of pat­terns, threads and knots

It is a beau­ti­ful spring day here in Lon­don, edg­ing ever clos­er, day by day, to true sum­mer.  The church­yard is hung with bunting to cel­e­brate the 800th anniver­sary of the Magna Car­ta, whose sign­ing took place in Run­nymede, and one of whose sign­ers, Bish­op Lang­ton, came through our neigh­bor­hood on his way home, and sanc­ti­fied our church chapel.  800 years ago.  That is history.

It’s help­ful to focus on the REAL­LY long game, because I won’t lie to you.  I’m find­ing the big pic­ture of my own small life at the moment to be a bit challenging.

It’s the for­est that’s get­ting to me.  The trees them­selves are per­fect­ly love­ly: Avery is in the last month of her much-appre­ci­at­ed sec­ondary edu­ca­tion, doing well, antic­i­pat­ing the excite­ment of uni­ver­si­ty in Octo­ber, after a sum­mer of bliss­ful trav­el.  She is ready to leave.

John is in the throes of apply­ing for per­mis­sions for the details of our dream house, to be built in the com­ing two or three years at the foot of Tow­er Bridge.  It’s an unbe­liev­ably com­plex process, a dra­ma peo­pled by seem­ing­ly ever-increas­ing num­bers of advi­sors, engi­neers, archi­tects, plan­ners.  He is very ambi­tious, and very pos­i­tive.  He is invent­ing a business.

I myself am still bask­ing in the glow of the fin­ished cook­book, hear­ing almost every day reports by Face­book and email of things my friends are cook­ing, tak­ing to potlucks, dish­es that are becom­ing Fri­day-night sta­ples, most-request­ed fam­i­ly dish­es, new birth­day tra­di­tions.  The recipes, the pho­tographs, and the sto­ries in the book have become part of peo­ple’s lives.  I could­n’t have pre­dict­ed the wide range of sheer FUN every­one is hav­ing with the book, all over the world.  It is a dream come true.

 

Even Tina the Won­der Dog, my friend Alyssa’s part­ner in crime, isn’t immune to the book’s charms.

And my bell-ring­ing!  Would you ever have believed, when I start­ed regal­ing you with my ambi­tions and adven­tures in the bel­fry four years ago, that I’d still be at it?  That I would be thriv­ing and still learn­ing, but amaz­ing­ly, accom­plished enough to help oth­ers learn?  A mas­sive mile­stone on Sat­ur­day: I gave my first les­son to a new learner.

It seems very recent that I myself was learn­ing, the tail stroke and sal­ly stroke rung sep­a­rate­ly, my dear teach­ers Andrew, Trisha and Eddie devot­ed to my progress.  Of course every week I still need to learn some­thing new myself, but to be in a place where I can pass along even a tiny piece of wis­dom?  That feels very good.

So what can I pos­si­bly have to wor­ry me?  It’s to do with the threads I’ve woven around me.

It’s part of my dark, twisty Scan­di­na­vian nature to val­ue things to the pre­cise extent that I’ll be heart­bro­ken when they’re over.  I’ll miss Avery’s school — and my place in it — ter­ri­bly, come autumn.  This will be the first autumn since I was five years old that my life won’t revolve around a school.  I went straight from school as a stu­dent to school as a pro­fes­sor, to school as a moth­er.  What on earth will hap­pen to that part of me that sees autumn as a begin­ning?  I don’t think that the moth­er of a uni­ver­si­ty “fresh­er” counts as a school moth­er, any more.

I real­ly can’t even think of not hav­ing her here, either.  The loos­en­ing of that par­tic­u­lar thread will take a lot of get­ting used to.  If I had­n’t tied it so tight­ly, it would be eas­i­er.  But ties aren’t real­ly made to be loose, are they?  Slip­knots are a cheat.  You have to tie real knots, but then be ready to undo them, when you need to.

Of course I’m excit­ed for John to have his project loom­ing so large, and I’m incred­i­bly proud of what he’s achieved already, against so many odds.  I know I will love our even­tu­al dream home.  But I love the home I have now, in my secure lit­tle vil­lage with its small, cosy shops filled with peo­ple who ask how I am, what I’m cook­ing.  I love my church, my bell­tow­er, scene of such dra­ma, learn­ing and just plain good fun.

I know I’ve been hap­py in oth­er places, in fact in all the oth­er places in my past.  Every time we move, every time things change, I vow for a brief moment not to get so involved, not to get so wrapped up in the new life, the new peo­ple, the new com­mu­ni­ty.  But each time, I find myself falling in love.  I find myself at the Church Hall with eight oth­er ladies, scrap­ing snails off 90 wine­glass­es and din­ner plates, since they were stored out­doors in a card­board box that dis­in­te­grat­ed in the Eng­lish rain.  We will need them all for a parish­ioner’s 95th birth­day, next month.

