For Esme, with love and squalor

There is no deny­ing two impor­tant facts: Spring has sprung in Lon­don for one thing, as you see, and there­fore, as night fol­lows the day, the miserable/exciting/hilarious/backbreaking process of mov­ing has begun.  If only we knew where we were mov­ing TO, and WHEN.  Details, details.

Remem­ber The Doll­house, Option Num­ber One?  We went back, with Avery, and noticed that our entire dis­cus­sion cen­tered on what would not fit, what we could not bring, what we’d have to get rid of or put in stor­age, feel­ing as the great nov­el­ist Lau­rie Col­win said, that every­thing around us had been scaled down to fit a box tur­tle.  Not a good idea.

But The Barn, Option Num­ber Two, is still in play.  We went to see it for a third time yes­ter­day, and the door was opened by a delight­ful woman and her adorable Irish hus­band, beck­on­ing us in and insist­ing we sit down for a cup of tea.  “We just found out where our daugh­ter got into school, and we’re thrilled!  So it’s a celebration!”

(“How’s that whole ‘nev­er make friends with land­lords because it’s a mis­take to mix busi­ness with friend­ship’ plan work­ing out for us?” I asked John later.)

One of the fun­ni­est moments of this search?  I opened the oven at The Barn to see if my excel­lent All-Clad roast­er would fit (it would­n’t), and in the slight­ly warmed oven was a hunk of rose­mary-encrust­ed bread!  All my life I’ve read about peo­ple sell­ing their hous­es who bake bread before buy­ers come to see it, but it’s nev­er actu­al­ly hap­pened to me before.  Delight.

Add to this excite­ment the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Option Num­ber Three, a sort of Mod­i­fied Doll­house, where some of our things would fit, but not all.  The famous wall of books would morph into four rather unim­pres­sive and sep­a­rat­ed columns of books, in two dif­fer­ent rooms.  Avery could not bring her child­hood bed because the four-poster would not fit under the slight­ly doll­housey-dormer roof of her planned bed­room.  Okay, we can buy anoth­er bed.  But no base­ment?  Where do the Christ­mas orna­ments go, and those dozen Russ­ian con­somme cups, and all Avery’s out­grown clothes wait­ing for my nieces to decide it’s not “girly” to wear dress­es?  Not to men­tion four lit­ter­box­es?  STRESS!

The final Xanax-induc­ing point of dra­ma is that none of the con­trac­tors work­ing on any of these pos­si­ble hous­es can be fin­ished until — at best — JUST the cru­cial moment when our lease expires.  Which means that we and the pre­vi­ous own­ers will be pass­ing each oth­er through the cor­ri­dors on the Day of Reck­on­ing, bring­ing box­es in while they’re bring­ing box­es out, and just HOPE that we end up with the right chil­dren and pets.  And Christ­mas orna­ments.  All because of the mas­sive inflex­i­bil­i­ty of all the pow­ers that be. All the house own­ers on each side who have to put their hands on their hips and say, “That one par­tic­u­lar day is the Mag­ic Day!  Live with it!”

Ugh.  I can’t wait until John’s dream house is even­tu­al­ly built and we nev­er have to utter anoth­er nego­ti­at­ing word as long as we live.  Until then, we live a bit on tenterhooks.

It’s all a les­son in learn­ing to live hap­pi­ly with­out the con­di­tion that you’re in con­trol of any part of your life.  Which is healthy, because any illu­sion that we are in con­trol is just that, an illu­sion.  Bet­ter, in some ways, to have your total lack of con­trol thrust in your face, and then you’re forced to find ways to be hap­py even under those circumstances.

And you know what?  I’m tak­ing a com­plete­ly healthy fam­i­ly — if neu­rot­ic cats can be con­sid­ered healthy — to some house, some­day, and we’ll be there togeth­er, cook­ing din­ner, hav­ing friends over, super­vis­ing home­work, lis­ten­ing to singing lessons being prac­ticed, maybe even smelling bread in the oven!  And that, in the end, is the only impor­tant thing.  Doing it all togeth­er, in good health.

In the mean­time, we’re deter­mined not to pack up and take a SIN­GLE object we don’t LOVE, which means lots of clear­ing out.  And clean­ing out the squalid base­ment has its moments.

“Does mouth­wash have an expi­ra­tion date?  Here’s some we brought from New York in 2005.”

“Do we want this tin of yacht var­nish?  Why do we HAVE a tin of yacht varnish?”

“Who gave us this set of salt and pep­per shak­ers in the shape of Chinamen?”

“Do we know any­body who would take all these out­grown ice skates?”

“Why do we have three pota­to ricers?”

