the past is anoth­er country

Here in rainy, chilly south­west Lon­don, mov­ing house con­tin­ues with all its pains and pleasures.

The love­ly things that we have found in our lat­est run-up to a house move can­not be topped by this beau­ti­ful gem, giv­en to Avery when she was born by our bril­liant sil­ver­smith and jew­el­er friend, a neigh­bor in our first New York loft.  Was it ever used?  Even if not, we cher­ished it, and now it’s been unearthed in the back of a cup­board, tar­nished and a bit sad.  But noth­ing that a bit of pol­ish could­n’t put right.

It’s fun­ny how … inevitable one’s life seems some­times, how every­thing and every­one is in the spot that life has set out, and one can’t imag­ine it any oth­er way.

And then, the land­lords come back to view “their” house prepara­to­ry to mov­ing back in next month, and I have had an amaz­ing morn­ing see­ing a whole alter­nate life with­in these walls where we three have been so hap­py for two years. Far from the qui­et peace of our life, here was an entire fam­i­ly — four chil­dren under 9! — run­ning all over “their” house, chas­ing our cats (who react­ed with var­i­ous degrees of fran­tic pan­ic) up and down three flights of stairs, peek­ing under the beds where they had hid­den, paus­ing a moment to tell me about their life in Swe­den, ask­ing where all my oth­er chil­dren are.  “You can’t have just the one, can you?  We have about four.”  (I loved the idea of “about” four children.)

The father sighed, cor­ralling the lit­tlest boy by his hood­ie, “I have no idea how we end­ed up with four chil­dren.  Well, I do, but…” How dif­fer­ent life could have been if I had had “about” four chil­dren.  As the par­ents ran around mea­sur­ing rooms and dis­cussing fur­ni­ture (and try­ing to keep their tod­dler from destroy­ing my art col­lec­tion), I sat with the two lit­tle girls on the guest bed and intro­duced them to Tacy, who after they were qui­et for a few min­utes, began to purr and stretch her legs.  “It’s a bit like hav­ing sis­ters and broth­ers, for my daugh­ter,” I explained.  “The cats are real­ly part of our fam­i­ly.” “We’d love to have a cat,” the eldest daugh­ter sighed, “but our lit­tle broth­er might take it apart.” Wim­sey, too, let him­self be petted. 

Final­ly there was a tat­too of beeps from the giant SUV in our dri­ve­way — “Dad­dy says the baby is toot­ing the horn, so please come!” the eldest boy report­ed.  They left in a flur­ry of mis­match­ing shoes and drag­ging out­er­gar­ments, the moth­er say­ing with grim res­ig­na­tion, “These chil­dren will not under­stand at ALL when we move in and all your cats are gone.”

In our ongo­ing attempt to purge our house­hold of all but the most essen­tial items, I root­ed around last week in the cre­den­za that holds my files and fold­ers, and found that most dinosaur-ish of all items in this mod­ern world: a real Rolodex. 

I think I am the last per­son on earth to pos­sess one of these things, once the sta­ple of every­one’s desk­top (back when “desk­top” was a phys­i­cal thing, that is).  Grant­ed, I haven’t used it in years, but I still own it.  And what a trea­sure trove of the past it is.

Busi­ness cards!  Does any­one use them any­more?  Or do peo­ple just whip out their iPhones and enter blood­less infor­ma­tion into an imper­son­al data­base?  I was obsessed with busi­ness cards, back in the day, and with build­ing up my lit­tle world bit of paper by bit of paper.  In those days, when we moved house I car­ried my Rolodex with me, not trust­ing it to the movers.  Oh, the mem­o­ries it evokes, today.

The lady who made Avery’s beau­ti­ful birth announce­ment!  Avery’s Pony Club here in London.

Restau­rants at which we have shared fab­u­lous meals — per­haps most notably, Nobu in Tribeca, where it was our “local,” believe it or not, to which we took Baby and then Tod­dler Avery to many ear­ly din­ners.  We had their pri­vate reser­va­tion num­ber!  But truth be told, most often we just dropped in, and when they saw us in line, they waved us for­ward, much to the tourists’ dismay.

