near­ly there

Things are, I hes­i­tate to say, look­ing up. Blue skies all day! My best beloved slept from 11 p.m. to 10:30 a.m.! And Avery had her last impor­tant inter­view this after­noon. A school she’s not real­ly inter­est­ed in wrote yes­ter­day to invite her for an inter­view on Feb­ru­ary 5! Lord have mer­cy, was­n’t this all meant to be over long before that? I’m not even sure she needs to go.

Tomor­row is, ta dah: the St Paul’s exam for which the poor child has been prepar­ing for a year and a half. We can only hope she remains virus-free for the next 28 hours, and con­tin­ues to be her usu­al intre­pid self. Her only wish after her inter­view this after­noon was to pick up her dar­ling friend Anna, have a bis­cuit and go play in the Regen­t’s Park play­ground where they go with their form for PE (and have to share all the desir­able rides with their 25 com­pa­tri­ots). So since the day was fair, off we went. It’s very sat­is­fy­ing to know that she may be seri­ous, hard­work­ing and grow­ing up faster than we ever would have dreamed, but she’s still awful­ly hap­py to sit on a mer­ry-go-round with her best friend and gig­gle. They have a com­plex and ongo­ing game called “Shel­ty” in which Anna plays a Shet­land pony (or pup­py? I for­get) and Avery her dot­ing own­er. I con­fess to my eyes’ glaz­ing over when she tries to fill me in on the fin­er points, but it was great to see them can­ter­ing along in the mud and grass.

These inter­views! “Look at this paint­ing of a lady with a let­ter and tell me what you see” was a very lucky draw for Avery. There are very few instances in which a moth­er with a PhD in art his­to­ry is of any prac­ti­cal use what­so­ev­er, but this was one of them! “I won­der if it might be a Ver­meer,” she said inno­cent­ly, and although it was not, she got huge kudos for even won­der­ing. “What is your favorite book?” was anoth­er good one, since she just fin­ished “Rebec­ca” and the inter­view­er also loved it. They dis­cussed char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, descrip­tion and plot (good thing she was­n’t fak­ing it), and then moved on to “What can you tell us about Amer­i­can pol­i­tics?” to which she pro­duced the all-too-telling reply, “I’ve com­plete­ly giv­en up on them.” Guess what she hears at home? So the lady tried again, with “What are some dif­fer­ences between Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans?” and got “Well, it’s most­ly to do with what sec­tion of the coun­try you live in,” reveal­ing her New York­er sta­tus, I’m afraid. I remem­ber after the 2004 elec­tion, the cov­er of New York Mag­a­zine was black, utter­ly black, but for the words in white: “Amer­i­ca to New York: Drop Dead.” Any­way, I don’t think Avery will win any points for her polit­i­cal savvy.

Then anoth­er head­mistress showed her a pho­to­graph of a bird turn­ing into ski slopes turn­ing into leaves and flow­ers, and asked her to define the word “meta­mor­pho­sis.” Whew. And told us a fun­ny sto­ry, too, about the sys­tem of “coach­ing,” or “tutor­ing” for these exams that a lot of par­ents suc­cumb to. Appar­ent­ly the coach­es get to be fair­ly well known in the school sys­tem, and like a painter with a favorite palette, they reveal their bias­es and incli­na­tions and meth­ods all too obvi­ous­ly. One appar­ent­ly loves to equip his lit­tle charges with a list of “all-pur­pose adjec­tives,” which the gulls must plug into their var­i­ous essays and answers. “One year, and I wish I were jok­ing about this, the word ‘melan­choly’ pep­pered at least 20 essays and so we knew they had all stud­ied with that one par­tic­u­lar tutor.” Avery piped up, “Well, it IS a nice word,” and the head looked at her sharply and said, “But not in absolute­ly any sit­u­a­tion, sure­ly,” and Avery said mild­ly, “Well, you can always try to say ‘NOT melan­choly’, as well!”

Well, it’s near­ly over. The din­ner of cham­pi­ons tonight? This was her request.

Spaghet­ti Car­bonara with Mushrooms
(serves 4)

1/2 pound Amer­i­can (streaky) smoked bacon, diced
3 tbsps white wine
2 tbsps butter
1/2 pound mush­rooms of any kind, sliced
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 1/2 cups light (sin­gle) cream
1 egg yolk, light­ly beaten
fresh black pepper
4 tbsps grat­ed parme­san cheese, plus more for sprinkling
as much spaghet­ti as you like, per­haps shy of a pound

In a heavy skil­let, brown the bacon to your lik­ing, pour­ing off the fat as you do so. When the bot­tom of the skil­let begins to get too brown with bacon bits, remove the bacon to a dish and deglaze the skil­let with the wine. Add the but­ter and melt, then saute the mush­rooms and gar­lic till soft. Pour in the cream and the egg yolk and mix well over low-medi­um heat (depend­ing on your cook­er), then sprin­kle with the pep­per and the cheese. Set more cheese aside to gar­nish the dish. Take the skil­let off the heat.

Cook the spaghet­ti and drain well, then toss in the skil­let of sauce and turn up the heat. Toss in the bacon. Stir until thor­ough­ly warmed and thick, a cou­ple of min­utes. Yum.

***************

With this she asked for roast­ed beets with bal­sam­ic vine­gar. What child ASKS for beets? I ask you. And yet will she eat a car­rot? Absolute­ly not.

And although I left ear­ly to make Avery’s inter­view, and the tutor was late, we had a real­ly nice meet­ing of the cre­ative writ­ing class at Birk­beck. My good­ness my class­mates are tal­ent­ed. For var­i­ous rea­sons my own attempt at the home­work was lame by any stan­dards this week, but Kei­th’s sto­ry of a psy­chot­ic throat-slash­ing (“their throats grinned up at me” or some such incred­i­ble descrip­tion) and Car­ol’s of an alien­at­ed Ukrain­ian park­ing war­den swap­ping his hel­met for a yarmulke for shab­bat… these sto­ries were amaz­ing. So impres­sive, and such nice, sym­pa­thet­ic peo­ple. I will real­ly buck­le down for next week’s home­work. I have neglect­ed it sore­ly, but then there have been oth­er things on my mind.

Ah well, beets beck­on. I can­not describe to you how brave Avery has been through this long prepa­ra­tion, too much com­pe­ti­tion (in my hum­ble opin­ion), pun­ish­ing sched­ule and rig­or­ous exams, plus all the faux-social chitchat of these wretched inter­views. Through it all she has been pos­i­tive and even sun­ny, focused and ener­getic. ONE MORE DAY! Fin­gers crossed. And then, heav­en for­fend, I may have to get a life of my own. Car­ol asked me today, “Are you a heli­copter moth­er, Kris­ten?” “What’s that?” I asked, star­tled. “One who hov­ers.” Oh, prob­a­bly. I asked Avery, and she said, “Well, in a GOOD way.” I’m not sure there is a good way to hov­er, but it’s worked so far and I’m too old to learn new tricks now. Maybe with grandchildren…