grace under pressure

Well, I have to be child­ish and admit to a cer­tain fris­son of pan­ic today at being prop­er­ly the only adult in my house­hold. How have I, trained over the past ten years to rec­on­cile myself to John’s long work hours, many busi­ness trips, my being in charge of every lit­tle detail of our at-home lives, become this scaredy-cat? I’ll tell you how: the mind-bend­ing com­fort, these last sev­er­al months, of hav­ing him home all the time. Well, my wake-up call has buzzed.

John has gone off this morn­ing to spend the next cou­ple of weeks with his par­ents back in Iowa, so… good­bye ear­ly-morn­ing cheer­ful per­son who makes tak­ing Avery to school such a dai­ly treat (to be replaced with surly if reli­able me, not a morn­ing per­son). Good­bye per­son who always seems to know which park­ing bays are going to be sus­pend­ed (to be replaced with me, who reg­u­lar­ly for­gets where I have parked the car at all). Good­bye per­son who will hap­pi­ly (well, at least will­ing­ly) run out to the cor­ner store for what­ev­er last-minute things I have for­got­ten for the prepa­ra­tion of din­ner. I have become so spoiled!

But he is need­ed back home, so off he went with a suit­case full of sil­ly gifts, includ­ing any­thing we could find made of figs for his moth­er, who will eat any num­ber of them just plain, so who knows what she’ll think of the pre­pos­ter­ous comestibles we found at the gor­geous La Fro­magerie in Mox­on Street, off the Maryle­bone High Street. What a beau­ti­ful shop, with its own Cheese Room attached to which is a very seri­ous sign inform­ing the vis­i­tor “Only a cer­tain num­ber of per­sons may be admit­ted to the Cheese Room at one time. Please await your turn.” Soci­ety has real­ly accom­plished some­thing when peo­ple will queue up to enter a room filled with smelly cheeses. Then I vis­it­ed Sel­f­ridges can­dy sec­tion and acquired some­thing like Avery’s weight in vanil­la jel­ly beans for John’s dad, who feels about vanil­la as Rose­mary does about figs.

I also picked up a book for Rose­mary called “Roast Figs and Sug­ar Snow,” which looked com­plete­ly beau­ti­ful, although I did­n’t peruse it long enough to get a sense of the recipes. All this while Avery hung out at her friend Jade’s birth­day par­ty: the first bowl­ing expe­ri­ence for Avery, and as she terse­ly report­ed after­ward, the last. “I am real­ly, real­ly, real­ly bad at bowl­ing,” was the exact descrip­tion. Whew, I am relieved not to add anoth­er activ­i­ty to her list of week­ly require­ments, and equal­ly relieved to know that a hideous pair of bowl­ing shoes will not be resid­ing in her clos­et. I spend enough time at the Queensway Bowl and Skate Rink as it is! But wait, drum roll please: Lev­el 9 has been achieved! It’s been a long time, since there was a pesky back­ward fig­ure-eight or some such skill that took for­ev­er to learn to get past Lev­el 8. And to reward her for Lev­el 9 she gets a badge for me to sew on her bag, in a stun­ning shade of… black. Seri­ous­ly! Avery put it just right: “I think they should make the col­ors for Lev­els 1 and 2 real­ly beau­ti­ful, to encour­age the small chil­dren, but then reserve some nice col­or for the high lev­els! Black??” I will be sure to sew it on her PE bag this after­noon while she’s at the barn.

Most­ly I’m sit­ting here think­ing about how much I admire peo­ple who pos­sess what I would call “grace under pres­sure.” As opposed to I, who pos­sess­es a qual­i­ty whose sci­en­tif­ic term is “pan­ic and neg­a­tiv­i­ty under almost noth­ing.” I have been so spoiled, not only in hav­ing John around so much since he hap­pi­ly quit his job, but also in gen­er­al in life just sort of hap­pen­ing, with its usu­al load of respon­si­bil­i­ties and tasks, but also punc­tu­at­ed by so much fun and good luck. So when the murki­er, less sun­ny aspects of life rear their ugly heads, I find myself sore­ly in need of opti­mistic cop­ing skills. I know, intel­lec­tu­al­ly, that most of the world lives under dark clouds of one kind or anoth­er most of the time, and I am incred­i­bly appre­cia­tive of all the good things that come my way, but the unfor­tu­nate flip side to my bless­ings is what a Big Whingey Baby I become when cir­cum­stances are any­thing but ideal.

