The Latin Prize and oth­er thrilling events

Before I get to what’s shown in these pho­tos, I’ll tell you what times we are hav­ing, these last hec­tic days in Lon­don before the end of school and time to whisk our­selves off to Con­necti­cut for the sum­mer. Hav­ing school last until the sec­ond week in July cer­tain­ly does alter one’s per­cep­tion of sum­mer: it’s here, and yet it isn’t.

For exam­ple, our ver­sion of the Fourth of July was rather mut­ed. John went to work, Avery went to school, I guess I cleaned the lit­ter­box or some such thing, and hung around killing time with house­hold chores. Final­ly we got an email invit­ing us to a bar­be­cue at the Smiths’, hooray! As always hap­pens in such sit­u­a­tions, I decid­ed to take pota­to sal­ad to them and imme­di­ate­ly the day turned from bor­ing and slow to a race against the clock to gro­cery shop, boil pota­toes, chop herbs, mix dress­ing and assem­ble, all in this awful heat wave we’ve been hav­ing. Try boil­ing pota­toes and then hav­ing to cut them up, in a kitchen with­out air con­di­tion­ing in 90-degree heat! I felt like a pio­neer woman in Kansas. But it turned out per­fect­ly, if you’d like to try it. Boil pota­toes as usu­al and cut in bite-size pieces. Then chop fine­ly hand­fuls of chives, lemon thyme, dill and pars­ley, as well as a red onion. Mix equal parts may­on­naise and sour cream with the juice of a lemon and its zest, salt and pep­per. Toss all this togeth­er and chill. The pota­to sal­ad, I mean, not you (although that would be good too).

A rush to pack the sal­ad in a cool bag, wash my hair and face and sling Avery’s ice skates over my shoul­der, and off to the rink to meet her class for the last day of skat­ing, waah! Always such fun to watch their lit­tle selves and gos­sip with Angel­i­ca’s nan­ny and Coco’s mum. All over until next year.

I decid­ed that with pota­to sal­ad, a bag of lit­tle cans of that Marks and Spencers gin and ton­ics I was wax­ing lyri­cal about recent­ly, a back­pack, a gym bag, skates and hand­bag, I was unequal to the task of find­ing the prop­er bus, so we splurged on a taxi and arrived at the Smiths’ to find Emi­ly clos­et­ed with some extreme­ly impor­tant Russ­ian art his­to­ri­an, unex­pect­ed­ly, so I dropped Avery and the food off with the kids, and Mick and I went up to Blenheim Books in Blenheim Cres­cent, to find birth­day presents: his for an Eton mate and mine for Anna’s lit­tle sis­ter Ellie. Only in such a charm­ing shop might one be able to sat­is­fy both require­ments! I bought “Tim in Dan­ger” for her, a fan­tas­tic book from the 1940s in a series by Edward Ardiz­zone, known main­ly for his illus­tra­tions, but the “Tim” books are com­plete­ly charm­ing. For some fan­tas­ti­cal rea­son, lit­tle boy Tim has con­vinced his par­ents that if does well in his schools, a prop­er reward would be to let him hire him­self out as a mer­chant marine on the high seas. Nat­u­ral­ly! They’re just won­der­ful sto­ries. Of course I came across one old copy of “Tim and Char­lotte” when Avery was tiny, and found that they were all out of print, so I labo­ri­ous­ly tracked down vin­tage copies from all over the globe, of the whole series. Where­upon the pub­lish­er prompt­ly decid­ed to reis­sue them all. Darn! Mick found a par­tic­u­lar­ly win­some cook­book and a tempt­ing nov­el for his friend’s birth­day par­ty, and we walked home in the intense late after­noon heat, dis­cussing his plans for his first year at Har­vard in Sep­tem­ber, how to ship 300 books to school and still have mon­ey for tuition, his spe­cial­iza­tion in Mid­dle East­ern lan­guages. With this area of inter­est, and his par­ents both ex-Marines, John has imme­di­ate­ly con­clud­ed that he will become a spook. Cool, my own Tom Quinn!

A very nice evening. We stag­gered home very late, and did not real­ly get enough sleep for the big day that was to fol­low: Prize Day! Now, every­one in Avery’s class had been warn­ing her in the nicest pos­si­ble way not to expect a prize, because she had been in the school only half a year. Fair enough. Under­promise, overde­liv­er, as John used to say (gen­er­al­ly in terms of when he was com­ing home from a busi­ness trip). We all got dressed up and went to the Roy­al Insti­tute of British Archi­tects, and chat­ted in the lob­by wait­ing to be sum­moned into the enor­mous Great Hall. Such excite­ment when the gulls came in from their walk across the street, all scrubbed and shin­ing and excit­ed to get their prizes. We were giv­en a pro­gram, which all the Eng­lish par­ents knew list­ed the prize win­ners, but we did­n’t, typ­i­cal Amer­i­can dodos, so we did­n’t even look at it, just kept talk­ing to friends, until sev­er­al peo­ple said, “Avery won the Latin Prize,” and “Avery won the Howard de Walden essay prize, third place!” Howard de Walden was the orig­i­nal own­er of all the land that is Maryle­bone, and his estate still con­trols the dai­ly run­ning of the neigh­bor­hood, as the Grosvenor Estates con­trols May­fair. There, I’ve pro­vid­ed my lit­tle Lon­don edu­ca­tion­al tit­bit for the day. Back to the real­ly impor­tant stuff: she real­ly did win! A sil­ver cup with “Latin” on one side and the names of all the past win­ners, with her name and the date on the oth­er! She gets to keep it for a year, and then gives it back for next year’s winner.

