of date and wal­nut cake, and chat for a bit with other par­ents. Then the girls are called onto the stage in the Singing Hall, one by one, to per­form the pieces they are prac­tic­ing for the upcom­ing National Exams this week­end. Avery is singing one piece in French (very depress­ing words, but they sound lovely) and one piece in Ger­man (she assures me it’s a bucolic tale of frolic and may­hem, but it sounds like a funeral dirge).

I’ll take plenty of tissues.