when the child’s away…

Well, Mon­day is here again and last night saw us at Padding­ton Sta­tion pick­ing up Avery from her week­end in Corn­wall: how odd to have a child old enough to go some­where with oth­er peo­ple, to a place we’ve nev­er our­selves been. We missed her pathet­i­cal­ly, won­der­ing all the time where she was and what she was doing. Being my child, much of her very pic­turesque sto­ry­telling involved the food she ate (lamb cooked to per­fec­tion, many desserts involv­ing an ingre­di­ent I’d nev­er even heard of, called tamar­il­lo), the best ice cream on the face of the earth, mint fudge that she brought back in a hot lit­tle bun­dle pro­vid­ing the sorts of clear fin­ger­prints our bur­glary cop­pers could only dream of. And her lit­tle orange spot­ted silk scarf, a recent present from me for no good rea­son, tied up around a per­fect trea­sure trove of things found at the sea: pot­tery frag­ments, lit­tle shells and stones with one tiny hole in them, beg­ging for a leather thong or rib­bon around the neck. Sea glass, lit­tle tan­ta­liz­ing glimpses of the sea. What fun she had. And how we missed her. But she’s back. “The AIR, you guys, you would nev­er believe it.” I think we’re Corn­wall-bound pret­ty soon.

After, that is, our approach­ing sum­mer at “home.” It’s fun­ny, now we’ve approached the sum­mer return three times, it’s begin­ning to take on a pat­tern. First is patent dis­be­lief that such a place exists: as Avery mocks my say­ing each sum­mer, “the green of the grass, the red of the barn, the white of the fence, the blue of the sky,” but it’s all ridicu­lous­ly true. A pic­ture-post­card snap­shot of Amer­i­ca, and yet impos­si­bly true. Ten­nis courts, chil­dren on bicy­cles stir­ring up the dust on our unpaved coun­try road, bum­ble­bees in the hydrangea tree that every sin­gle sum­mer seems to flower too late and I say to any­one who will lis­ten, “Should­n’t that tree have bloomed by now?”

And cray­fish in the pond, whose elu­sive and slight­ly creepy pres­ence my neigh­bor Anne assures me means our water is real­ly clean. “Cray­fish won’t live where the water isn’t pris­tine,” she says, which relieves Avery who nev­er­the­less fore­stalls my parochial fer­vor with, “Do NOT ask me to drink that water, Mom­my!” The tiger lilies will be stretch­ing their ran­dom orange blos­soms toward the house and road from their lit­tle bed in front of the house when we arrive, and the grass will show where it needs seed­ing, the wall will have lost a few more stones and a few days will pass before we implore Rol­lie the Farmer from up the road to see if he Knows Some­one who might pos­si­bly repair the wall. So far this con­ver­sa­tion has tak­en place for about six years run­ning, to very lit­tle action.

We’ll check to see if the 1967 Land Rover (just a bit younger than me and in far bet­ter nick than I am) runs at first shot, and if the VW runs at all. The neigh­bors will drift by to say hel­lo and remark on how tall Avery has become (she real­ly has), I’ll run to the farm stand for toma­toes, sweet corn, peach­es, and the black plums that Avery begins to eat right in the car, drip­ping juice all over the seats, only to swipe it up with a tow­el wet from the swim­ming pool.

Ah, so, you can see I’ve pro­gressed right from the first stage of “we’ll nev­er be THERE, THERE does­n’t real­ly exist,” to imag­in­ing all the pre­cious bits of being THERE.

Right now, though, we’ve got the last strag­gling bits of the school year to get through (that pesky per­mis­sion slip for next spring’s trip to Pom­peii, oops, near­ly missed that dead­line), a trip to the vet for poor itchy Wim­sey, sil­ver pol­ish to buy so my dear clean­ing lady can while away the bor­ing day once a week when she’s here see­ing to our bits and pieces. Sev­er­al days at Lost Prop­er­ty to fill in for vol­un­teers who can’t make it — today saw me deal­ing with no few­er than 60-ish items from irre­spon­si­ble girls who strewed every­thing from ten­nis rac­quets (sev­en) to PE trousers (six pairs) to sci­ence block eye­wear, lacrosse mouth­guards (ick), swim­ming tow­els and Ger­man home­work. Last week was the much-vaunt­ed sec­ond-hand PE kit sale and a mas­sive suc­cess it was! My dear friend Annie was in charge, and her com­bi­na­tion of bright-eyed enthu­si­asm and sub­tle sales pitch (“these leg­gings are real­ly nice under the games skirt on those cold days”) was per­fect: every­thing sold out that first day, while I made the rounds at the New Girls’ Tea, look­ing for new vol­un­teers for our esteemed Lost Property.