“Oh, look, it’s the oth­er half dozen of those gold­en and red Russ­ian con­somme cups Binky gave us for Christ­mas in 1990.  When did we ever know twelve peo­ple who all want­ed to drink con­somme at the same time?  Maybe that’s why we nev­er unwrapped this half dozen.”

And such sweet hap­py mem­o­ries flood­ing back too, like the Christ­mas that my daugh­ter, now top­ping me by at least an inch, was small enough to fit into this sleep­ing bag, a gift from my dear mum.

There were absolute trea­sures in a slight­ly mildewy card­board box full of fam­i­ly mem­o­ries.  How about this for the moment before my wed­ding?  Don’t I look excit­ed and dewy, and ready for a life­time of mar­ried bliss and con­stant moves?

And me with my dar­ling old­er broth­er, Andy, from 1970, I think.

I like to think I’ve aged slight­ly bet­ter than my stuffed squir­rel, who also emerged from a card­board box down in that base­ment.  Sor­ry, Squandy, I loved you a lit­tle TOO much.

And the invi­ta­tion to Avery’s first birth­day par­ty here in Lon­don, near­ly 5 years ago now.  Back when I actu­al­ly did things like com­pose poems, type them up on col­ored paper and tear the text out, to be glued onto a home­made card.  Now I reserve that sort of atten­tion for slic­ing pota­toes paperthin and com­par­ing the salt con­tent of six dif­fer­ent types of butter.

Hap­pi­ly for our san­i­ty, in the mid­dle of all this non­sense the gray Lon­don skies sud­den­ly scud­ded away over the Chan­nel and we were giv­en five straight days of blue skies, or at least par­tial blue skies, and clear, dry air.  Which meant dry ten­nis courts, which meant our return to the land of the exer­cis­ing!  John and I have long decid­ed we’ll nev­er be gym peo­ple, but give us a decent day and 45 min­utes and we’ll hap­pi­ly bat the ball back and forth.

It felt so good, five days in a row feel­ing our hearts first start in sur­prise at being used for any­thing more than liv­ing, and leg mus­cles first say, “Hey, what the heck is THAT you want me to do?” and then start enjoy­ing them­selves.  A relief.

Of course it rained last night.  But we had a good week.

There was, as well, the Musi­cal Evening at Avery’s school, where the girls are enjoined to turn up wear­ing all black, “No plung­ing neck­lines, please,” and there onstage, across the sea of black clothes and var­i­ous­ly-hued faces, was our daugh­ter’s bright-red-lip­sticked smile.  The ONLY point of col­or!  And the music: Avery’s group sang, to her anti-pop cha­grin, a cou­ple of num­bers by “Take That”, just a gen­er­a­tion off real­ly, and Car­ole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend,” which they all found impos­si­bly cheesy.

Thank good­ness for good food.  On the night of the school musi­cal evening, Avery was allowed to stay at school until the per­for­mance at 7, so John and I took the oppor­tu­ni­ty to eat some­thing she does­n’t like: a cat­e­go­ry which includes, sad­ly, all shell­fish.  But this was DIVINE.

King Prawns with Saf­fron, Gar­lic and Champagne

(serves 4)

2 dozen king prawns, raw with shells on

4 cloves gar­lic, minced

juice and zest of 1 lemon

2 tbsps olive oil

pinch saf­fron, dis­solved in 1 tsp hot water

pinch Mal­don sea salt

plen­ty of fresh black pepper

splash old champagne

2 tbsps COLD butter

hand­ful chives, minced

Remove the heads of the prawns and cut up the back of each with scis­sors.  Lay on a flat dish.

Sprin­kle the prawns with all the ingre­di­ents up to the cham­pagne, smoosh around with your fin­gers till the prawns are coat­ed and set aside for about an hour.

Get a fry­ing pan real­ly hot and tip all the prawns in at once.  Stand back!  Now turn them in suc­ces­sion once the under­sides have turned from gray to pink, and when each prawn is thor­ough­ly pink but NO LONGER than that, they are cooked through.  Add the splash of cham­pagne and siz­zle for a cou­ple of sec­onds, then the cold but­ter.  Toss thor­ough­ly and sprin­kle on chives.  Let cool so you can peel them, then go for it.

Sim­ple deli­cious, and SO sim­ple.  And if you weren’t going low-carb, as we still try to do occa­sion­al­ly, they would be great with some lin­gui­ni, and a bit more olive oil, cham­pagne and butter.

Then there was the evening of the school dance per­for­mance to which we went to sup­port Avery’s bril­liant friend Lille.  I con­fess that I don’t under­stand danc­ing, peri­od, and I keep wait­ing for some­one onstage to start talk­ing and explain the plot.  But it was love­ly just to sit back in the dark, put all thoughts of land­lords present and future out of my mind, and just watch the beau­ti­ful girls spin about.

