end of a live­ly month

I adore fall. Or “autumn,” as we call it in Britain. Why not “fall”? Or equal­ly, why “fall” in Amer­i­ca? I love it though: I always read the same books: Body in the Bel­fry by Kather­ine Hall Page, Witch of Black­bird Pond by Eliz­a­beth George Speare (what is it with me and dou­ble-bar­reled names?), The Affa­combe Affair by Eliz­a­beth Lemarchand…books that cel­e­brate the splen­dor, the com­plex­i­ty and the being-on-the-brink that is autumn. And I guess it all starts in Octo­ber, real­ly, although I start stack­ing up those favorite books and peek­ing in, the last week in September.

Tonight Avery and I made it to a new adven­ture: the pool asso­ci­at­ed with her school! Now, my intense­ly sting­ing eyes noth­with­stand­ing, this place is an incred­i­ble boon. For the equiv­a­lent of $70 a year per entire fam­i­ly, we can swim on Tues­day and Thurs­day evenings, Sat­ur­day and Sun­day morn­ings, AND use the ten­nis courts. What a bar­gain, in a town that holds so few for the unwary resident.

So this after­noon I was look­ing up dis­con­so­late­ly at the stream­ing sky­light over my kitchen, absolute­ly splash­ing with rain, and think­ing, “No, thanks, no swim­ming today,” but then I pulled myself up by my wet boot­straps and said, “We can­not be defeat­ed by the occa­sion­al del­uge. We must press for­ward into… more water.” So I picked Avery up at school, stopped for an absolute­ly nec­es­sary gin­ger­bread man, and came home so she could do her home­work and I could under­chef din­ner: the ulti­mate in prep so you can swim until the last POS­SI­BLE moment.

Quick Left­over Stir-Fry with Fried Rice
(serves 4)

2 left­over grilled pork shops (or steaks, or chick­en breasts, or lamb chops)
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 thumb-sized knob gin­ger, peeled and minced
2 tbsps sesame oil
2 tbsps soy sauce
1 tbsp peanut (ground­nut) oil
1 pack­age broc­col­i­ni (ten­der­stem)
1 pack­age bean sprouts
1 pack­age ready-cooked (Amoy is the brand I use) fine noodles

rice:
1 cup jas­mine or bas­mati rice
1 1/2 cups water
3 eggs, beaten
1 tbsp soy sauce

So while your child does her home­work, slice the chops or what­ev­er left­over meat fair­ly thin. Put in a medi­um shal­low bowl and add the gar­lic, gin­ger, sesame oil and soy sauce. Mar­i­nate in the fridge while you swim.

Cook the rice and set aside. Leave the eggs, beat­en, in the fridge.

When you come home, heat up a large skil­let and add the peanut oil. Fry the ten­der­stem broc­col­i­ni under nice­ly ten­der, and place in a large serv­ing bowl. Now throw the meat in its mari­nade in the same skil­let and fry until warm, then add the sprouts and noo­dles until well-mixed and hot. Take out with tongs and place in same large serv­ing bowl with broccolini.

Now heat the liq­uid in the skil­let and scram­ble the eggs in it. When fin­ished, throw in the rice and toss well to mix thor­ough­ly, adding the soy sauce.

Love­ly, and it cost about 8 pounds alto­geth­er and did­n’t take much effort (although the cleanup can be annoy­ing, giv­en how easy it was to cook! but be brave and persevere).

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

Swim­ming. The whole expe­ri­ence under­scored how cozy and hap­py I find our new lives. We walked over in the gath­er­ing twi­light, pass­ing our local estate agents who demand­ed what we were hav­ing for din­ner and averred that they thought of us for a house to buy “every after­noon when we see you walk­ing by,” crossed the local green where we kicked up fall­en leaves and dis­cussed the day’s lunch (steak and mush­room pie in puff pas­try for heav­en’s sake), and the RE sub­ject (don’t know why, Saul sounds pret­ty inter­est­ing to me but I can’t con­vince Avery). We arrived at the pool and signed in, our glass­es imme­di­ate­ly steam­ing up, and through the haze I rec­og­nized Avery’s friend Emi­ly, read­ing on a bench. “I’m only here because my moth­er has this intro­duc­tion thing! But now I can stay with you and swim.” And there was her moth­er, hap­py to do her gro­cery shop­ping with­out her beloved child, hap­py to rem­i­nisce over our din­ner party…

