real life

I have been enjoy­ing a lit­tle respite from remem­ber­ing, self-exam­i­na­tion, and the dredg­ing down inside for ways to tell of our expe­ri­ences ten years ago.  I am ter­ri­bly grate­ful to all my won­der­ful read­ers who assured me that I had been able, final­ly, to express what I intend­ed to express.  As unlike­ly as it sounds, as soon as I pressed the “pub­lish” but­ton on my beloved blog, I felt a real weight off my shoul­ders.  I flexed my mus­cles, took a deep breath, and felt com­plete­ly pre­pared to let go of these expe­ri­ences and mem­o­ries, and to return to the ordi­nary busi­ness of liv­ing — and being me, writ­ing about living.

Why do peo­ple want to write, any­way?  Well, I turned as one should always do in these sit­u­a­tions, for wis­dom from great writ­ers.  Fore­most among them for me is the inim­itable E.B. White, author of count­less human­ist essays, end­less arti­cles for the New York­er mag­a­zine, and for me most impor­tant­ly, of “Char­lot­te’s Web,” pos­si­bly the great­est chil­dren’s book of all time.

E.B. White tells us two chal­leng­ing things:

“Remem­ber that writ­ing is trans­la­tion, and the opus to be trans­lat­ed is yourself.”

“All writ­ing is both a mask and an unveiling.”

White’s words of wis­dom here sup­port a notion I believe com­plete­ly: every self is an opus, every ordi­nary per­son­’s life gives us exam­ples for liv­ing our own.  The hur­dle is in the trans­la­tion, of course.  With a bad trans­la­tion, even the most fas­ci­nat­ing and illu­mi­nat­ing text (self) can appear opaque, mean­ing­less.  We put the text aside and give up on what­ev­er its mes­sage might have been, because the trans­la­tion left us cold.

As well, White is telling us that writ­ing is about CHOIC­ES.  Remem­ber the old school game of “show and tell”?  Think about it.  Why are they two dif­fer­ent notions?  Because just show­ing — unveil­ing — means very lit­tle with­out being able to stand beside your cho­sen object and tell why you care, why you brought it in to school.  And if the cho­sen object is your own SELF, then the unveil­ing and the trans­la­tion become very precious.

Writ­ing down our Sep­tem­ber 11 mem­o­ries made it pos­si­ble for me to put a sort of frame around our experiences,to try for once NOT to wear a mask but to unveil every­thing.  E.B. White also famous­ly said, “Write what you know.”  Most of the time what I know is extreme­ly dai­ly, pro­sa­ic and ordi­nary, and I take a great joy in putting it into words, cher­ish­ing it all.  Writ­ing about such appalling expe­ri­ences was very dif­fer­ent — there was no joy in remem­ber­ing, but I learned that remem­ber­ing even ter­ri­ble things very well is a gift.  My hus­band and fam­i­ly felt relieved to have that part of our lives framed, defined, put in a box, and the lid shut firmly.

What made those mem­o­ries so hard to unveil was the empha­sis they put on how pre­cious our lives are.  It’s like the game I play on the Tube, look­ing around at every sin­gle pas­sen­ger and say­ing to myself, “That per­son is the most impor­tant per­son in the world to SOME­ONE.  I won­der who that some­one is?”  Events like Sep­tem­ber 11 under­score that cru­cial role that every sin­gle one of us plays, to some­one.  More than one per­son, maybe, if we are lucky.

But after awhile, it is very nice to make sure that box lid is firm­ly shut, put the box on a high shelf, and turn back to the dai­ly round of activ­i­ties that make up our real life, deeply com­fort­ing in their lack of significance.

