of exams, and then comfort

I know “The Book of Com­mon Prayer” tell us that “in the midst of life we are in death,” but it seems to me that more to the point, in the midst of death we are in *life*. Now Mar­tin Luther had a much more eso­teric and philo­soph­i­cal inter­pre­ta­tion of this idea, but it’s very sim­ple actu­al­ly. You can’t just turn your­self off, or stop the world and get off. In fact you can­not real­ly even pause to give due atten­tion to the sig­nif­i­cance of loss, some­times, because the vast and yet minute­ly par­tic­u­lar machin­ery of life tugs at you relent­less­ly. Just so was our day yesterday.

It began with a dri­ving rain­storm and an ear­ly alarm clock because, in the midst of our sad­ness and lone­li­ness, The Exams Must Go On. Well, I don’t know if they must, but they did. So in the dark of ear­ly Jan­u­ary morn­ing, we got our­selves to Godol­phin and Latymer School for the first of the three every-Fri­day exams that have loomed so long on Avery’s hori­zon. She, full of blue­ber­ry muffins, pancetta and straw­ber­ries (nev­er let it be said that anx­i­ety affects her appetite, bless her heart), packed up her Pony Club pen­cil case (her lit­tle rit­u­al of tak­ing every item out and describ­ing it to me broke my heart: such a seri­ous lit­tle girl) and we set off in a taxi. Not for me the search for a park­ing spot, not on such a day.

I let the taxi go and walked Avery to the door, but before I could prop­er­ly hug her or any­thing, she was swept up by the throngs and I just pecked her cheek and off she went. I felt total­ly bereft! Slogged my wet way to the Ham­mer­smith bus sta­tion (a place that has the poten­tial to kill com­plete­ly any inter­est you might have in human­i­ty’s con­tin­u­ing past today). Home on the bus, frankly half asleep, and stag­ger­ing into the flat. So depressed. But there in the sink was a beau­ti­ful bou­quet of white lilies from Avery’s school. That’s the sort of ges­ture that makes things worth­while. So I did my lit­tle chores, look­ing at my watch, and then final­ly suc­cumbed to an hour under the duvet with my cats and a hot water bot­tle. The alarm (two in one day! what a hor­ror) woke me in time for the sec­ond bus ride of the day, back to the school.

You would have laughed at the pick­up rit­u­al! I sup­pose if they had actu­al­ly poked the chil­dren with hot lit­tle pins it MIGHT have been more unpleas­ant, but not much. The hun­dreds of wet par­ents, all smelling like dogs or bears, crowd­ed into the assem­bly hall, lined with ginor­mous wood­en plaques list­ing all the gulls in per­pe­tu­ity who have won this or that schol­ar­ship, near­ly all with the words “Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty” or “Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty” after their blame­less names, with the occa­sion­al “Yale Uni­ver­si­ty” sprin­kling the Eng­lish tra­di­tion with a lit­tle hereti­cal Amer­i­can dust. At pre­cise­ly 12:15 a for­mi­da­ble young woman stepped up onto the stage, smashed a gav­el down on a table and shout­ed from a micro­phone that she was the deputy head. I can­not lisp the ten­der syl­la­bles of her name because of the babel of parental tongues that would not shut up. Final­ly she got across the infor­ma­tion that our gulls would come out onto the stage under the aus­pices of the room num­ber in which they had under­gone (to say “tak­en” does not ade­quate­ly con­vey the anx­i­ety in the room) the exam. Then she pro­ceed­ed to bel­low out room num­bers, and groups of six or eight cow­er­ing lit­tle shapes would slink onto the stage, where­upon six or eight adult arms would wave fran­ti­cal­ly and the bod­ies attached to the arms push in a MOST un-Eng­lish way toward the stage. Just awful. There were tears, lots of tears. Had the exam been that bad, or could the gulls in ques­tion not find their parental arms? I nev­er found out.

Final­ly Room 14 was announced and there was Avery in her lit­tle group, look­ing remark­ably calm, pen­cil case under her arm. I retrieved her and we went out (the rain hav­ing, mer­ci­ful­ly, stopped), and we ran away as fast as we could. “So? How was it?” I asked, and she stopped dead on the pave­ment. “If,” she said dra­mat­i­cal­ly, “you were ever to run into the per­son who wrote that exam, in a dark alley… RUN FOR YOUR LIFE.” I had to laugh. “No, seri­ous­ly,” she insist­ed, “it was two and a half hours of PURE EVIL.” This made the whole awful morn­ing worth­while, I have to say, and there was more where that came from. Spe­cif­ic exam­ples of evil, like “a+b‑c=41” and also “a‑c+b=52.” What are the val­ues of a, b, and c? These two prob­lems (or some vari­ables like them) were appar­ent­ly true at the same time. Pure evil! There’s no oth­er word for it.