We all filed in and sat down and tried to behave our­selves under the cen­so­ri­ous eyes of not only Mrs D, but the Chair of the Man­agers of the school over­all, built like the bow of a ship and just about as warm and fuzzy. Until she gave her very fun­ny, very wise speech, that is.

A very odd, appar­ent­ly porno­graph­ic writer was the prize pre­sen­ter! It’s tra­di­tion­al for the school to com­mis­sion a minor celebri­ty par­ent to offi­ci­ate, but hel­lo, erot­i­ca? Well, all right. She was a Miss Kathy Lette, and I must say she was fun­ny, if not quite the role mod­el one would expect the school to choose: she con­fessed to nev­er hav­ing been to a Prize Day before, and to hav­ing left school at age 15, “so I’m an auto­di­dact, which means self-taught, and lets any­body else off the hook.” Mrs D made the Annu­al School Report, which detailed the many cur­ricu­lum points the chil­dren study, the new librar­i­an to begin in Sep­tem­ber, the big changes in school life since they acquired the build­ing adja­cent and allowed them to accept more pupils (like Avery! thank you, Mrs D). Then it was prize time. There were dozens of sil­ver cups and salvers and plat­ters lined up on the long table, and Mrs C presided in a sort of ner­vous way, try­ing des­per­ate­ly to give the right thing to the right gull. Avery did not find out she won any­thing until she and the oth­er Form Four win­ners were plucked from their seats, and even then she did­n’t know what she had won until she heard Mrs D announce it! Her lit­tle smile just went from ear to ear. All the par­ents in our row were so very gra­cious and pleased for us, the New Family.

Com­ing as we do from the Amer­i­can school of “no one is bet­ter than any­one else,” in which sin­gling out is a crime pun­ish­able by death, it was very hard to get used to the idea that right out in pub­lic, announced with a micro­phone, chil­dren could be dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed from one anoth­er. Sev­er­al oth­ers of Avery’s class­mates received two awards, and many received none at all. Amaz­ing. Of course I don’t know how we would be feel­ing about all this if she had­n’t received a prize. I sup­pose it would have to be tak­en as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to encour­age the child for next year, which could work if you said exact­ly the right thing. But in any case, that is the sys­tem here. Of course Beck­y’s elder daugh­ter Ash­ley looked back in our direc­tion in time to see me all teary-eyed, very embar­rass­ing! I could­n’t help it. It seemed an incred­i­bly touch­ing, reward­ing event, to cel­e­brate how hard every­one, includ­ing the teach­ers and staff, have worked all year. We are so proud of her.

Pro­fes­sor S’s speech was very inter­est­ing, focus­ing as she did on the impor­tance of con­tribut­ing to the greater good. She said stern­ly, “Hold up the index fin­ger of your right hand and place it on your chest. Good. Now say to your­self, ‘this is ME.’ And as you’re say­ing that, and think­ing about the Big You, realise that aside from the peo­ple in this room, very few peo­ple in the world care, or know, about the Big You. They’re think­ing of the Big Me them­selves, and most of them do not come from the advan­tages that you gulls have. It is your respon­si­bil­i­ty to take what you have been giv­en, and think about what con­tri­bu­tion you can make in the Great World.” Very inter­est­ing, con­sid­er­ing that the rest of the day had been very much about back-pat­ting, prais­ing, giv­ing to them. It is dif­fi­cult some­times to know how to tem­per all the giv­ing that our child expe­ri­ences, with some lim­its, and some sense of her place in the greater scheme of things. Of course it’s won­der­ful to give to her, not just things but atten­tion, and approval. But how to mod­er­ate her per­cep­tion that the rest of the world, and the rest of her life, will treat her that way. It can be a quandary.

But we did­n’t have much time to pon­der these large ques­tions, or to enjoy the tri­umph, because Wim­ble­don beck­oned! So I put Avery into Beck­y’s hands, the poor thing off to organ­ise her youngest daugh­ter Ellie’s birth­day par­ty, so of course what she need­ed most was an extra child. It bears say­ing again: Becky is a saint. We head­ed off in the most expen­sive cab ride of my life, to the ten­nis. Traf­fic was under­stand­ably hor­ren­dous, but for some rea­son we just sat back and chat­ted and did­n’t obsess over the rapid­ly mount­ing fare. As we arrived, it was clear that the skies could open at any moment, but noth­ing could damp­en our spirits.

More about Wim­ble­don lat­er, but right now must go col­lect Avery from her friend Sophi­a’s birth­day par­ty, at a place called “Build a Bear,” which is, accord­ing to Avery, a ver­i­ta­ble Shangri-la of child­hood. I think the par­ents who do such a birth­day par­ty deserve medals, because it must be more than slight­ly ener­vat­ing to take a large group of lit­tle girls to choose flat bears, put them through the stuff­ing machine (includ­ing a real plush heart of the child’s choos­ing), dress them in minute lit­tle out­fits and come away with an adop­tion cer­tifi­cate. Imag­ine the deci­bels! Imag­ine the push­ing and shov­ing and “you got the dress I want­ed for Kiwi!!” poten­tial dis­as­ters. But Avery will be in heav­en, I can guar­an­tee you that. One more crea­ture to add to the sev­er­al hun­dred now in her bed every night! Bliss.