of first days, and beloved visitors

Good­ness, what a whirl­wind we’ve been in for the past week. No soon­er had we set­tled into our post-sum­mer rou­tine than it was… the first day of Avery’s new school. And of course in the tra­di­tion of all first days, John was able to pro­duce his mag­i­cal plate of cin­na­mon toast, albeit chal­lenged by the num­ber of curly let­ters this year! We tried to imag­ine a school that would pro­vide a good acronym for cin­na­mon toast: some­thing like Williams House Trip­tych. But in any case, although Avery said she was ner­vous, and cer­tain­ly I was for her, she man­aged to wolf down the entire plate of toast as well as all the straw­ber­ries and a nice pile of pro­sciut­to. She is def­i­nite­ly hav­ing a growth spurt: she’s eat­ing every­thing in sight. Plus, to get ahead of my sto­ry, the lunch at the new school is SUPERB! She is very spark­ly at pick­up every day, hav­ing ingest­ed actu­al food between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.

Walk­ing her to school was a nice social adven­ture! We were picked up by Elsie, who lives above us in a near­by street, and then we went on to find Hol­ly who is across the first big road to cross (thank­ful­ly there’s a zebra cross­ing which peo­ple seem to observe), then to get Sophia at the top of the next big inter­sec­tion. The actu­al dropoff was a total anti-cli­max: bare­ly a kiss and she was up the big front steps and gone. All of us, moth­ers and John, sighed. “Well, that’s that.” So every­one dis­persed: peo­ple to work, Elsie’s mom Annie and me to walk along toward home, chat­ting as best I can at 8:15 in the morn­ing which isn’t say­ing much. And Annie is of course an incred­i­ble morn­ing per­son, filled with verve and fizz and con­ver­sa­tion; what a waste, for her to be sad­dled with ME! But I did lis­ten with atten­tion to her tale of a near­by indoor pool in which I might swim, with her, at some lat­er date (and lat­er time of day, I pray). I turned in at our gate feel­ing that I’d dodged a bul­let: Avery was safe­ly at school and I had met nice peo­ple, and noth­ing ter­ri­ble had happened.

I must explain some­thing. About me and first days, and school dropoff. Although I am get­ting much bet­ter about the anniver­sary this year, I must say that the first full day of Avery’s kinder­garten expe­ri­ence was Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001. I am toy­ing with the idea of some­day writ­ing this down, all that hap­pened to us that day, but suf­fice to say that I spent the whole sum­mer before her kinder­garten fear­ing irra­tional­ly that some­thing ter­ri­ble would hap­pen to her if I left her at school. All sum­mer. Every­one was extreme­ly frus­trat­ed with me, that I could­n’t enjoy the idea of her being at school all day, inde­pen­dent and hap­py, no, I had to make it into a dra­ma all about ME. And then I left her at school, about six blocks from the World Trade Cen­ter, and that’s when it happened.

Believe it or not, I spent quite a lot of time after­ward think­ing about what was, to me, the obvi­ous con­nec­tion between leav­ing Avery at school and that ter­ri­ble tragedy. I real­ly did con­nect them. And in the inter­ven­ing years I have strug­gled every super-blue-sky-day not to pan­ic, and cer­tain­ly every school first-day dropoff (and to a minor extent every dropoff, peri­od), not to panic.

But you know what? It gets bet­ter. I was real­ly pret­ty good about leav­ing her at the new school, and I was also absolute­ly saved by the arrival, short­ly after school dropoff, of my house­guests for the week: Bob, the love­ly min­is­ter who mar­ried us, and his dear wife Ann. Bob has turned 80 this year, and retired after 52 years of teach­ing the­ol­o­gy, phi­los­o­phy and reli­gion at my alma mater. He mar­ried us! Lo these near­ly 20 years ago. And good­ness, I was glad to open my door to them and wel­come them into our abode for the week.

