life lessons

Exams are over!  Avery has put every­thing into her brain that she can.  If you can imag­ine — I can’t, even though I watched her do it — this includ­ed Math­e­mat­ics, Music, His­to­ry, Reli­gious Stud­ies, Geog­ra­phy, Chem­istry, Biol­o­gy, Physics, Eng­lish Com­pre­hen­sion, Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture, French, Latin and Russ­ian.  It is quite a shock to real­ize that she and I have come to a point where the ONLY sub­ject in which I know enough to help her is French.  And even there, although I can per­haps con­verse more eas­i­ly, she has a com­pre­hen­sive under­stand­ing of gram­mar that I either nev­er knew, or have forgotten!

But we did sit togeth­er and work on all three lan­guages togeth­er.  I was in absolute awe at her abil­i­ty to con­ju­gate Latin verbs while rec­og­niz­ing how they relat­ed to her work in French, and then in turn to switch to Russ­ian.  Did you know that if you’re count­ing 1 thing in Russ­ian, the thing is spelled one way, but if you are talk­ing about 2 or 3 of that thing, the thing is spelled COM­PLETE­LY dif­fer­ent­ly?  But then between 4 and 21 of that thing are spelled AGAIN com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent­ly?  Keep­ing in mind, of course, that this is all in Cyril­lic to begin with.  I was very impressed.

If you ever have time to waste, but in a sort of intel­lec­tu­al way, get your­self on Google Trans­late.  Every once in awhile, she and I dis­agreed about some French tense, or rather I had for­got­ten the cor­rect answer, and we went to Google as the Wim­ble­don umpires go to Hawk­eye.  “Past imper­fect?  What the heck is that?” I grum­bled.  But away we went to ver­i­fy, and she was always cor­rect, mad­den­ing­ly so.  Final­ly, in a state of sheer exhaus­tion, she began play­ing around, in the way that only a mad­den­ing lit­tle brain can.

“Let’s get Google to teach us to say, ‘I sus­pect you of being a KGB spy.  Leave me alone.’ ”

So we did.  THEN she typed those same sen­tences into Google Trans­late in Russ­ian let­ters, spelling it pho­net­i­cal­ly.  THEN she clicked on the but­ton say­ing, “Lis­ten,” where you can hear the way the words are sup­posed to sound.  And if you type things in pho­net­i­cal­ly, and “lis­ten” to it, you get a com­plete­ly James Bondish, stereo­typ­i­cal Russ­ian voice utter­ing your sen­tence.  We laughed and laughed.  The sen­tence did­n’t sound near­ly as fun­ny in Armen­ian, or Ara­bic.  It was a brief fun­ny half hour in what was essen­tial­ly a full week of noth­ing but work, for her.

And then all last week she had her exams, three and four every day, for hours at a time, inter­spersed by the occa­sion­al hours of MORE revi­sion in between.

Some­times we stopped to smell the roses.

Every day she came home to report the day’s insanity.

“Dur­ing my French oral, the teacher asked, ‘What does your father do?’ and I went com­plete­ly blank!  ‘Lie,’ the teacher hissed, ‘just lie and say some­thing,’ so I said, “Il est un avo­cat.”

“Dad­dy is an avo­ca­do!” we chor­tled.  One of my favorite old French jokes, that “avo­ca­do” and “lawyer” are the same word.

“And then, in my Russ­ian oral, she asked what col­or my wardrobe was, and all I could think of was ‘orange.’  ‘Real­ly?!’ she asked.  ‘How about what col­or is your bed?’  I pan­icked!  ‘Red!’ I said.  ‘What an inter­est­ing room… an orange wardrobe and a red bed.”

All I could do was to feed her.  Her favorite pas­tas, her favorite pro­tein-fest: pier­rade.  Each sep­a­rate bite of duck and sir­loin and hal­lou­mi cheese — our new favorite! —  cooked on a hot stone, by each of us.

I thought I should cook some­thing that relat­ed to her exams, so I asked, “What’s on for tomorrow?”

“Maths.”

“Well, what could I cook that would put you in the mood for that?”

Short silence.

“Pi.”

Since I felt I should at least pre­tend to have my own life while she was going through these tri­als and tribu­la­tions, I have been dili­gent­ly pulling my rope.  I was allowed to go up into the bel­fry to watch Arnold untie the mute for my clap­per, and there was a tiny bell, sus­pend­ed above the others.

What’s that?”

“Oh, that’s the Angelus bell, the bell that calls to wor­ship.  The sanc­tu­ary bell, I call it.  Don’t you have one in your church?”

