the only prob­lem with a tall husband

Is that it’s hard to fit him into a Mini Coop­er! But we’re going to try. We’ve been car­less for too long, we’ve decid­ed, so yes­ter­day we start­ed on the road to offi­cial adop­tion of an orphaned Mini and test drove a mod­el at Park Lane BMW. One of the dubi­ous dis­tinc­tions of liv­ing in May­fair is that with­in three blocks of our flat, one can pur­chase an Astin Mar­tin, a BMW, a Bent­ley, or… a Mini. It’s the cutest car ever. But very tiny, so John had to fold him­self up like a clown in a phone booth to get in. At first, the salesla­dy Ani­ta was very skep­ti­cal (or “scep­ti­cal” as they insist on spelling it here), watch­ing his head graze the roof, his knees tucked under his chin, and poor Avery com­plete­ly squashed in the back when he pushed the dri­ver’s seat back to its fullest extent. But life, includ­ing car pur­chas­es, involves com­pro­mise, so I sat back in my com­fy pas­sen­ger seat and watched as John and Avery nego­ti­at­ed who got what amount of room. He start­ed off with the sug­ges­tion that she mere­ly ride at all times with her legs crossed on the seat, which was greet­ed with a guf­faw and the coun­ter­sug­ges­tion that we get a con­vert­ible so he can put his legs out the top and dri­ve with his hands. Final­ly seats were adjust­ed to every­one’s sat­is­fac­tion and we took turns dri­ving around Hyde Park, mar­veling at how it turns on a dime, or a six­pence, the sur­pris­ing amount of engine pow­er for such a tee­ny lit­tle vehi­cle. And Ani­ta, whose accent sug­gests her ori­gins in some­place end­ing in a “stan,” assured us of its remark­able “safe­ty­ness,” which is reas­sur­ing, and sur­pris­ing con­sid­er­ing all the oth­er cars on the road top it by sev­er­al if not many inches.

So John is head­ed off to New York for the week this after­noon, and when he gets back on Sat­ur­day we’re going to look seri­ous­ly for a nice used Mini for our very own. I actu­al­ly felt quite com­fort­able dri­ving, which is aston­ish­ing since my last remem­bered dri­ving expe­ri­ence in Lon­don end­ed in my being hit by a tour bus full of vis­it­ing Finns, then ric­o­chet­ing into a Jeep owned by a Greek diplo­mat. The poor bob­by who attend­ed the scene said he felt like he was stuck in a NATO meet­ing. The poor car was totalled, or rather 100 pounds shy of being totalled which meant we had to get it fixed. I was fine, but it has left me (and the British dri­ving com­mu­ni­ty) a bit hes­i­tant about my tak­ing the wheel again. I think some nice dri­ving lessons would be good.

Oth­er that, I con­fess to a bit of bore­dom. None of the tasks star­ing me in the face seems inter­est­ing: sewing on more name tapes, fold­ing laun­dry, glu­ing pho­tos in the album, gro­cery shop­ping. I need an adven­ture. Wait, I’m going to have one! I almost for­got. The sec­ond week­end in Octo­ber, Avery and I are going to jour­ney off to Paris, to stay in a dar­ling lit­tle hotel with my dear friend Sarah and her daugh­ter Eve. It’s Eve’s tenth birth­day present, and it will be a nice time for the two girls to par­lay their long-dis­tance, moth­er-moti­vat­ed friend­ship into a real time friend­ship. You see, Sarah and I met ten years ago when I was plan­ning a con­fer­ence ses­sion at the Col­lege Art Asso­ci­a­tion annu­al meet­ing, and one of the papers I accept­ed for the pan­el was Sarah’s, on the Eng­lish painter Gwen John. It lat­er turned out that Sarah had been liv­ing right in my neigh­bor­hood the last time we were in Lon­don, and tak­ing a course at Christie’s and doing all her research right smack where I was doing mine, at the Vic­to­ria and Albert Muse­um library. We are con­vinced that we imprint­ed on each oth­er with­out ever meet­ing, which accounts for our incred­i­bly close friend­ship as soon as we met. Imme­di­ate­ly we cor­re­spond­ed by email sev­er­al times a day, with let­ters that were equal parts art his­to­ry, preg­nan­cy, and food. Years went by when, as she remind­ed me recent­ly, we each knew what the oth­er was hav­ing for din­ner every sin­gle night! By the time the con­fer­ence took place lo these many years ago, Eve was nine months old and Avery three. It was very con­ve­nient to have Sarah in my life, because at the oth­er end of a key­board was a faith­ful report on exact­ly what to expect Avery to do, eat or say in six months’ time.

Then we decid­ed to turn the pan­el dis­cus­sion into a book, which sound­ed very sim­ple but actu­al­ly took for­ev­er and a day to accom­plish. We used to joke that our chil­dren would be able to read the darn thing by the time we final­ly pub­lished it. And it was TRUE. And they weren’t par­tic­u­lar­ly ear­ly read­ers, either. Our hus­bands refer to this work as our “get rich quick scheme.” I recent­ly got a bi-annu­al roy­al­ty report from the pub­lish­er assur­ing me that as soon as my roy­al­ties for the last half-year reach $50, they will issue me a check. Ah, well, what price friend­ship. And do you know what? By googling Sarah I got to an Ama­zon page that solemn­ly informed me of the fol­low­ing facts: in our book you get 3,133 words per dol­lar and even more impor­tant, 4,837 words per ounce. I think that’s a bar­gain. And only 24% of books avail­able on Ama­zon con­tain a high­er fre­quen­cy of com­plex words than our book con­tains. Again, so much bang for the buck.

But seri­ous­ly, Octo­ber 14 will find the four of us hap­pi­ly eat­ing our way through Paris, watch­ing the pup­pet shows in the Lux­em­bourg Gar­dens, show­ing the girls all the mag­nif­i­cent art­works that inspired us to be art writ­ers and cura­tors, and one of us a fab­u­lous artist her­self. Even more impor­tant, it will give Eve and Avery a chance to dis­cuss what col­lege they want to go to (my mon­ey’s on Bryn Mawr Col­lege, where I got my incred­i­bly use­ful and lucra­tive PhD). Because we’re plan­ning that they’ll be roommates.