Oh my did we chat! They set­tled into the guest room and then came down to the kitchen to sit and chat. Hours lat­er we real­ized we were starv­ing! It was but the work of a moment to find bean and lentil sal­ad in the fridge, toss in some of the grilled shrimp we’d had for din­ner the night before. And slice some toma­toes and mush­rooms and toss them in bal­sam­ic vine­gar and chilli oil, and put Brie and goat’s cheese on a plate with some Ryvi­ta. Voila, lunch! I will tell you now: if you have bean and lentil sal­ad, you have lunch. Throw in any­thing left­over from din­ner: sliced cold beef, pork or roast chick­en, shrimp, scal­lops, any­thing. If you need some extra fla­vor, add a minced clove of gar­lic and some lemon zest. Done. And you’ve cleaned out your fridge.

Sev­er­al more hours of catch­ing up, and I real­ized I had lived through the entire hor­ri­ble First Day of School and had giv­en Avery scarce­ly a thought! How love­ly. I ran off to get her and Bob and Ann relaxed at home, enjoy­ing the break in the rain. And can I report, dear read­ers: Avery had a MAR­VEL­LOUS, won­der­ful, glo­ri­ous day. “The sec­ond best day of my life, and I’m not even being fair: I can’t count the day of the school play!” I felt so grate­ful to get her back, hear all of her enthu­si­as­tic account of, guess what most of all: the FOOD. Actu­al­ly food, to be eat­en! “There was steak, with mush­rooms, and CHOCO­LATE CAKE, with warm vanil­la sauce!” There’s a big dif­fer­ence between a grow­ing girl who’s spent the whole day using up her admit­ted­ly love­ly break­fast, and one who’s been well and tru­ly fed five hours lat­er. LOVE­LY. A huge sigh of relief to have her with me, hap­py, hap­py. And FULL. More than that, the girls were NICE to her. And the teach­ers love­ly and sup­port­ive, the build­ings full of poten­tial for excit­ing get­ting-losts. Alto­geth­er, a heart­warm­ing day!

Home for slow-braised chick­en with root veg­eta­bles, sim­ply the best cooks-itself din­ner ever. And here’s a hint: braise the chick­en breast DOWN. That way, the breast, which tends to dry out, cooks entire­ly sub­merged in white wine-laced chick­en broth. Just love­ly. John came home and the con­ver­sa­tion, which had been sort of catch-uppy about what’s hap­pened at col­lege since we were there, turned polit­i­cal, philo­soph­i­cal, the­o­log­i­cal, you name it! It’s been a long time since my brain was tuned that high. Dis­cus­sions of Niebuhr and Tillich (both of whom fea­tured in our wed­ding cer­e­mo­ny!), abor­tion rights and cre­ation­ism, nar­ra­tive the­ol­o­gy and util­i­tar­i­an­ism. Avery’s head went back and forth as at a ten­nis match! Glorious.

The fol­low­ing day found us at.. St Paul’s Cathe­dral. I’ve nev­er, embar­rass­ing­ly, been. But now Avery is at her new school, I felt we should go, and it was well worth the vis­it. Gor­geous mosaics, stat­ues, tomb­stones. Just love­ly. We climbed to the “Whis­per­ing Gallery,” some 250 steps, and sat for Bob’s lec­ture on the saints pic­tured in the gallery and the “gnos­tics” who inter­pret­ed them. And then would you believe Bob climbed the fur­ther 200-some steps to the very top! Ann and I did not fol­low! A nice lunch and then I was off home… they came back lat­er to join Avery and me in the kitchen, and for Bob to ask a mil­lion ques­tions about the works they had seen in the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion of the Tate Mod­ern, across the Mil­len­ni­um Bridge from the Cathe­dral. I had to put my brain back into art his­to­ry land, away from recipes, pre-teen book plots, Lon­don friends, Con­necti­cut friends and fam­i­ly… into that place where, in 1992, I was the King of my own world, knowl­edge­able about every­thing I could have want­ed to under­stand about post-struc­tural­ism, decon­struc­tion­ism, you name it! To go back and reach into that book list, idea list, com­par­a­tive mind­set… oh it was a stretch!