In oth­er words, what I real­ly like writ­ing about is what the Vic­to­ri­an nov­el­ist George Mered­ith called “see­ing divin­i­ty in what the world deems gross mate­r­i­al sub­stance.”  How I love gross mate­r­i­al sub­stance, how I rev­el in it!  Gross mate­r­i­al sub­stance might present itself as medieval church where I ring, and the weight of its glo­ri­ous bells…

or the raw ingre­di­ents which when I put them togeth­er form a sup­per of scal­lops, beets and goat cheese…

or the aching­ly beau­ti­ful autum­nal leaves climb­ing up the Geor­gian wall where I lean my bicycle…

All these bits of the world do seem divine to me, and I love chron­i­cling them.

Not to men­tion the peo­ple who pop in and out of my imag­ined nar­ra­tive: the daugh­ter and hus­band whose crises of ortho­don­ture and tax­es form lit­tle hur­dles to hop over, or crash into…  And the love­ly peo­ple at my church who have giv­en so much time in order to make out of me a respectable bell­ringer!  I did a real­ly good job at ring­ing in “rounds” last week­end and Trin­ny, one of my love­ly instruc­tors said to Howard, my most devot­ed teacher, “Kris­ten did real­ly well at that, Howard!  Give her a lit­tle praise!” to which Howard answered, “She is noth­ing now but one of the name­less, face­less rab­ble to me,” grin­ning at me a bit with a twin­kle in his eye.  What an hon­or that is to me, to be part of the rab­ble.  We pull our ropes, and the love­ly tones float over the vil­lage, and I sud­den­ly notice the lit­tle fig­ures in the lead­ed glass win­dow above my head!

Look close­ly!  The lit­tle shapes at the bot­tom of the win­dow are BELL­RINGERS!  And if you count over left to right, the eighth lit­tle fel­low is dan­gling at the end of his rope high above the bellcham­ber!  Some­one with a sense of humor cre­at­ed this win­dow, know­ing how some­times bell­ring­ing can be dead­ly seri­ous, lit­er­al­ly heavy, and we all need a lit­tle light­en­ing of the spir­its.  That light­ness is cer­tain­ly some­thing sup­plied by our young ringers, every one of them a beau­ty inside and out.

Life was made more deli­cious by lunch out with my friend Elspeth at Son­ny’s in the High Street.  How admire the food at that love­ly cafe.  It is my goal this week­end to repro­duce the dish I had there: per­fect sashi­mi of yel­low­tail tuna rolled in black sesame seeds, accom­pa­nied by lit­tle dol­lops of avo­ca­do mousse, tiny piles of indi­vid­ual grape­fruit beads, and a scat­ter­ing of shiso, a new ingre­di­ent for me, which the wait­ress explained was “Japan­ese corian­der,” in Amer­i­ca “Japan­ese cilantro.”  Del­i­cate and gorgeous.

To work off all this love­ly food, John and I have been dogged­ly rid­ing our bikes and play­ing our crazy ver­sion of ten­nis.  “Use the WHOLE court!” we chor­tle, jump­ing for balls that go high over our heads.

One morn­ing we hopped on our bikes and rode to hell and gone, try­ing to find the All Saints Church, Ful­ham where I was to ring bells that night!  We rode and rode and rode, until final­ly we came to a bridge.  “Well, this isn’t Put­ney Bridge where the church is,” I com­plained.  “No, I think it’s… Bat­tersea!”  We were miles out of our way, so we turned around and rode past the Wandsworth Bridge as well, laugh­ing at our­selves, and final­ly came upon the church where I was lucky enough to be a vis­it­ing ringer that evening.  Gorgeous.

The fun of being a decent-ish ringer is that now I can be itin­er­ant!  I can wan­der, wher­ev­er I am invit­ed.  And the fun of Ful­ham was that we rang on what are called “sim­u­la­tors,” which means I wear head­phones that play the sound of bells ring­ing in rounds, only the sound of my bell is left out!  So I have to man­age to ring in JUST the spot where the silence falls.  Then there is a shame­ful ses­sion with Edmund, my Ful­ham teacher, who shows me on the com­put­er screen an exact record of my efforts, and how far off the mark they are!  Great fun.