“This is the clos­est to a church I have,” I confessed.

How won­der­ful that the name of my favorite restau­rant should be a bell!

I’ve had three dif­fer­ent ring­ing teach­ers so far, and their dif­fer­ent styles, their approach­es to my learn­ing, have giv­en me a lot to think about.

Andrew believes in let­ting me ring and ring and ring until some­thing goes wrong and I say, “Take the bell, please!”  Then he says, “Take a drink of water.  Here’s what hap­pened just then.”  And once I feel con­fi­dent again, I take up the rope.

Trin­ny, my sec­ond teacher, believes in just ring­ing per­haps twice, try­ing to get each one per­fect, and then stop­ping before any­thing unex­pect­ed hap­pens.  “We don’t want you feel­ing out of control.”

Everett, the most senior of my teach­ers, believes in still anoth­er method.  “I think you should get your­self ready to ring, and not stop for 45 min­utes.  You feel some­thing going wrong, you fix it your­self, you under­stand what’s hap­pen­ing with your bell and you learn to han­dle any­thing that happens.”

I talked to John about the fear fac­tor.  “What’s the worst that can hap­pen?”  And tru­ly, unless some­thing real­ly bizarre were to hap­pen — like my foot get­ting caught in the loop at the end of the rope and my whole body being hoist­ed by the half-ton weight of the bell — most­ly the risk is rope burn if I don’t let go in time.  How bad can that be?

It’s the uncer­tain­ty that scares me.  I think I have just got out of prac­tice with not know­ing what I need to know, in order to accom­plish what I want to accom­plish.  I’ve for­got­ten that every new skill — rid­ing a bike, dri­ving, play­ing the piano — starts with end­less rep­e­ti­tions of tiny skills, bor­ing as can be imag­ined, per­se­ver­ance with a seem­ing­ly point­less series of tasks.  Until sud­den­ly, one day, you turn a cor­ner.  You can DO the thing.

How brave of Avery to per­se­vere with the dozen or so sub­jects she’s being asked to get under her belt!  Start­ing with a new alpha­bet, end­less­ly mem­o­riz­ing, so that in the end, she’ll find her­self in Moscow order­ing din­ner.  Or at the very least, telling a spy to leave her alone.

Well, cook­ing com­forts me.  Some­where along the line after num­ber­less cloves of gar­lic mixed, end­less exper­i­ments with what works and what does not, splat­ter­ings of hot oil and fry­ing pans of burnt pinenuts, I can pro­duce a plate of per­fect deep-fried soft-shell crabs and king prawns, and there is noth­ing wrong with that achievement.

Deep-Fried Soft Shell Crabs and King Prawns

(serves 4)

8 soft shell crabs, fresh or frozen (then thawed and WELL drained)

12 king prawns, raw with shells removed but tails on

1/2 cup cornflour/cornstarch

1/2 cup Panko breadcrumbs

1/2 tsp each: pow­dered gin­ger, pow­dered Sumac, pow­dered cayenne, gar­lic salt

rape­seed or canola oil, enough to sub­merge seafood

Dry seafood com­plete­ly and set on a plate, hav­ing LOTS of paper tow­els ready, stacked up nearby.

Mix flour and bread­crumbs and all seasonings.

Dredge the seafood thor­ough­ly in the mix­ture, squish­ing it in with your fin­gers.  Not much sticks, but it is the fla­vor that counts.

When the oil is hot enough that a bread­crumb dropped in fries instant­ly, place seafood gen­tly in the oil in a sin­gle lay­er, cook­ing for one minute, then turn­ing and cook­ing for 30 sec­onds more.  Drain on paper tow­el.  Serve with a chilli mayo if you like (sim­ply may­on­naise mixed with chilli sauce to your taste, with lemon juice).

If you have ever been dis­ap­point­ed in order­ing any fried food deliv­ered — I have had more such dis­ap­point­ments than in love — turn away and do these at home.  So sim­ple.  Just stand back from the spit­ting oil!

Dur­ing the week we took our­selves off for a wan­der round Barnes Ceme­tery, formed in 1855 and closed in 1950, inex­plic­a­bly com­plete­ly neglect­ed and over­grown.  This fea­ture only adds to its creepy, touch­ing, very Eng­lish charm.

Think of the lan­guages learned, the bells rung, the meals cooked, the fam­i­lies raised by all the souls rep­re­sent­ed by these graves.  A bit of per­spec­tive, that’s what this week needed.