Bob asked earnest­ly, “I under­stand the notion of Mod­ernism, Kris­ten, and Post-Mod­ernism in the­ol­o­gy, but what func­tion does Post-Mod­ernism serve in the his­to­ry of art?” And some­how I was able to explain this, and to rec­og­nize the art they had seen from his descrip­tions, and pro­vide names and titles (his eye­sight does­n’t per­mit the read­ing of muse­um wall text), and some inter­pre­ta­tion. “ ‘Oh, Kris­ten, where ARE you?’ I kept ask­ing myself,” Bob mourned. I wish I had been there! One of those times when one’s arms are stretched in dif­fer­ent direc­tions. “I haven’t been able to tell you every­thing about my day,” Avery whis­pered, and then John was home want­i­ng to talk about the elec­tion… !! We final­ly sat down to grilled salmon, bean sal­ad, roast beets… and more dis­cus­sions, this time of racism in the 1960s in my col­lege soror­i­ty, the careers of all my for­mer pro­fes­sors. Just wonderful.

Thurs­day saw us at West­min­ster Abbey, in the pour­ing rain! I had nev­er prop­er­ly been there before, either, just a brief vis­it two years ago at Christ­mas when Avery’s school sang there. And I can tell you, I have a good piece of advice for any pos­si­ble future vis­i­tors: do your research ahead of your vis­it and find out what YOU want to see. Because it’s HUGE. We did the tour guide, the audio thingy, and while I was fas­ci­nat­ed by the mosa­ic floor restora­tion at the Great Altar, and then music of the Boys’ Choir, I could not have cared less about all the roy­al graves. And then I came upon what I cared about most: Poets’ Cor­ner. Not just poets, but all sorts of artis­tic types, both buried there and mere­ly remem­bered there: Avery’s dar­ling Antho­ny Trol­lope, Dick­ens, Olivi­er, Auden, T.S. Eliot, Jane Austen, you name it! Very excit­ing, although Bob felt it fol­lowed a cult of the dead per­son almost TOO far. He’s very inclined to be dis­mis­sive of such slav­ish fol­low­ings. Lit­tle does he know how many slav­ish fol­low­ers he will have when he meets his reward. He can’t stop us.

A nice sand­wich lunch across White­hall from the For­eign and Home Offices, and I got to hear the sto­ry of their meet­ing: at a Yale-Smith dance… 57 years ago! Just lovely.

Home to get Avery and to put togeth­er the Chick­en Biryani and cheesy spinach for din­ner, and to hear more from Avery about this shangri-la that is school, and most specif­i­cal­ly the CLOTH­ING the girls wear. “I know you’ll think it’s super­fi­cial of me, Mom­my, to care about their clothes, but after all these years of uni­forms, clothes can be very reveal­ing of a per­son­’s per­son­al­i­ty!” So much fun to hear her going on and on about this or that girl and her tights, skirts, t‑shirts, hair­dos… and the class­work sounds OK, too! Avery end­ed up in a bath while we watched the McCain VP choice speech. In shocked silence. Good­ness. I should­n’t say more.

We did laugh over Jon Stew­art’s “Dai­ly Show” take on Joe Biden’s VP speech. Biden had told, in his usu­al folksy way, the sto­ry of his night­ly train-ride home, through the small towns, with the hous­es all lit up on the sides of the tracks, and his imag­in­ing their con­ver­sa­tions, around their kitchen tables. “How are we going to pay the mort­gage?” “How are we going to man­age send­ing John­ny to col­lege?” And Jon Stew­art added to this, “Why do we have to live so close to the train tracks?” his voice trail­ing off in a Doppler effect. Avery has repeat­ed that SO many times. But seri­ous­ly, what one earth is hap­pen­ing to this elec­tion? It’s very odd being here and being expect­ed by our British friends to explain what on EARTH Amer­i­cans are think­ing. It’s cer­tain­ly not some­thing I can begin to elucidate.

