every­thing soft (espe­cial­ly me)

Well, it’s Sun­day evening, there’s a chill rain falling on the mid­night streets of Lon­don, and I feel I’ve dodged a bullet.

Thurs­day found us dri­ving a des­per­ate­ly anx­ious Avery to have her den­tal surgery. Some­how I imag­ined this hap­pen­ing in a den­tist’s office (sil­ly me, that’s what hap­pens in Amer­i­ca, I think, nev­er hav­ing been through any such thing), and since the den­tal sur­geon had told us to expect the pro­ce­dure to last a half hour, I had us home about an hour and a half lat­er, relieved at its being over.

I had it all wrong.

We pulled up to the stat­ed address to find our­selves at a hos­pi­tal. A real, prop­er hos­pi­tal. Avery’s despair deep­ened. Up to a hos­pi­tal ROOM, com­plete with bed with head and foot that moved accord­ing to a lit­tle remote con­trol, an entire­ly unbe­liev­able menu of food items like “Veg­etable Pako­ra with Rai­ta” and “Seared Cod with Miso Sauce” (in a HOS­PI­TAL??), and per­haps most incred­i­ble, a com­plete list of wines and spir­its. At this point, while the porter (like at a door­man build­ing in New York) was point­ing out how to work the space-age bed, I was about ready to order the entire bot­tle of Smirnoff vod­ka and call it a day.

Hos­pi­tal gown (“The ties open at the back, dear”), dress­ing gown (only in Eng­land) and dis­pos­able slip­pers. Did they think she was stay­ing the night? I felt com­plete­ly shocked out of my skin. Some­how, I knew we would­n’t be home in an hour and a half.

Three hours of wait­ing lat­er, things went from shock­ing to com­plete­ly unbe­liev­able, for me, as the sur­geon and anaes­thetist (I longed for Amer­i­ca where it’s spelled anes­the­si­ol­o­gist and some­how sounds less scary with­out the dipthong) arrived. Dressed in clothes that looked appro­pri­ate for a round of golf (sur­geon) and an accoun­tants’ office (anaes­thetist), they announced that plans had changed and Avery would be put under a gen­er­al anaesthetic.

Before I could prop­er­ly take this in, Avery and John were nod­ding rather calm­ly, both of them hav­ing been intel­li­gent enough to do research on all pos­si­ble pain relief options, long before the day. I felt com­plete­ly igno­rant and rug-pulled-out-from-under, but what could I say? It all seemed a fait accom­pli. Seem­ing­ly instant­ly, she was tak­en away, John hav­ing been vot­ed the par­ent to accom­pa­ny her to the “oper­at­ing the­atre” (I was des­ig­nat­ed as “recov­ery parent”).

“Say good­bye to Mum,” the nurse intoned kind­ly enough, which felt like doom to me.

“Bye, Mum­my,” Avery said, and with her usu­al demeanor of charm and impec­ca­ble man­ners to strangers, sim­ply walked away into the the­atre, John fol­low­ing her.

AUTHO­RISED PER­SON­NEL ONLY.

I was struck by what seemed to have hap­pened: my only child sim­ply tak­en from me, thank God with her father with her, to under­go some­thing that’s nev­er hap­pened to me, a jour­ney down a per­ilous and unknown path, at the mer­cy of peo­ple I had scarce­ly met, let alone quizzed about their steadi­ness of hand, their mood, their lev­els of con­cen­tra­tion. What if they’d had too much cof­fee, or not enough, or fought with their girl­friends and weren’t pay­ing attention?

“Are you all right?” asked a love­ly pass­ing nurse. This is Eng­lish for any num­ber of ques­tions. It rarely means what Amer­i­cans think of ask­ing “Are you all right?” which would indi­cate a pret­ty seri­ous con­cern for some­one’s well-being. To the Eng­lish, it can mean, “Is your cof­fee milky enough?” or “Do you need help with your baby’s bug­gy?” in the Tube.

This Eng­lish lady, how­ev­er, could see that I took her ques­tion literally.

