A day at Kew

My God, first, though I must offload about my day yes­ter­day. Rain? Check. Sleet? Check. HAIL? In abun­dance. Child dragged to ortho­don­tist who out­lined a course of action that left both of us drained of col­or and slight­ly pan­icked. Child then dragged to sta­ble and left there to work off her anx­i­ety by lead­ing cry­ing chil­dren around the park on hors­es who kicked and spat. I walked home and got com­plete­ly soaked for my pains.

Sigh.

But we accom­plished, grad­u­al­ly, all that was need­ed: a long walk to East Chiswick or West Shep­herd’s Bush or wher­ev­er you’d offi­cial­ly place the post offices where parcels go to die if you’re not home to receive them, to find the feath­ered wings and halo that will trans­form my daugh­ter from a pre-teen bun­dle of nerves into an angel this evening. Then we went to the chemist for the per­fect pink lip­stick and nail var­nish, and to make me hap­py, stopped at the Lyric Square farmer’s mar­ket for about a hun­dred sam­ples of the Gig­gly Pig’s many sausages, final­ly to choose one mod­est pack­age of spicy gar­lic. The man ahead of us bought five pack­ages of EVERY­THING. I could­n’t believe my ears, but the Gig­gle Pig Lady kept her cool and just said, “Yes, sir,” to all his requests. When he hand­ed her the 75 pounds, though, she cracked and said, “That’s been a plea­sure, sir.” To fill his deep freeze! I adore Tra­cy Mack­ness, whose brain­child the Gig­gly Pig is: for­mu­lat­ed dur­ing her prison sen­tence for sup­ply­ing cannabis. Bet­ter than graf­fi­ti or tat­toos, I feel. Any­way, that cheered us up, and now with John bring­ing home pump­kins to carve, Hal­loween can arrive.

And at the post office, a bronze plaque bear­ing names in that curly script so pecu­liar to the Edwar­dian age: the names of the dozen or so post­men of Ham­mer­smith who died in World War I. Topped with a bronze red-paint­ed pop­py and bear­ing a poem that began “To those whom age will nev­er dimin­ish…” it brought tears to my eyes. I have just fin­ished read­ing Bird­song, a nov­el that I’m appar­ent­ly the last per­son to dis­cov­er. Once my friend Edward told me to read it, every­one I know said, “Oh, I gave that book to every­one I knew, the Christ­mas it came out, except you because I thought it was too scary for you.” In any case, it is a sto­ry of one British World War I sol­dier, told through a com­plex series of time shift and points of view, his love affair with a mar­ried French woman, and then the life of his grand­daugh­ter in the 1970s. Now, before I read this heart­break­ing nov­el, I don’t know that I would have par­tic­u­lar­ly noticed the plaque in the post office, but sud­den­ly I thought, “Twelve POST­MEN, just in Ham­mer­smith?” I explained a bit to Avery who was polite­ly inter­est­ed, but not real­ly moved. The sheer num­bers. Read Bird­song, and wear your poppy.

Avery will be twelve on Mon­day. As usu­al dur­ing the few days before her birth­day, I spend a lot of time inad­ver­tent­ly reliv­ing the days before her birth, remem­ber­ing the absolute unre­al­i­ty of what her arrival would mean. It was like wait­ing to get a kit­ten. No more sig­nif­i­cant than that, real­ly: some­thing new to play with, won­der­ing if it would be a nice kit­ten or one that we’d sort of end up ignor­ing after a time. Not reck­on­ing with the real­i­ty of an actu­al per­son, who would be here for­ev­er. Some­times late­ly she feels very adult, shar­ing my sense of humor pre­cise­ly and find­ing the same things touch­ing, hav­ing com­plex con­ver­sa­tions about school, philo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sions about her world. Oth­er times, though, as last week when I was walk­ing home with her from swim­ming, she and a friend raced ahead on the leafy, wet, dark side­walk say­ing, “How do you skip? This is my skip,” show­ing a par­tic­u­lar way of lift­ing feet. “Well, I like your skip, but here’s my skip…” and then they feel like lit­tle girls again.