So in we went. Warm water, glass pan­els in the ceil­ing! Gor­geous to trail about on my back, look­ing up at leaves blow­ing, the sky grad­u­al­ly turn­ing dark. I did the three dives I plan to do every time I get a chance until I turn my toes up: the pike, the back dive and the inward. If I dis­cov­er I can­not do them I will turn in my card, some­day. We had a glo­ri­ous, love­ly time, shar­ing the pool with just a hand­ful of leisure­ly lap-swim­mers. “Mum­my!” Emi­ly called to me, and then cov­ered her mouth with hand in embar­rass­ment. “I mean…” “That’s OK, Avery’s friends usu­al­ly call me “Avery’s mom,” I said. She decid­ed upon, “Mum­my and a half” for the dura­tion of our swim. “Mum­my and a half, watch my dive.”

Final­ly we dried off and emerged to cross the green again. “It’s all spark­ly!” Avery said. “I’m nev­er out and about when it’s dark and wet and spark­ly like this!” We stopped at the local wine store for a bot­tle of Cal­va­dos on this dark and windswept night, and the pro­pri­etor let me speak French with him! “What do you do?” he asked in French, and I learned the phrase “livre de recettes,” for cook­ery book. Home for our stir­fry, feel­ing vir­tu­ous and hap­py, if hair-chal­lenged. I can­not believe I car­ried on a con­ver­sa­tion with a French­man giv­en the scary reflec­tion I caught in the hall mir­ror as I came home. Oh dear.

So Sep­tem­ber has been… let’s see… full! Rosh Hashanah to all our friends at home, espe­cial­ly Alyssa, around whose table I might be sit­ting, enjoy­ing mat­zoh ball soup, were I still liv­ing in Tribeca… Sep­tem­ber has seen Avery accus­tom her­self to a new school, me try to learn the names of her friends and teach­ers through ellip­ti­cal but reveal­ing tales after school, we’ve solved Lord Peter Wim­sey’s skin dis­or­der (tomor­row will find me back at the vet for a cor­ti­sone top-up). We’ve set­tled into our new house, firm­ly wel­comed our new neigh­bors as friends, got to know our local mer­chants to the degree that one order the Finan­cial Times just for John, our wait­ress at the cor­ner cafe did­n’t mind not being tipped after brunch because we came straight back! Our gar­den seems to wel­come us this new sea­son, with bright-orange berries on one bush and bright-orange leaves on another.

And I’ve been giv­ing more thought, in this last month before the final deci­sion, to the elec­tion. I’m no polit­i­cal junkie, for sure. Much more like­ly to find myself think­ing of lentils then land­slides, pota­toes than polls! But I have come with a few gen­er­al obser­va­tions that I think will suf­fice for me: I pre­fer diplo­mat­ic dove to ene­my-count­ing hawk, I pre­fer artic­u­late, can’t-find-a-sound­bite to repet­i­tive mem­o­rable epi­thets, and I pre­fer what may turn out to be dig­ni­fied, gen­tle defeat to angry, fin­ger-point­ing vic­to­ry. I pre­fer open, vul­ner­a­ble curios­i­ty to closed, “I already know every­thing I need to know” secu­ri­ty. I don’t like anger. And I don’t like peo­ple look­ing for a fight, or think­ing what fight might come ahead of what oth­er fight. I like the idea of peo­ple being open to talk­ing to any­one, absolute­ly any­one, over the idea of mak­ing lists of who and what is open to being talked to or about. So I admit I don’t have much in the way of con­crete num­bers or facts, but like Abra­ham Lin­coln said, “it’s the kind of thing you like, if you like that kind of thing.” And I know it when I see it.

So let the last month before the elec­tion spin itself out… today I made my train reser­va­tions for my food writ­ing week! It’s inevitable now. Check your fridge for some left­overs, haul out those sprouts and… go swimming.