I want to be a per­son who sees five peo­ple she knows on her bike ride home from yoga, and for her yoga teacher’s mom to be a trustee at Home-Start, where I’ve put so much of my heart.  I like to put down roots, con­nect things, to belong.  If I were a knit­ter, I’d make myself the kind of warm sweater I like to wear.

Hous­es, too.  They change.  But I like this place, the warmth and love I’ve poured into this home, the din­ing table that has been the scene of so many beau­ti­ful din­ners, but also — as now — the locus of all Avery’s school­work, exam after exam.  How hard she has worked, here.

This is the place that gave birth to my beloved “Tonight at 7.30”!  It was here that the vast bulk of the pho­tographs were tak­en by Avery, in the sun­ny gar­den, in the light­box in the crowd­ed laun­dry room, on the stove­top with savoury things bub­bling away.  It was here that the hilar­i­ous “drop­ping of the turkey” at the Kick­starter video day took place, and here that I slaved over the design of every para­graph, the sweet aprons, the back-break­ing index, the pas­sion­ate Kick­starter cam­paign, the pack­ing of the parcels to mail around the world.

I hate to say good­bye to any of it, the mem­o­ries that fill this house, and my life in it.

Nat­u­ral­ly, the thing to do when I’m already feel­ing sad and nos­tal­gic is to spend an entire after­noon pos­i­tive­ly wal­low­ing in the past.  Oh, the stack of pho­to albums.

It is only in the last cou­ple of years that I’ve stopped putting all our pho­tographs into albums.  John’s moth­er dotes on this pile when­ev­er (wher­ev­er) she comes to vis­it, and her time with us isn’t com­plete until she’s gone through every sin­gle page of every sin­gle album, sticky with pho­to glue.

Actu­al­ly, I found the process of look­ing through the stack quite com­fort­ing.  Rather than feel­ing melan­choly over the pas­sage of time, I felt real­ly grate­ful for all the fun we’ve had, with the small child we enjoyed so much, in all the places we’ve lived and thrived, with all the char­ac­ters who have peo­pled the dra­ma.  Here are just a few…

Christ­mas in Indi­anapo­lis, with my moth­er and Wish­bone, a pal from baby days.

Avery, Annabelle and Elliot, her “near­ly cousins,” out pick­ing apples on a sparkling Octo­ber day in New York State.

Me, Mia and Joel, the “client” and the cre­ators, of our love­ly New York loft.

Avery in a library in Water­loo, Iowa, dur­ing an idyl­lic sum­mer visit.

Avery and her dad in an ear­li­er sum­mer in Iowa, pos­ing on the golf course.

Anoth­er hap­py moment, that same evening.

Avery with Vin­cen­t’s lit­tle girls, all tal­ent­ed pho­tog­ra­phers now, descend­ed from the pho­tog­ra­ph­er fathers.

Me, in our New York Broad­way apart­ment of a life­time ago, play­ing with the lit­tle girl next door who inspired us to have Avery.

A mil­len­ni­um bash, the din­ner par­ty to end all din­ner par­ties, 2000.

Pos­ing with friends at the most glam­orous wed­ding ever, back in the five min­utes, cir­ca 1996, when smok­ing a cig­ar was actu­al­ly cool.

This hilar­i­ous shot of Avery, aged per­haps five, the first record­ed moment (of MANY) of her react­ing with indig­na­tion at some­thing she’s read in the paper.

Bask­ing in the sun­shine in a riyadh, in Marakkesh.

A long-ago birth­day par­ty, with­out a care in the world.

The next 20 years of our lives won’t be lov­ing­ly pho­tographed in quite the same way that the past 20 have been, I know that.  This is the calm before the storm, the last few months before every­thing changes, before the focus shifts and the kalei­do­scope set­tles into a new pattern.

The thing about rela­tion­ships, whether they’re with schools, or homes, bel­fries or chil­dren, is that you can’t insu­late your­self from the heartache of things chang­ing.  You have to throw your­self heart and soul into the rela­tion­ships as they grow, enjoy­ing every bit that you can, and be ready to let go when the time comes.

I must find a way to enjoy the for­est AND the trees, and this sin­gle peony in my gar­den.  After all, it’s in the nature of a gar­den, and a peony in par­tic­u­lar, to be tem­po­rary.  But it’s still impor­tant to love them.  And then gath­er my ener­gy to tie a few new knots.