A sin­gu­lar­ly awful writ­ing class on Wednes­day: ful­ly deserved deri­sion for an old piece I’d sub­mit­ted for the pure and sim­ple rea­son that I have not pro­duced any­thing new for at least two months. But you know what? As dis­mal as I may find my writ­ing skills (I use that last term loose­ly) these days, I find they were even worse two years ago. Bet­ter in the end not to sub­mit any­thing at all than to be in the unen­vi­able posi­tion of defend­ing, or even not, a piece I know to be s**te. What on earth to do to kick­start my cre­ative impuls­es, put pen to paper, tap those com­put­er keys?

My par­ents have suc­cess­ful­ly cel­e­brat­ed, at my sis­ter’s able hands, their 50th wed­ding anniver­sary, Back Home in Indi­ana, and a mighty cel­e­bra­tion it was. Spe­cial pho­to albums, cake, flow­ers, all the right guests. My moth­er sound­ed high as a kite on the phone, with my dad sound­ing capa­bly pleased, tak­ing it all in his stride. We’ll redou­ble our efforts with my moth­er’s birth­day in August, to encom­pass the big mile­stone. Hap­py Anniver­sary, you two!

John and I spent the week­end with­out Avery most­ly with him han­dling insur­ance details for our bur­glary, rent­ing a car for the dura­tion until we leave for the sum­mer, with my han­dling Avery’s school details, doc­tor, den­tist and ortho­don­tist, emer­gency con­tact lists, all the detri­tus that piles up on a desk when I’m not look­ing! And ten­nis, which I called what we play, until I began watch­ing… Wim­ble­don today. Oh my! It’s like cook­ing din­ner and then watch­ing the Food Chan­nel. As if!

Speak­ing of the Food Chan­nel, we threw all our recent diet-ish restric­tions (no bread, pota­toes, but­ter) aside on Sun­day and went for a lunch to end all lunch­es, inspired by hav­ing seen the chef at Taste of Lon­don on Fri­day. The Blue­print Cafe, the domain of one of my favorite celebri­ty cooks, Jere­my Lee, is a def­i­nite des­ti­na­tion south of the riv­er. His food, as he said him­self in his cook­ing demon­stra­tion at Taste, is one where “the food looks as if it just… land­ed on the plate, not these lit­tle bits placed here and there.” Just so! His dish at the demo was chick­en fil­lets mar­i­nat­ed in a GREEN paste made of pars­ley, thyme, rose­mary, gar­lic, lemon, pep­per and loads of mus­tard, in the blender, then baked. Love­ly, and his ban­ter was too, too fun­ny. “Have you lost weight, Jere­my?” the com­men­ta­tor asked, and Jere­my answered with­out skip­ping a beat, “Why have a six-pack when you can have the whole keg, I always say!”

So I knew we want­ed to go to his restau­rant, and off we went, with no Avery to fer­ry to and from the sta­ble (sob). And what a lunch. Grilled pork liv­er on skew­ers with bacon, sage and but­ter, which we both greed­i­ly had although we could have shared. Then John had a HUGE plate­ful of sweet­breads with black but­ter and lentils, and I had a whole lit­tle grilled mack­er­el (bone heav­en, I’m afraid, but love­ly) with a sal­ad of cucum­bers with dill and mus­tard. Every­thing swim­ming, rather, in but­ter and oil and loads of salt, which is, sad­ly, how I love to eat when I’m indulging myself. The side dish of steamed spinach was a rev­e­la­tion: a hint of gar­lic, and, the very knowl­edge­able wait­er said in an aside, nut­meg. LOVE­LY. The table came equipped with a pair of tiny binoc­u­lars so we could spy on the boats going by just out­side the window.

Why is it that con­ver­sa­tion is so much more inter­est­ing, one makes so much more effort to be GOOD com­pa­ny, when one is out, eat­ing food cooked by oth­er peo­ple? Per­haps it’s because one’s hus­band dress­es up in a spe­cial­ly swanky shirt, looks gor­geous, is full of fun­ny anec­dotes and I had to raise my game. In any case, we felt quite, quite swell and lux­u­ri­ous and hap­py to be out togeth­er. Too much home cook­ing can make Jill quite a dull girl.

That being said, I can report that the mar­i­nat­ed hal­ibut with wasabi and gin­ger that I described to you last time is quite sub­lime at home, and sprin­kled with a lit­tle chopped chill­ies and lemon grass, and served with a dol­lop of creme fraiche and a slice of good sour­dough bread, is a very good din­ner for peo­ple who’ve indulged in a but­tery lunch. And that, my friends, will count as a recipe for now, because… it’s bed­time, and the vet beck­ons tomor­row. I’ve got to get my game face on.