kings and tow­ers and a molar

First of all, it’s time for anoth­er Men­tal Note. Have you ever dropped your child off at school and then come home to do that wicked thing you often con­tem­plate but nev­er do: Get Back In Bed And Pull the Cov­ers Over Your Head? Well, take it from me: don’t. I had the weird­est dreams ever. First, I dreamt that Avery was cov­ered entire­ly in tar­tan. Not as a gar­ment, but her actu­al self. I can’t remem­ber if it was the real tar­tan or not, but some­how that did­n’t seem to mat­ter. So I woke up in a pan­ic, turned over to go back to sleep and then I dreamt that I opened the refrig­er­a­tor and huge uncon­trol­lable heads of broc­coli came spilling out. Waah. Bad. Then there was some­thing involv­ing the cats and spaghet­ti, at which point I decid­ed the bet­ter part of val­or was just to be sleepy for the rest of the day.

Any­way, last things first. Avery lost her first molar! This seems an inop­por­tune rite of pas­sage: I remem­ber when she GOT the jol­ly thing. How can she be old enough to lose it? She explained it very poet­i­cal­ly (after slink­ing into my bed­room at 10 p.m. last night hold­ing it in her hand). “You see, babies don’t real­ly need the teeth they have, as they eat most­ly mushy things. So the roots are rather frag­ile, and final­ly, when peo­ple get to be my age, the roots just… let go, and the tooth floats away.” It sounds, as every­thing does these days, like a metaphor.

Ah well, she does­n’t even believe in the tooth fairy any­more, so times are cer­tain­ly chang­ing. I remem­ber when my beloved friend Sarah Webb, a bril­liant artist, arranged the first vis­it of the Tooth Fairy to her daugh­ter Eve (they were our part­ners in crime for our trip to Paris last Octo­ber). Sarah scat­tered a trail of gold glit­ter from Eve’s bed­room door to the space under her pil­low where she left some tiny gift. In the morn­ing Eve said, “Mom­my, are you the Tooth Fairy?” “Now why on earth would you ask that?” “Because lots of my friends have lost teeth, and glit­ter has nev­er been part of their experience.”

Any­way, com­pared to the lost molar, my trip to the Roy­al Acad­e­my to see the new show, “Cit­i­zens and Kings,” was pos­i­tive­ly an under­state­ment. No, tru­ly, my friend Susan who is a vol­un­teer there took me through the show and it is def­i­nite­ly worth a vis­it. The icon­ic por­traits of Napoleon, The Sun King, George Wash­ing­ton and so many oth­ers are real­ly quite stun­ning and the rooms are arranged very clev­er­ly by var­i­ous themes, and not at all crowd­ed, so that the view­er does not get bored. Susan was an excel­lent guide with lots of behind-the-scenes infor­ma­tion that made it espe­cial­ly enter­tain­ing. Then we repaired to the court­yard with the stat­ue of the first head of the Roy­al Acad­e­my, Sir Joshua Reynolds (did you know that the foun­tains sur­round­ing him are in the arrange­ment of the con­stel­la­tion of stars on the day of his birth? nei­ther did I, but Susan did). The court­yard is cur­rent­ly dom­i­nat­ed by the two tow­ers of Jeri­cho by Anselm Kiefer, which have been the sub­ject of such con­tro­ver­sy in the city. I myself can­not see what the fuss is about. Of course they are ref­er­ences to the many scenes of social destruc­tion about us these days, of course they bring up asso­ci­a­tions to Beirut, Afghanistan, New York, that’s obvi­ous. But the sheer scale of them, con­crete, rein­forc­ing steel, lead, com­bined with an eerie insub­stan­tial­i­ty, and the chang­ing impact they have depend­ing on the col­or of the sky, all com­bined for me to make a very suc­cess­ful instal­la­tion. We went on to Jay Jopling’s new Pic­cadil­ly White Cube gallery, with its con­cur­rent exhi­bi­tion of oth­er apoc­a­lyp­tic Kiefer pieces. Much as I hes­i­tate to agree with Don­ald Kus­pit about any­thing, the gray­ness of Kiefer­’s work and the enor­mi­ty of the palm tree, lying supine in the huge gallery space, were very effec­tive and impres­sive. How did he get that tree out of the ground, much less installed with such incon­gruity in a gallery space just yards from Christie’s? Very odd, and beau­ti­ful. Susan and I puz­zled over the Latin labellings but were left in igno­rance, so we’ll have to look it up. Tomor­row, perhaps!

We end­ed up hav­ing a quick lunch in Pic­cadil­ly, dis­cussing our chil­dren, art, school, fam­i­lies. In the past two weeks, I think I have defined what a good friend­ship is, and I would like to learn some­thing from it from the giv­ing end, since I’ve received so much late­ly. I think a real­ly good friend­ship is about hav­ing the per­son lis­ten to you when you need help, real­ly lis­ten, and then not just nod sup­por­t­ive­ly, but actu­al­ly react truth­ful­ly. It has been so refresh­ing late­ly, ask­ing for advice, telling my friends how I’ve react­ed to some­thing, han­dled some­thing, and I don’t get just a nice sup­port­ive nod. I get actu­al help. As in, every once in awhile, “oh, Kris­ten, that was real­ly not the right way to go about that.” Or, “look at it from this angle instead,” or even more help­ful, “when I was in that sit­u­a­tion, I real­ized I was mak­ing the same mis­take.” I come out of these con­ver­sa­tions feel­ing strange­ly uplift­ed, because I real­ize I am actu­al­ly being lis­tened to. And the per­son oppo­site me cares more about mak­ing the sit­u­a­tion bet­ter than just nod­ding sup­por­t­ive­ly and not risk­ing any­thing. So I myself am going to try to lis­ten bet­ter. And not just say what is expect­ed, or the eas­i­est route at the moment. Real­ly react and say what you think would be help­ful. I don’t know what I would have done late­ly with­out Becky, Olimpia, Simone, Susan, Vin­cent, and so many oth­er excel­lent com­pan­ions. May I be able to do the same someday.