And the com­pre­hen­sion! And the essay. Thir­ty pages of hell. She has no idea how she did. I have to say I was impressed that she had done any of it at all. My last expe­ri­ence with test-tak­ing was the night before the GRE (Grad­u­ate Record Exam­i­na­tion to those of you lucky enough not to take it). There we all were, seniors in col­lege in Octo­ber of the year, at the bar nat­u­ral­ly, hav­ing those last six drinks before going to bed. “What do you have on tomor­row, Kris­ten?” some­one asked, and I looked at my watch and said, “Oh no! I’d bet­ter go, I have the GRE tomor­row.” From this anec­dote it will be appar­ent that I did not pre­pare over­much, nor wor­ry. Well, Avery is made of dif­fer­ent stuff. After all the work that child has put into her stud­ies, she had bet­ter be reward­ed. That’s all I can say.

She was suf­fi­cient­ly recov­ered at lunchtime to eat an enor­mous bowl of mac­a­roni and cheese. Then we head­ed off to the skat­ing rink. I sat with her friend Jamie’s moth­er Vic­to­ria, who was just what the doc­tor ordered. A real­ly sup­port­ive, love­ly talk with her about John’s dad, about the exams, about pri­or­i­ties in life and parental respon­si­bil­i­ty and grief and faith. What I would do with­out my friends I do not know. Becky took me in hand on Thurs­day after­noon and fed me hand­made beignets and sym­pa­thy. I think the only point in grief and loss (not there has to be a point, but it would help) is that after one has been through a thing one­self, one has true empa­thy for oth­er peo­ple going through it, and help­ful advice. That is, one does if one is a good per­son as Becky is. Her kitchen is always so com­fort­ing. With three chil­dren of her own and mine there as often as not, there are always four bowls of each tasty snack, four glass­es of what­ev­er to drink, four voic­es bab­bling and clam­or­ing for atten­tion. It was love­ly to see the girls express their sym­pa­thy for Avery, and then in typ­i­cal child fash­ion, move direct­ly to their dress-up clothes and imag­i­nary ani­mals. Most reassuring.

Any­way, back to dread­ful Fri­day. After skat­ing we went out to din­ner with Beck­y’s fam­i­ly and it became appar­ent that nei­ther Avery nor I had what it took to get through an entire evening. We final­ly made our apolo­gies and slumped off home, where­upon we both alight­ed on the per­fect sit­u­a­tion: under the duvet in my bed­room, hot water bot­tles all round, cats on our laps, and Lord Peter Wim­sey’s “The Nine Tai­lors” on the tel­ly. A lit­tle girl in a white night­gown, a cold wind blow­ing out­side, and a long phone con­ver­sa­tion with John, his mom and sis­ter from Iowa, helped to dis­pel the hor­rors of a day that had start­ed so ear­ly and been so dif­fi­cult. It’s the per­fect movie for one (or two in our case) in need of com­fort: bell-ring­ing, snowy New Year’s Eve, lots of scotch and hot water, and an unloved vic­tim. Per­fect. We slept well.

And today was much the same. We hung around in bed fin­ish­ing the movie until near­ly noon, and then it felt like the right thing to do to open the cur­tains, get a fresh breeze, make our beds, and some chick­en soup. Guess what? Although I stand firm­ly behind a chick­en soup made with the remains of a good organ­ic roast­ed chick­en from your own home­ly oven, you know what you can do in a pinch? Make sure you have good qual­i­ty chick­en stock in your cup­board, dump it in a saucepan with some sweet lit­tle Chante­nay car­rots, some sliced cel­ery and a hand­ful of Man­is­che­witz fine noo­dles, and ten min­utes or so lat­er you’re in busi­ness. The per­fect lunch for me for whom any sad­ness or trou­ble goes right to my tum­my, and for Avery who, though intre­pid in every way, loves a good bowl of chick­en soup.

I took her off to her first act­ing class of the term and she has a new teacher! Some­one who pur­ports to have some high-lev­el cast­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties! And he stopped her in the hall­way after class and said, “That was very good,” so we feel sure fame and for­tune are just a mat­ter of time. There was, how­ev­er, a brief ker­fuf­fle at pick­up. She did­n’t see the car, I could­n’t see her, and we both thought some­thing hor­ri­ble had hap­pened. It’s so lux­u­ri­ous when John is here to dri­ve, while I go in to get her! Avery wailed, “A lit­tle per­son like me needs two par­ents!” I had to laugh. Isn’t it pathet­ic that I con­sid­er it an accom­plish­ment sim­ply to get to the act­ing school with­out get­ting lost, get from there to the gro­cery, and back again, and home, no acci­dents and remem­ber­ing to lock the car. Most peo­ple can accom­plish this whilst at the same time com­pos­ing sym­phonies or trad­ing mil­lions of dol­lars in junk bonds.

We are sur­viv­ing. Actu­al­ly more than that. I won­der if it isn’t maybe even more use­ful and sat­is­fy­ing a parental expe­ri­ence to get a child suc­cess­ful­ly through an awful time, than it is to enjoy a good time. It’s hard not to be able to do any­thing to pre­vent a sad loss, or to put out a hand to make the hurt go away. But if you can take the job you’ve been giv­en, not curl up in a ball and give up, and come out the oth­er side still stand­ing, it’s not a bad thing. And tomor­row she gets the whole day at the sta­ble. And… it promis­es to rain ALL day. After all, we would­n’t want any­thing to be too easy.