With all my ring­ing activ­i­ties, Avery is just as occu­pied — much more so! — with rehearsals for the school musi­cal, “Sweet Char­i­ty.”  She came home last week rav­ing about the les­son the dra­ma teacher had giv­en them that day.  “You know, it looks total­ly dif­fer­ent to smoke mar­i­jua­na than an ordi­nary cig­a­rette,” Avery assured us, per­haps not notic­ing our looks of mild dis­may.  “So she showed us exact­ly how it should look.”  “From per­son­al expe­ri­ence, I assume?” I asked faint­ly.  “I guess so,” Avery said, uncon­cerned.  Her father gave an elab­o­rate mimed demon­stra­tion, derived I fear more from trashy B‑movies than any very exten­sive real-life knowledge.

All a moth­er could do was to cook, real­ly.  I had been hard at work the day before mak­ing some emer­gency chick­en soup for one of Avery’s friends who was ail­ing, and some­thing inspired me to make… chick­en meat­balls.  So much more fun than just lit­tle pieces of chick­en breast float­ing in the broth!  And it required noth­ing more than John’s sug­ges­tion the fol­low­ing evening, sim­ply “Pojars­ki?” to cat­a­pult those lit­tle meat­balls into a sub­lime new dish.  Give it a try.

Chick­en Meatl­balls in Pojars­ki Sauce

(serves 8)

for the meatballs:

about 2 lbs/1 kg  chick­en breasts (about 8 small half-breasts), bone­less and skinless

1 1/2/350 ml cup milk

1 1/2 cup/80g Panko breadcrumbs

1 tbsp Fox Point (or oth­er savory) seasoning

good grind fresh black pepper

for the sauce:

3 tbsps butter

1 tbsp flour (more lat­er if need­ed to thick­en sauce)

6 cloves gar­lic, minced

1 shal­lot, minced

1 1/2 tbsp paprika

about 1/3 cup/90ml brandy

1 cup/275ml chick­en stock

1 cup/275 ml sour cream

good grind fresh black pepper

Trim the chick­en breasts com­plete­ly of any fat, gris­tle, ten­dons.  They must be supreme­ly per­fect for this dish.  Now place them in your Mag­im­ix or Cuisi­nart and pulse care­ful­ly until the chick­en is fine­ly ground.  Not mushy, but fine­ly chopped.

Mix the milk, bread­crumbs and sea­son­ings in a medi­um bowl, then add the chick­en.  With clean hands, squish togeth­er all these ingre­di­ents until you can see that the chick­en is thor­ough­ly mixed with the bread­crumbs and the sea­son­ings are well-dis­trib­uted.  The mix­ture should be as wet as you can rea­son­ably han­dle.  Add more milk if nec­es­sary to achieve this very frag­ile, wet mix­ture.  Set mix­ture aside.

Now make the sauce, because you will poach the meat­balls in it.  In a large (at least 12 inch­es) shal­low fry­ing pan or pael­la pan, melt the but­ter, add the flour and cook, stir­ring con­stant­ly, for a minute.  Then add the gar­lic and shal­lots and saute until soft.  Sprin­kle on the papri­ka and cook for a minute or so.  Deglaze the pan with the brandy and cook for two min­utes rather high, stir­ring as the brandy evap­o­rates.  Add the chick­en stock and sour cream and begin stir­ring with a wire whisk.  Sim­mer and sea­son with black pep­per to taste.  Be care­ful of the sea­son­ing as this sauce (and the meat­balls) can be decep­tive­ly salty depend­ing on the sea­son­ings with the chick­en and the fla­vors of the stock.

When the sauce is thor­ough­ly mixed and hot, care­ful­ly make meat­balls the size of golf­balls and drop them gen­tly into the sim­mer­ing sauce.  Try to main­tain a sin­gle lay­er, but if you can­not, poach the first lay­er for sev­er­al min­utes until the meat­balls can be moved care­ful­ly, then fit in the extra meat­balls.  Poach at a low sim­mer for about five min­utes, then turn each meat­ball care­ful­ly, coat­ing them in the sauce. Poach a fur­ther five min­utes.  Taste to make sure chick­en is thor­ough­ly cooked.  At this point you may take the pan off the heat and leave it for the fla­vors to devel­op.  Heat through when you are ready to eat.  Serve with noodles.