Let’s see, our last adven­ture of half-term (has it real­ly been only two weeks? a lot of togeth­er­ness for moth­er and daugh­ter) was to take the tube to Kew Gar­dens to meet up with my writ­ing week friend Louise and her daugh­ter Lara. Of course it’s nev­er a guar­an­tee that two chil­dren will take to each oth­er just because their moth­ers do, or because they’re the same age, but they did! “She reminds me of Meta,” Avery said in a whis­per, refer­ring to her Iowa friend, grand­daugh­ter of my inlaws’ best friends. A sporty, easy­go­ing, ener­getic girl, ready to run along the path car­ry­ing the com­plete­ly incom­pre­hen­si­ble map, very author­i­ta­tive about which direc­tion to take. Louise and I were con­tent to fol­low slow­ly behind (one of those moments when you real­ize you’ve become your moth­ers, gos­sip­ing and trail­ing slow­ly while your chil­dren climb all over every­thing and get pro­gres­sive­ly muddier).

We climbed a hideous­ly high struc­ture called the Xstra­ta Tree­top Walk­way, sus­pend­ed MUCH too high above the ground and sway­ing, I swear, slight­ly in the wind. “Is this thing mov­ing?” I asked and both girls screamed and clung to each oth­er. We were brave and walked all the way around, but hon­est­ly between the height and the con­stant air traf­fic over our heads as VERY low planes made their way to Heathrow… I felt quite ill by the time it was fin­ished! “I think that was quite enough, maybe too much,” Louise said as we reached the ground and dealt with our ver­ti­go. “Let’s find a place to sit down.” We repaired to the con­ser­va­to­ry and sat admir­ing lemon and lime plants and chat­ting while the girls explored. It’s a very sat­is­fy­ing place to take chil­dren and watch them wear them­selves out.

Just as nice as the Gar­dens was the tiny vil­lage of Kew itself, at the train sta­tion. The girls dived into the Kew Book­shop, small but very exten­sive in its choic­es, while Louise and I went to the very charm­ing butch­er, Pethers, where an apple-cheeked young man addressed us as “Young Lady,” and made us laugh. “How long will your goose fat keep?” I asked, buy­ing a rather large tub, and he said, “Well, health and safe­ty makes us say three to six months, but real­ly almost indef­i­nite­ly, and we know it’s good because it’s from our geese,” ges­tur­ing to the birds in the fridge! That’s true prove­nance. I bought a gor­geous pork fil­let which proved extreme­ly ten­der, grilled to per­fec­tion the next night.

Then we end­ed up at a neat as a pin food and organ­ic body prod­ucts shop called Oliv­er’s, which for some rea­son smelled exact­ly like the kitchen at the French home where I lived in high school: a com­bi­na­tion of herbs, onions and apples, pota­to dirt, I don’t know what else. Pos­si­bly some hand-milled soap. Any­way, I stood with my eyes closed for a sec­ond, look­ing like a com­plete fool, no doubt, liv­ing in the past. The pre­pared meats looked love­ly, and I saw the largest beet­root ever in cap­tiv­i­ty I think, but all I bought was a tin or two of le Puy lentils, hard to find in my very not-posh neigh­bor­hood in London.

And that was our day. We’re plan­ning some­thing like an ice-skat­ing ven­ture next, or a trip to a Lon­don muse­um. It’s fun­ny how our Totleigh Bar­ton friend­ships are play­ing out in the real world: how we have cho­sen who to stay in touch with. It’s added a spicy dimen­sion to that real world, which can some­times feel rather relent­less­ly DAILY.

I don’t have a new recipe for you, for which I’m real­ly sor­ry. But tonight, since Avery’s away at a Hal­loween par­ty, I’ve bought veal scal­lop­ine, and I feel an Orlan­do mush­room sauce com­ing on. I’ll report.