I think that liv­ing hap­pi­ly in the real world is an actu­al skill. Like oth­er skills (skat­ing and bowl­ing) you come into life with a cer­tain capac­i­ty to be good at it. But then you can either hone your nat­ur­al skills, or you can be lazy and just coast by. My father-in-law, for exam­ple, is just about the hap­pi­est per­son I know. He approach­es each day (whether it’s lolling on the beach in St. Barts, or shop­ping in Lon­don, or slav­ing over some unbe­liev­ably com­plex and unsat­is­fy­ing work prob­lem) as a day in which to get the max­i­mum amount of hap­pi­ness out of it. Bad gram­mar, but you know what I mean. And part­ly how he approach­es life this way is down to his ten­den­cy to think first about what the peo­ple around him would like, what they need, what would make them hap­py. And he is the orig­i­nal glass-half-full per­son. He vir­tu­al­ly invent­ed opti­mism, and noth­ing can keep him down for long. Of course he is aid­ed and abet­ted in this by his side­kick, my moth­er-in-law, whose gen­er­ous Ital­ian tem­pera­ment means that she runs on all avail­able cylin­ders all the time. What a mag­i­cal com­bi­na­tion, actu­al­ly, her Ital­ian fire and his Irish blar­ney. No won­der my own hus­band is such a delight. I would like to learn from all their resilience, their bounce-backed­ness. Maybe I can.

Last night at din­ner the three of us were dis­cussing the notion of love at first sight, and the relat­ed notion of soul-mates. John and I just seen the very enjoy­able and roman­tic film “The Illu­sion­ist,” in which the main premise is the ful­fill­ment of love at first sight. In my typ­i­cal non-Latin, non-Irish, instead Ger­man­ic and Scan­di­na­vian approach, I said, “I think a hap­py mar­riage is less about love at first sight and more about being will­ing to stick it out over the long haul.” John said, “Well, we’re lucky enough to have both.” Silence, while we all con­sid­ered this. Then Avery laughed and said, “Dad­dy, Dad­dy, always the diplomat.”

I’m going to try hard to be a grown-up in the next cou­ple of weeks, and try to learn the les­son that life is about all those clich­es: “tak­ing the rough with the smooth,” “when life gives you lemons, make lemon­ade.” My goal is to be absolute­ly cloy­ing­ly pos­i­tive and chirpy, so that no one around me will rec­og­nize me and every­one will ask me to go back to my dis­mal, dark, spoiled per­sona. I won­der how long it will take?

In the mean­time, I want you all to go out and buy my newest musi­cal obses­sion CD: the new album by Corinne Bai­ley Rae. She is a British singer, annoy­ing­ly young to be so accom­plished (she writes, sings, plays gui­tar, I don’t know what all else). Her music was the sound­track to the com­plete­ly fab­u­lous film “Venus,” and it has a haunt­ing sort of beau­ty that makes me think of a mod­ern Rick­ie Lee Jones, she of the albums of our col­lege years (oh, the kiss­ing to the tunes of the Duchess of Coolsville!), a sort of mean­der­ing, poet­ic, style that would appeal to Ella Fitzger­ald, if she lived in 2007. Like a much bet­ter Edie Brick­ell, too.

just like a star across my sky
just like an angel on the page
you have appeared to my life
feel like I’ll nev­er be the same
just like a song in my heart
just like oil on my hands
hon­our to love you

We were play­ing Corinne Bai­ley Rae, on the evening this week when we received sad news, and Avery said last night, “Oh, that song makes me sad now.” I thought how my own emo­tion­al devel­op­ment is at times right on a par with that of my 10-year-old child (and often revolt­ing­ly far behind hers), so I pulled myself togeth­er and said, “Well, that’s what mem­o­ry is all about, and it’s not always good, but it’s impor­tant to lis­ten to this song again, and realise…” “That you can hear it, and then some­day feel bet­ter,” Avery offered. Well done.

Of course two min­utes lat­er she was ten again, insist­ing on eat­ing some nox­ious blue pow­dery can­dy prod­uct she had found lurk­ing in the bot­tom of her treat draw­er. “That’s just com­plete­ly dis­gust­ing, Avery, look at your lips, your teeth and your tongue,” I object­ed. “Don’t look at me, Dad­dy, I’m all blue,” she gig­gled. So are we all a bit, today. But we’re going to rise above it.