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HEAV­EN­LY!

These meat­balls are light, fluffy, del­i­cate.  The sauce is the def­i­n­i­tion of savory, rich, old-fashioned.

It was just as well that I was for­ti­fied with this love­ly dish, because my next bell­ring­ing out­ing was a dis­as­ter.  I tried a method called Plain Hunt on Five, which involves the bells actu­al­ly switch­ing places in their order.  Beyond me!  I got con­fused, the bell began to fall, I pan­icked, made the near-fatal mis­take of look­ing UP into the bel­fry, the bell real­ly fell and I for­got how to raise it.  Too scary!

After res­cu­ing me, my teach­ers explained kind­ly.  “When you’re rid­ing a bike, if you’re real­ly good at the skills, then when you get lost you can retrace your steps.  Or if a pedes­tri­an wan­ders into your path, you can swerve to avoid him.  But if you’re just begin­ning at rid­ing the bike, if you get lost or swerve, you might fall off in the heat of the moment, and lose track of all your skills because they aren’t auto­mat­ic yet.”  Truer words were nev­er spo­ken.  I’m just not an auto­mat­ic ringer yet.  Thank good­ness for those fun­ny lit­tle win­dow fel­lows, to cheer me up.

These love­ly win­dows were put in around 1983 after arson fire of 1976 destroyed all but the orig­i­nal 1215 bits of the chapel, and the tow­er.  Can you imag­ine, 1215!  We are bandy­ing around ideas on how to cel­e­brate our 800th birth­day in three years’ time.  Imagine.

The bril­liant thing about learn­ing a new skill, and doing a new and very SPE­CIF­IC thing, is the love­ly free­dom of being shout­ed at and crit­i­cized but ONLY for the thing one is doing!  Just the wrong han­dling of your bell at that moment in ONE par­tic­u­lar way.  No hard feel­ings!  No accu­sa­tions of “being a bad ringer”.  Just a mis­tak­en action, at a par­tic­u­lar moment, eas­i­ly fixed, eas­i­ly for­got­ten.  No baggage.

Would­n’t life be bet­ter if we could take crit­i­cism for every­thing that way… “That thing you just said to me, oh hus­band mine, I will take that as mere­ly crit­i­cism of one par­tic­u­lar aspect of my wife­li­ness, not a con­dem­na­tion of the whole enter­prise!”  I’d like to emu­late my ring­ing teach­ers and learn not to start crit­i­cisms with “You always…” or “You nev­er…”  Just “don’t do THAT!”

My father, the bril­liant child psy­chol­o­gist… what an invalu­able resource he was when Avery was a baby.  I remem­ber he offered me the fol­low­ing advice when I was a very young moth­er. “Be sure that what you say to your child is ONLY what you mean to say to her about exact­ly what is hap­pen­ing right then, not all mixed up with how mad you got at work, or how annoyed you are with your hus­band, or bad traf­fic or any­thing else.  Just talk to her about the one spe­cif­ic thing.  And then it’s over, and you both move on.”  How wise and lov­ing he was.

And so life has calmed down once again.  This week­end will bring an anniver­sary par­ty for old friends, a house­warm­ing par­ty for oth­er old friends, for which I shall enjoy shop­ping for gifts.  A hair­cut for Avery, a spot of gar­den­ing for me, our joint fam­i­ly project look­ing after the next door cat (coal-black, called “Snowy”) while our neigh­bors are on hol­i­day, a deli­cious Sat­ur­day sup­per of lamb chops.  “Gross mate­r­i­al sub­stance,” in oth­er words.  How love­ly and divine it all is.