“My daugh­ter’s in there, with­out me. Her father’s there, though…”

“Ah, here he comes. It will all come out all right,” she said, and smiled with the uncon­cern of the pro­fes­sion­al in an are­na that seems to the out­side vis­i­tor total­ly over­whelm­ing and frightening.

There fol­lowed the longest 40 min­utes of my life. Worse than wait­ing for a plane to take off in my worst moments of fear of fly­ing, but sim­i­lar. How could I have put the most pre­cious thing in the world in the hands of com­plete strangers who knew how to han­dle machin­ery I could­n’t even iden­ti­fy? We tried to watch tel­ly, we tried to chat, but even John was a bit off and con­ver­sa­tion flagged.

Final­ly the love­ly nurse was back, smil­ing, “Would you like to come to her now?”

“You mean she’s all right?”

“But of course, a bit wob­bly per­haps, but you must­n’t wor­ry,” this all said in a placid French accent, her whites impec­ca­ble, she sep­a­rat­ed from me by a gulf of non-moth­er­hood. (Of course she may be a moth­er, but not the one of my child who might be a bit “wob­bly.”)

And I found Avery, all tubed up and cer­tain­ly wob­bly, although motion­less, her eye­lash­es flut­ter­ing, things attached to her hands, but unmis­tak­ably still Avery behind her eye­lids, when they flut­tered open.

“I was dizzy but I could­n’t make the words work…” she said. I found her hand under the blan­kets, pris­tine and soft, and held it, feel­ing my life had been saved.

The sur­geon and anaes­thetist appeared, in scrubs now and non­cha­lant, “It’s been a plea­sure,” they said mean­ing­less­ly, not seem­ing to real­ize that they had brought me to the brink of total dis­as­ter, and then decid­ed to let me live. How on earth do they DO that every day, many times a day? Take a 13-year-old’s con­scious­ness, body and life in their hands, fix some­thing, bring her back, and sim­ply move onto the next one? As for­eign an exis­tence as I can imag­ine. All this for two tiny gold chains attached to her buried incisors, to be attached to her braces next week. As if her teeth matter.

But of course they do. Real life continues.

Some two hours, a glass of water and a straw lat­er, plus end­less mea­sur­ings of her heart rate and blood pres­sure, she was allowed to dress in her civvies, dis­card the dread­ed hos­pi­tal gown (“I’m for SURE enter­ing that con­test to redesign hos­pi­tal gowns!” she said emphat­i­cal­ly), and shake the nurse’s hand gra­cious­ly. “It’s been a plea­sure to look after you today,” the nurse said.

We put Avery care­ful­ly into the car, I feel­ing as if I was han­dling an angel that I’d almost not got­ten back. She was her nor­mal self, detail­ing every­thing she remem­bered. “How weird to think I’ve been in a room I don’t even remem­ber, and some­thing’s hap­pened to me that I just MISSED,” she marvelled.

We arrived at home, set­tled her with the new Daisy Dal­rym­ple mys­tery books that had mirac­u­lous­ly arrived in the post while she was away, a cash­mere throw, a warm cat. The nurse hav­ing insist­ed that she eat some­thing to soak up the IV med­ica­tions, I made some creamy red pep­per soup. It can be done in the blink of an eye, while the cook downs a love­ly cock­tail and begins to rejoin the land of the liv­ing, the thought­less, the care­less and normal.

Creamy Red Pep­per Soup
(serves 3)

2 tbsps butter
3 cloves gar­lic, rough­ly chopped
1 shal­lot, rough­ly chopped
4 red bell pep­pers, rough­ly chopped
2 sprigs thyme, rough­ly chopped
long splash Marsala wine
3 cups GOOD chick­en stock
1/2 ‑3/4 cups dou­ble cream, depend­ing on how creamy you like it
sea salt and black pep­per to taste

Melt the but­ter in a heavy saucepan and throw in gar­lic, shal­lots, pep­pers and thyme. Saute till just not raw. Add Marsala and turn up heat to burn off alco­hol for 30 sec­onds or so. Add chick­en stock and sim­mer until pep­pers are cooked, about 25 min­utes. Whizz with a hand blender and put through a sieve to catch pep­per skins and thyme stems. Add cream to soup and season.