Chanterelle!  How could they have gone out of busi­ness.  It was the fan­ci­est restau­rant in our neigh­bor­hood when Avery was tiny, and we used to walk her past its sto­ried win­dows, say­ing, “When you are old enough to have Chanterelle behav­ior, we will take you there.”  I can’t imag­ine she ever did­n’t have Chanterelle behav­ior, but by now, it is gone.

Back in the days before Google, I hoard­ed florists’ cards from any city where we might know some­one we need­ed to thank.  My moth­er-in-law’s florist for her beloved orchids, my moth­er’s for her birth­day daisies.  Even a florist in St Barths!  I can’t imag­ine why.

Of course the New York art world of a decade or so ago is well rep­re­sent­ed: dur­ing the days of my teach­ing career and then gallery life, I col­lect­ed peo­ple like I col­lect books.  Cura­tors, review­ers, aca­d­e­mics, buy­ers, and of course the many, many artists who came in and out of my life.  Won­der­ful names from the world of fem­i­nism, too!  I have Glo­ria Steinem’s num­ber, in case you need to get in touch.  And Avery was impressed that bell hooks has a card in my Rolodex.  Those were the days when I used my brain for some­thing a lit­tle more com­pli­cat­ed than a recipe for chick­en meatballs.

And then there are the relics from Avery’s social life as a lit­tle girl: friends, her preschool, sum­mer camps, favorite cloth­ing shops.  A hap­py past.

But the most won­der­ful­ly evoca­tive cards of all are from just peo­ple, from our New York past, our sum­mers in Maine, the aunts and uncles who peo­pled my child­hood, my dear dad.  As if I need­ed  his busi­ness card!  But I loved flick­ing through the Rolodex and see­ing his name.  He always answered his phone, “This is Dr. Fred­er­ick­son.”  And I would reply, “So is this.”

I had intend­ed to throw my Rolodex away.  After all, why do I need defunct num­bers for cou­ples who have bro­ken up, peo­ple who have died, book­shops that have long since closed their doors, cousins in Ken­tucky whom I might see once in a decade?  Cer­tain­ly I don’t need a card with my sis­ter’s or sis­ter-in-law’s num­bers on it, as these are pre­cious bits of infor­ma­tion, stored in my brain, with­out the help of a twirling plas­tic thing long since eclipsed by technology.

But in the end, I kept the Rolodex.  There are just too many mem­o­ries there, good and bad, to con­sign it to the rub­bish heap.

What’s one more card­board box, anyway?

To dis­tract myself from the impend­ing mis­ery of the move, I have been ring­ing!  The lat­est tri­umph has been one that can’t be quan­ti­fied, or pho­tographed.  It’s the grad­ual dis­ap­pear­ance of FEAR.

Ring­ing is, after all, a scary sport/hobby/musical endeav­our.  You’re at the mer­cy, to some extent, of momen­tum, grav­i­ty and a very large met­al thing with a mind of its own, at the end of a rope.  But with prac­tice has come a degree of con­fi­dence, though it scares me to say it.  This week­end saw me at yet anoth­er Quar­ter Peal, an expe­ri­ence that a year ago filled with ter­ror and fear for weeks ahead, an expe­ri­ence that two weeks ago caused some mild anx­i­ety.  But on Sun­day, I actu­al­ly looked for­ward to those 41 min­utes of per­fect­ly intense con­cen­tra­tion, team­work and excitement.

This one was excit­ing because I was tre­ble, and my fel­low learn­er Michael was tenor.  Nor­mal­ly an expe­ri­enced band would not allow two learn­ers to be in a QP togeth­er, as we each intro­duce a vari­able into the equa­tion and gen­er­al­ly speak­ing it’s bet­ter to have only one!  But our love­ly, sup­port­ive home band was will­ing — even eager! — to take the chance.  And we thrived.