After­ward of course I found I had four new emails, from John who had been com­pos­ing them dur­ing the performance.

And while we watched the danc­ing, din­ner was cook­ing all by itself in the oven at home, one of my favorite ways to feed the fam­i­ly.  In that oven, at 140C/280F was a lit­tle gam­mon (ham to my Amer­i­can friends) glazed with hon­ey, a but­ter­nut squash halved length­wise, dot­ted with but­ter and sprin­kled with chopped fresh sage, and then MORE sage in this creamy indul­gent, carb‑y delight of a side dish:

Pota­toes Gratin with Fresh Sage

(serves 4)

6 medi­um potatoes

1 cup whip­ping cream

1/2 cup ched­dar cheese, grated

onion pow­der

gar­lic powder

sea salt

sin­gle cream near­ly to cov­er pota­toes (per­haps 1/2 cup)

1 dozen sage leaves

Peel the pota­toes and slice them super thin, either on a man­do­line or by hand.  This is a sooth­ing exer­cise for the tired and con­fused mind, because it turns out per­fect­ly, every slice. Put a lay­er in a glass or pot­tery casse­role, about 9x9 inch­es square or oval in a sim­i­lar size.  Pour over a bit of whip­ping cream just to cov­er.  Sprin­kle with some grat­ed cheese and then sprin­kle over a dust­ing of onion pow­der and a dust­ing of gar­lic pow­der.  Repeat this process until you run out of pota­toes, then fin­ish by pour­ing enough sin­gle cream over them near­ly to cov­er them, and arrange the sage leaves on top.

Now, an hour and a half before you want to eat, put EVERY­THING in the oven at once.  Leave.  Come back and take the gam­mon out to rest for about 15 min­utes, cov­ered with foil.  Take out the pota­toes as well and cov­er to keep warm.  Turn the oven up to 220C/425F and get the squash bub­bling.  Then slice the gam­mon super thin and dig in.

At the end of this over­whelm­ing week, all we could do on Fri­day — after Avery’s excit­ing act­ing audi­tion! more on that when we know — was to come home from our var­i­ous activ­i­ties, order a piz­za with every veg­etable in the world on it, then after din­ner retreat under a duvet with a hot water bot­tle, the new biog­ra­phy of J.D. Salinger (which is won­der­ful­ly dense and sat­is­fy­ing), a cou­ple of cats, my hus­band by my side to appre­ci­ate, my daugh­ter there to hug good­night, and PEACE.

And a Sat­ur­day vis­it from my beloved friend Esme from Amer­i­ca, although this time via Ams­ter­dam.  She came bear­ing sala­mi — “I real­ly want­ed to buy this and I knew you were the only one who would appre­ci­ate it!” — and I of course rec­i­p­ro­cat­ed with a jar of goose fat, as one does.

Then we set­tled down to enjoy each oth­er’s com­pa­ny, such a rare treat, and talked for 8 straight hours.  John and Avery drift­ed in and out to con­tribute, I cooked slow-roast­ed shoul­der of lamb, but­ter beans in the jus, and steamed arti­chokes with a mus­tardy vinai­grette.  We cov­ered many impor­tant top­ics such as the bril­liance of our chil­dren — I first met Esme via email when we were both art his­to­ri­ans and both preg­nant! — the com­pli­ca­tions of breed­ing New­found­lands, the annoy­ance of mov­ing, and the wis­dom or not of col­or-cod­ing one’s book collection.

Have you ever heard of such a thing?  Esme actu­al­ly arranged her books, a huge col­lec­tion, by the COL­OR of the spine.  I know that there are peo­ple who are irri­tat­ed by the sight of my enor­mous wall of books all dif­fer­ent sizes and col­ors, but they’re alpha­bet­ized!  I can find them!  Esme, on the oth­er hand, lives with a per­fect rain­bow, a palette if you will, of her books, but she can nev­er reread any­thing unless she can remem­ber the col­or of its spine.  We had to laugh.  “Don’t even think about it,” John warned.  “But it would be the per­fect time, when we’re mov­ing!” I said.  “I do not want to live with you, your face con­stant­ly pressed against the book­shelf, try­ing to find an Agatha Christie only you can’t remem­ber if it’s red or blue,” he said flat­ly. “That is just dumb.  Sor­ry, Esme.”  “No,” she said, “I know what you mean.  But it’s beautiful.”

This morn­ing saw Esme off sad­ly ear­ly, and us to our moldy base­ment.  But the fun of her vis­it, the warmth of friend­ship with some­one who accepts me just as I am and has seen me through all of my daugh­ter’s life, both good times and bad… those feel­ings stay with me.  And I am energized.

Which is just as well, don’t you think?