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This soup is love incar­nate. It’s like chick­en soup but with­out the “sick per­son” con­no­ta­tions of chick­en soup. It’s vel­vety and bright red and cel­e­bra­to­ry, and it makes Avery hap­py every time. This soup depends entire­ly on the qual­i­ty of its few ingre­di­ents: espe­cial­ly real­ly good stock (not from cubes) and real­ly good cream.

This she sipped, and drank a glass of pink lemon­ade through a straw her clever father unearthed in the pantry.

And we put her to bed with hot water bot­tles, and a tis­sue paper pack­age to open, filled with lit­tle fake-pearl bracelets in fun­ny, cheer­ful col­ors. Some­thing to open. And she was asleep, safe.

I asked her the next day how she man­aged to com­port her­self with­out pan­ick­ing. She had an expla­na­tion that stopped me in my tracks, with its sim­plic­i­ty and dignity.

“If you can con­trol your exte­ri­or close­ly enough, and make it pos­i­tive, then grad­u­al­ly it begins to affect your inte­ri­or, and you real­ly begin to feel the way you’re acting.”

The next day she was COM­PLETE­LY FINE. No swelling, no pain. The annoy­ing anaes­thet­ic wore off and she was total­ly nor­mal. “Let’s walk to school at noon and I can say good­bye for the hol­i­day, to my friends.” Off we went, I leav­ing her to fin­ish the walk by her­self while I picked up an enor­mous quan­ti­ty of Scot­tish salmon at our local fish­mon­gers, to be baked in a method so sim­ple it can hard­ly be called a recipe. But with salmon that fresh and divine, it hard­ly requires chew­ing either, so it’s per­fect for a semi-invalid.

Fox Point Salmon
(serves 3)

1 length of salmon serv­ing three por­tions: per­haps 1 lb in all?
olive oil to drizzle
Fox Point Sea­son­ing to sprin­kle lavishly

Sim­ply driz­zle the oil, sprin­kle the Fox Point and bake this salmon in a very hot oven (425F, 210C) for about 20–25 min­utes, till JUST cooked through but NEV­ER dry. That’s IT.

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With this, it’s imper­a­tive to have:

Cheesy Spinach
(serves 3)

1 large bag washed baby spinach (1 lb)
2 tbsps butter
1 tbsp flour
1 tbsp cel­ery seeds
1/2 tbsp cel­ery salt (to taste, real­ly, but mind the saltiness)
3 cloves garlic
2 tbsps cream
1/4 lb sharp cheese: Ched­dar, Edam, Gruyere, Mon­terey Jack, grated

Whizz up the spinach in batch­es in the food proces­sor till in small pieces, but not mushy.

Melt but­ter in a large skil­let, add flour and siz­zle a bit, then add cel­ery seeds and salt and siz­zle more. Add cream and stir up into a stodgy, thick paste-like almost-sauce.

Now turn off heat, and throw in spinach and cheese. Just before you’re ready to seat, turn heat on low and stir con­stant­ly and watch it all mag­i­cal­ly amal­ga­mate into a bright-green, creamy, cheesy DELIGHT.

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Avery met up with me at the fish­mon­ger’s car­ry­ing a giant choco­late East­er egg, an offer­ing from one of her friends. “She missed me yes­ter­day,” she said with plea­sure, and we head­ed home, for a peace­ful after­noon, and a din­ner of every­thing SOFT.

Over it all, my heart was soft, and grate­ful. I thought of the par­ents who were at the hos­pi­tal still, overnight, over many nights, hear­ing bad news, sur­viv­ing any sort of unimag­in­able anx­i­ety, not hav­ing to invent it as I did, because it was there in a diag­no­sis or an oper­a­tion, not some­thing sim­ple and pre­dictable and every­day as Avery had been through. And I was thankful.

It would be good to remem­ber to feel that way every day. I know very soon we’ll be back to chew­ing, and quib­bling, and being annoyed that she leaves her wet bath tow­el on her bed­room floor. But not today. Today every­thing is soft.