In the mean­time, I tread through the days mak­ing so many mis­takes! I went to the gro­cery and came home with­out a sin­gle thing that was on my list. Grant­ed, they were unusu­al, and yet bor­ing things like dish­wash­er rinse aid, and match­es. I’m sor­ry, those are things that occur to the human mind only at the pre­cise moment of load­ing the dish­wash­er or light­ing the din­ner can­dles. I can­not car­ry the need for them in my mind at any oth­er time. Oh, and I was sit­ting vir­tu­ous­ly read­ing with my lit­tle Form Two gulls, lit­tle Emi­lie to be pre­cise, when even lit­tler Ellie walked in with her coat and brief­case, looked me up and down and said, dead­pan, “You’re not sup­posed to be here until Thurs­day, Miss Kris­ten. You’re sup­posed to be with Form Three right now.” Holy *&%, she was right. Up I got and trudged across the pas­sage where the Form Three teacher just said patient­ly, “That’s all right, Mrs Cur­ran, it’s hard to keep the days straight.” Espe­cial­ly the ones that require me to be sen­tient at 8:20 a.m.

And I have been a dead loss as far as cook­ing. It’s not that Avery isn’t reward­ing to cook for. Actu­al­ly, yes, that’s what it is. She would always pre­fer noo­dles and but­ter to any­thing else, although she hap­pi­ly eats what­ev­er I put in front of her. But some­how din­ner con­ver­sa­tion palls for me, when it cen­ters almost exclu­sive­ly on the atmos­phere left in one’s mouth once a molar has been lost, or the rel­a­tive mer­its of the songs that will be sung today by the var­i­ous school hous­es for the inter­school singing com­pe­ti­tion, or the incred­i­ble cute­ness of the 18-hand horse (yes, 18 hands, I react­ed exact­ly the same way, what is my tiny child doing on the biggest horse in the sta­ble!?) she rode that after­noon. So I have been tremen­dous­ly lazy and made dull but reli­able toma­to sauce, eat­ing it with spaghet­ti, and fol­lowed by putting the left­overs in an oven-proof dish the next night topped with moz­zarel­la and baked in a slow oven for half an hour. Not Lucul­lan delights. That can wait till John gets home.

Easy Toma­to Sauce
(serves four)

1/2 stick butter
3 cloves gar­lic, minced
2 soup-size cans whole peeled Ital­ian plum tomatoes
1/2 cup light cream
salt and pep­per to taste
lots of grat­ed pecorino

Now what? Here’s what. Put it all in a saucepan, except the cheese, and mash the toma­toes a bit with a pota­to mash­er. Sim­mer for about half an hour. That’s it.

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

Last night I suc­cumbed to total slug­ness and we went out to a local Ital­ian place that I can’t name because the last time I did, the own­er con­tact­ed me about my com­plaints (in this space!) and said he hoped we would come back. Well, we did and noth­ing has changed. A total lack of com­pre­hen­sion as to what we were order­ing, com­bined with a mind-numb­ing acoustic sit­u­a­tion which mean that I lost ful­ly half of Avery’s mono­logue on the theme of the 18-hand horse (not that I mind­ed). As Avery final­ly observed, when we had ordered our drinks YET anoth­er time, “some­times restau­rants being full of real Ital­ians is authen­tic and some­times it’s just… imprac­ti­cal.” Sigh. And she’s a quar­ter Ital­ian, what can I say.

At least there is my com­e­dy class. Yes­ter­day the teacher looked around the room at us and said, “James is going to be late. He says he has to meet up with some­body who owes him mon­ey.” Imme­di­ate­ly every­one began spec­u­lat­ing about the bloody base­ball bat, the Irish thugs in Bermond­sey, etc. All the things that come up when you put sev­er­al would-be writ­ers in a room togeth­er all try­ing to be fun­ny. It was very refresh­ing. And sev­er­al of my cohorts have been read­ing the blog and enjoy­ing it, which was extreme­ly grat­i­fy­ing. Real writ­ers like it! That’s a good sign. We went on to ana­lyze part of anoth­er episode of “Extras,” which I find fun­ny for about five min­utes and then I want to turn it off. I asked the tutor why Ricky Ger­vais would write a show with only two main char­ac­ters, and he said, “Well, he plays one of them and he gets a lot more air­time!” Exact­ly. I can’t take that much Ricky Ger­vais. Then we talked about the moti­va­tions of the char­ac­ters in the sit­com we’re try­ing to write (set in a health club owned by a petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­ny, don’t ask: that’s what comes of writ­ing as a team). There is a vil­lain­ous female char­ac­ter that we have to decide if the audi­ence is meant to like, or not. We were debat­ing how ugly to make her, and how far to push her evil­ness, when the tutor object­ed, “Wait, we’re not mak­ing her into some­one who’s dis­mem­ber­ing oth­er peo­ple’s chil­dren!” and I mur­mured, “Sea­son Two,” which got a laugh. But I don’t think I’m a sit­com writer at heart.

In any case, TGIF. Not so much as if John were here, but it does mean that if Avery and her beloved best friend Anna, who’s sleep­ing over, will per­mit, tomor­row I can spend a bit more time with my head under the cov­ers. Dream­less, one hopes.