The key to gain­ing con­fi­dence in ring­ing is, like every­thing else, just doing it.  The more scary sit­u­a­tions I find myself in and yet SUR­VIVE, even thrive, the more I realise I can han­dle most chal­lenges now.  I’ve had more Sun­day morn­ings when the rope flew out of my hands for a moment and my skills at what is called “recov­ery” sprang into action.  I’ve been asked to do things that a year ago would have been absolute­ly impos­si­ble, and two years ago I had nev­er even held a rope.  I’ve been told that bell­ring­ing is a life­long occu­pa­tion of learn­ing, because there is a nev­er-end­ing vista of skills to acquire.  That is either an inspir­ing notion, or an absolute­ly exhaust­ing one.

Mean­while, the seem­ing­ly end­less parade of Avery’s exams con­tin­ues.  I have learned a great deal from her per­se­ver­ance.  How can I moan and wring my hands over one or two puny Quar­ter Peals when every sin­gle day, she must square her shoul­ders for yet anoth­er over­whelm­ing demand on her intel­lect?  She’s been very calm, on the whole.  And to reward her for her efforts, I’ve been cook­ing her favorite things, includ­ing the real pur­pose of risot­to: aranci­ni.

Aranci­ni

 (1 large ball per per­son, or 2 small)

Take your left­over risot­to from the fridge about an hour before you want to eat, and spread it in a lay­er on a cook­ie sheet or bak­ing dish.  The idea is to take the chill off so that the fried ball will not be cold on the inside, nor will you have to burn the crumbs in order to get the inner bites warm.

Place Japan­ese panko bread­crumbs in a shal­low dish.

Heat what­ev­er quan­ti­ty of taste­less oil you feel com­fort­able with in a uten­sil you like.  I use a deep fry­er, but a large saucepan

Now with clean hands, roll a good por­tion of risot­to into a ball about the size of lime, or if you’re feel­ing as if you’d like them more fork than fin­ger food, a lemon.  Flat­ten the ball a bit and tuck a small piece of buf­fa­lo moz­zarel­la inside, then fold the edges back togeth­er and roll into a ball again.

Roll in bread­crumbs till com­plete­ly coat­ed.  When a pinch of bread­crumbs in the oil fries instant­ly, the oil is ready.  Care­ful­ly place each ball in the hot oil and let cook until brown, turn­ing fre­quent­ly.  The idea is to get the inside warmed through — of course you can’t tell, but you can imag­ine — with­out over-brown­ing the out­side.  When you are hap­py with the col­oration of your aran­ci­no, take it out and place it gen­tly on a few fold­ed paper tow­els.  If you have a plate-warm­ing oven, place the aranci­ni inside and keep adding to the plate until you are finished.

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These are sim­ply delight­ful: crunchy, creamy, savoury, with that lit­tle bite that good risot­to gives.  You can make these with any num­ber of fla­vors of risot­to: mine were wild mush­room this time, but you could have pancetta, pea and mint, red pep­per and fresh thyme, real­ly any­thing goes.  Just make extra risot­to and have at it.

Final­ly, because we real­ly want­ed ONE MORE THING to pack, do you remem­ber Avery’s birth­day cup­cakes?

They were com­plete­ly adorable as cup­cakes, made by the dream­i­ly tal­ent­ed peo­ple at Vic­to­ri­a’s Kitchen.  Then they mor­phed into the most enter­tain­ing jig­saw puz­zle ever, to keep us amused over the Christ­mas holiday.

Final­ly today, they came back from the framer’s in their ulti­mate incar­na­tion.  They are so extreme­ly cool that the framer wants to put a pho­to of them on his web­site.  One can under­stand why.

Now they, and the mem­o­ry of Avery’s 16th birth­day, will last for­ev­er, or as close to it as we can get.  Of course it takes a genius pho­tog­ra­ph­er to cap­ture them in all their mag­i­cal detail.

Of course life goes by far too quick­ly.  New­ly­wed mem­o­ries become over­laid with details from the years in between; a tod­dler you car­ry on your hip across Man­hat­tan becomes a teenag­er wend­ing her way across Lon­don, com­ing home from the the­atre.  Restau­rants open and close, par­ents age, and homes change.  All we can do is have the luck to make won­der­ful mem­o­ries, and the sense to keep them close — whether in a Rolodex, or under a piece of glass, or just held in our minds — when we have the chance.