On Fri­day morn­ing we had one more talky break­fast togeth­er, talk­ing about par­ent­hood, child­hood test­ing, the future of our uni­ver­si­ty, their upcom­ing bik­ing trip from Bruges to Ams­ter­dam! I hat­ed to see them go. Enor­mous hugs and assur­ances that we will not let very much time go by before see­ing each oth­er again… and they were off, pulling their lug­gage behind them with their bike hel­mets snicked onto their suit­cas­es. Remark­able peo­ple. I’m so glad Avery spent time with them. And… he taught Avery to crawl, right on the floor of the Phi­los­o­phy Depart­ment offices, these 11 years ago. He reminds me of John’s dad: stal­wart, trust­wor­thy, strong, right­eous and gentle.

Din­ner tonight was, I must say, just the three of us, and I say mod­est­ly, total­ly spec­tac­u­lar. Give it a try.

Pan-Seared Scal­lops with Bacon, Beet­root and Rocket
(serves four)

4 medi­um beet­roots, roast­ed 1 1/2 hours at 400 degrees, peeled and sliced
2 tbsps olive oil
16 large scal­lops, roeless
8 rash­ers (slices) back bacon (Gig­gly Pig, prefer­ably!), trimmed and sliced thin
1 bunch green (sal­ad) onions, sliced thin, both white and green parts
1 bag rock­et leaves
hand­ful lentils

dress­ing: whisk every­thing together
3 tbsps olive oil
1 tbsp peanut oil
1 tbsp Japan­ese mirin or oth­er vine­gar (if reg­u­lar vine­gar, use less lemon juice)
1 tbsp grain mustard
1 tbsp creme fraiche
juice of 1 lemon
1 clove gar­lic, fine­ly minced
pinch salt
pinch ground pepper

First: arrange sliced beet­root on a large plate.

Next, heat the 2 tbsps olive oil in a large stick­proof skil­let. Cook the scal­lops on one side for 1 minute, then turn over and cook to your lik­ing: anoth­er minute for seared, slight­ly longer for well-cooked. Remove to a plate.

Now add the bacon to the same skil­let and cook till cooked through and slight­ly col­ored. Add the spring onions and cook till soft. Remove to a medi­um bowl.

Now to assem­ble: toss the rock­et in a lit­tle of the dress­ing and arrange on top of beet­root. Then arrange the scal­lops over the rock­et and toss over the lentils. Now toss the bacon and spring onions in the rest of the dress­ing and pour over the scal­lops. LOVELY!

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I can’t tell you how good this was. And we had it with:

Cau­li­flower Puree
(serves four)

1 medi­um head cau­li­flower, sep­a­rat­ed into florets
1/2 stick butter
cream to taste
salt and pepper

In a large saucepan cov­er the cau­li­flower with water and sea­son with salt. Bring to a boil and boil high for 10 min­utes. Drain thor­ough­ly. With a hand blender, blend with but­ter and as much cream as you need to get the con­sis­ten­cy you want: less for thick, more for creami­er. Sea­son to taste.

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This puree COM­PLETE­LY can­cels out any pur­pose mashed pota­toes have, in my opin­ion! I have nev­er eat­en it before, but I read some­where that cau­li­flower was the per­fect part­ner for scal­lops, and it’s true.

OK, enough food and what­ev­er. Back to… the weath­er. How many adjec­tives can the British weath­er peo­ple come up with to describe the rain? Late­ly it’s been… inter­mit­tent, per­va­sive, per­ni­cious, ever­p­re­sent, drown­ing… it’s too much! I know it sounds like a joke, and I adore my adopt­ed land, but it real­ly does… rain all the time. Good thing we have sun­shine in our souls. Oh, wait, that’s the Repub­li­cans. But maybe they’ll share.