a frag­ile evening

It was one of those after­noons and evenings that make me realise how spoilt we all are: a warm home to come to, the three of us to pitch in and help each oth­er out, and noth­ing real to com­plain about, just a gen­er­al feel­ing of malaise this par­tic­u­lar Thurs­day evening. What I’ve come to rec­og­nize as the “Thurs­day evening syn­drome.” Every­one is still sur­round­ed by the respon­si­bil­i­ties and pres­sures of the week, but there’s one more cru­cial day to get through before we can col­lapse. We moved it up a day last night and all just sort of col­lapsed last evening.

I had an excel­lent com­e­dy class and walked from Covent Gar­den to the park to see if Avery was rid­ing in the ring where I could see her, or around the Mile where I could­n’t. The sky was just turn­ing dusky blue with air­plane trails criss­cross­ing, and as I put one foot in front of the oth­er, I could feel some­thing shut­ting down. I can con­clude only that I got a stom­ach bug in my lunch on the way to class. It was a chore to get to the ring, and there they were rid­ing with all their might, Bill giv­ing Avery all sorts of trou­ble and as a result she was being sep­a­rat­ed from the group and made to work mad­ly on some skill that was­n’t going well. By the end of the les­son, and all the hors­es and rid­ers were troop­ing across the Bayswa­ter Road, she looked like she’d been pulled through the eye of a nee­dle. I lis­tened to the clip-clop of the ponies’ shoes in the mews on the way to the sta­ble and it sound­ed melan­choly! Don’t know why.

We met up with Becky and she kind­ly gave us a ride home, and for a moment I want­ed to be one of Beck­y’s chil­dren, go home with her and be tak­en care of. Alas, I checked with myself and sure enough, I was still the moth­er, and wife, so we came in to dark­ness, because John was out. “I have loads of home­work to do, Mum­my, so I’ll get start­ed right away,” Avery promised, only we dis­cov­ered that her back­pack was in the car, with John. Minor pan­ic. “Let’s just switch around bath­time with home­work time,” I sug­gest­ed, but “No, when will we have din­ner? I can’t get my home­work wet, you know, and…” And of course we had been plan­ning to run get a piz­za and try La Car­i­catu­ra again, but the thought of leav­ing the house, shiv­er­ing to the restau­rant and wait­ing polite­ly for things to hap­pen on some­one else’s sched­ule seemed the bridge too far. “We’ll get piz­za to bring home,” I decid­ed, but sud­den­ly my stom­ach was not coop­er­at­ing. Got Avery into her bath and lay down with a hot water bot­tle, and then John appeared say­ing he did­n’t feel par­tic­u­lar­ly well either, and did I think he had a fever?

John decid­ed that he need­ed to think about his work par­ty the night before, and admit that maybe every­thing isn’t all cheery all the time. I don’t think it’s a good idea to give the impres­sion to a child that cop­ing and being cheer­ful has to be a 24-hour-a-day, sev­en days a week atti­tude. Every once in awhile you can say, “That sucked,” and move on. He was so brave, I thought, to go to the par­ty, and it’s all right to admit it. Plus he’s spent all week prepar­ing num­bers to make an offer on a house, and then he did, and the estate agent has not respond­ed, which total­ly freaks him out. “I can’t tell if it would be good news if they accept­ed the offer, or the most scary thing I’ve ever done in my life,” he admitted.

And Avery, I don’t know how she does it. Day after day of such stren­u­ous school work, and play audi­tions, and vio­lin lessons, and strug­gles with the Eng­lish teacher and her impos­si­ble standards,and Latin to mem­o­rize, only to spend after-school time in the cold fight­ing with a two-ton ani­mal, and then more work at home. I keep think­ing she’ll crack, and lie down on the floor with her feet kick­ing. But she doesn’t.

So bath, home­work, for­get­table piz­za. Why do I think it’s a crime to skip din­ner, even if I don’t feel well, AND I did­n’t cook it? No idea. We tucked Avery up with mul­ti­ple hot water bot­tles, and all sort of just… opt­ed out. I decid­ed a good slug of Alka-Seltzer could­n’t hurt, and we set­tled down to “The Dai­ly Show With Jon Stew­art,” and his guest was the chief astro­physi­cist at the Rose Sci­ence Cen­ter, at the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Muse­um in New York! Who hap­pened to be a dad from good old PS 234, Neil de Grasse Tyson. I remem­ber that his daugh­ter in Avery’s class used to say, “My dad knows about stars.”

A tru­ly larg­er than life fig­ure, immense­ly knowl­edge­able, total­ly full of him­self, with a nev­er-exhaust­ed desire to explain it all, to every­one. I remem­ber one school potluck din­ner at our apart­ment where Neil end­ed up with a pil­low from my bed­room to explain some­thing, and he him­self stand­ing on the kitchen counter, and using his waist­coat embroi­dered with stars and plan­ets to illus­trat­ed yet anoth­er point. “We astro­physi­cists tell it like it is,” he would boast. “Spots on the sun? We call them ‘sunspots.’ A big hole that’s utter­ly, end­less­ly black? ‘Black hole.’ ” He has a new book out, that would be incred­i­bly depress­ing if it weren’t so incom­pre­hen­si­bly true. It was such fun to watch and lis­ten, and remem­ber back when the girls were so lit­tle, kinder­garten, in anoth­er city, anoth­er school, anoth­er life.

I’ll try to get a pho­to­graph this week­end of Avery’s new hair­cut: noth­ing dras­tic, just a good trim. Then it’s a school birth­day par­ty, and a con­cert Sun­day. We’re on the mend.