things to appreciate

Do you ever have one of those days when every­thing you encounter seems like some­thing you just can’t live with­out, and you start wor­ry­ing about when they won’t be there any­more? Or am I just mor­bid­ly fear­ful and Scan­di­na­vian? Well, I have those days quite fre­quent­ly, and so today I’ve decid­ed to turn myself around and instead of wor­ry­ing about los­ing them, just con­cen­trate on being glad I have them. I don’t know how suc­cess­ful this strat­e­gy will be, going direct­ly counter to my usu­al method of mak­ing even pos­i­tive things poten­tial­ly neg­a­tive, but I’ll give it a try.

I have to start with this morn­ing’s vis­it to the “Cafe Rouge” at Avery’s beloved school. Every autumn the French teacher organ­is­es a cof­fee morn­ing to ben­e­fit the Macmil­lan Can­cer Trust. All the moth­ers at school are invit­ed to come, in care­ful­ly organ­ised groups, and sit in the din­ing room of the school and be served crois­sants and cof­fee by our lit­tle gulls. All this is accom­plished in what I will again describe as “French,” and is very fun­ny. There is a lit­tle script on each table denot­ing what the gulls are meant to say, and what the moth­ers must say in response. Believe me when I say that any devi­a­tion, how­ev­er small, from this script is met with the blank­est of stares. “Bon­jour, madame. Bon­jour, made­moi­selle. Vois avez choisi?” and so on.

Now while I feel under­stand­ably that my child is prac­ti­cal­ly per­fect in every way, I have to step up and say that her French is not, shall we say, her strongest point. In fact it’s dire. How this can be when one of my few tal­ents is for­eign lan­guages, I do not know. But even so, we had fun. “Mum­my, I’ll go get your pain au choco­lat, but I don’t think you’ll real­ly want it, and if you want me to, I can eat it for you.” And sil­ly me, I actu­al­ly asked for three fur­ther help­ings which it then turned out I did not want. I real­ly think these chil­dren would ben­e­fit a LOT from hav­ing sev­er­al help­ings of pas­try at 10:30 in the morn­ing every day. They were all very chipper.

I kept think­ing that this time next year, she’ll be at a dif­fer­ent school, and I will not be wel­come any­where near. I won’t be able to buy myself a seat in her school din­ing room. And soon after that she’ll be get­ting to and from school on her OWN, unbe­liev­ably, so no more of my offi­cial favorite moment of the day, when she emerges laden with all her clob­ber and lots of sto­ries about her day. Sob.

Then, get this sad news flash: her unique­ly won­der­ful head­mistress has announced her retire­ment in July. Dou­ble sob! From day one, she has been the per­fect com­bi­na­tion of stiff upper lip and warm hand on one’s shoul­der. A sense of humour, great tact, gen­uine love for each child, the whole nine yards. Of course they will find a great replace­ment no doubt; I would imag­ine it’s a pret­ty plum job. But it will be an enor­mous loss. So I stood and chat­ted with her after the gulls had gone back to class, and we made plans for the Leavers’ Annu­al Book which we’re plan­ning to organ­ise all year: a pho­to­graph of each child, plus a piece of work from every sin­gle one. That will huge fun to accom­plish. Sob.

Then, let’s see, I sat up very late one night this week and just chat­ted with my moth­er. Too infre­quent­ly does this hap­pen. It’s the time dif­fer­ence, and the gen­er­al sense that once it’s late enough to call her, there’s school pick­up, home­work help, din­ner to organ­ise, eat and wash up, bath, sto­ries, songs. But this week I just sat down when every­one else was asleep and we had the nicest time. I got brought up to date on their house­hold projects, and health and cute­ness of their new cat, my grand­moth­er’s health. And of course there is no bet­ter audi­ence than a grand­moth­er for sto­ries about a remark­able child, so I got to spill all my lit­tle tales to the one per­son besides her oth­er grand­moth­er who nev­er gets tired of hear­ing about Avery. And who is always on my side, in any dis­pute! I love that.

Also, on the sub­ject of things to love, yes­ter­day I came out of my study to find a note in the hall­way from our next-door neigh­bor say­ing, “Dear Kris­ten, Have you lost a torty kit­ty? There is a very friend­ly one in the gar­den that I have nev­er seen before, and I won­dered if you had an escapee. Janet.” Because yes! Tacy and Hermione have become vagabonds. They dis­cov­ered, some­how, near­ly two years after we moved in, that they can squeeze through my open bed­room win­dow and escape. And after accom­pa­ny­ing them a cou­ple of times, I decid­ed that it was worth the tiny risk of some preda­tor being back there (or that rarest of crim­i­nals: the kid­nap­per of worth­less mutt cats), and they’ve been hap­pi­ly com­ing in and out since, many times a day. Hermione came in once, with some­thing in her mouth. I screamed slight­ly and said, “John, you’ve got to go look. If it’s dead… and if it’s not…” So we both went stealth­ily over to where her lit­tle tab­by body was crouched pro­tec­tive­ly over her prey, and looked. It was a leaf! That first day she went out, she killed at least six leaves and brought them proud­ly in to give to us, so like fools we find our­selves say­ing, “Good hunter! Good kit­ty!” Clear­ly we both need to get a job.

And yes­ter­day at my class was one of those days when I real­ly adore liv­ing in Lon­don: the amaz­ing vari­ety of peo­ple you meet! Plus I guess when you nar­row your cross-sec­tion of human­i­ty down to peo­ple who want to write auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal short fic­tion, you’ve already got an inter­est­ing bunch. Or at least a mem­o­rable bunch. Well, this group of thir­teen stu­dents promis­es to live up to its sta­tis­ti­cal poten­tial. We’ve got two pro­fes­sion­al trans­la­tors: one of Dutch instruc­tion man­u­als (how big can that mar­ket be). He expressed his sort of exis­ten­tial dis­sat­is­fac­tion with his job by observ­ing, “No mat­ter how good you are, and how much you get praised, your great­est accom­plish­ment is in being just like some­one else, only in a dif­fer­ent lan­guage. I need to express MYSELF.” In instruc­tion man­u­als? Why not?

Then, fun­ni­ly enough, anoth­er trans­la­tor, who’s trans­lat­ed all Jean Cocteau’s orig­i­nal screen­plays. For what pur­pose, one is tempt­ed to ask, but it’s a big city. She’s also a psy­chi­a­trist, nat­u­ral­ly. Then there’s a lady who’s appar­ent­ly thrown up her in West Sus­sex to learn to write her life sto­ry, and finds Ham­mer­smith the most con­fus­ing place in the world to find one’s way around. And a French girl with a degree in com­par­a­tive lit­er­a­ture from the Sor­bonne, and a West Indi­an lady with a lilt­ing voice and gig­gle, and a lady who speaks French, Eng­lish and Ara­bic, and of course my friend Dalia, Lebanese-born and raised in Nige­ria and Eng­lish board­ing schools, who’s a life coach.

We had a great first day, with one glitch that only time will tell how we can iron out: one of the stu­dents, a very frail lit­tle lady with a superbly lux­u­ri­ous Ital­ian gild­ed note­book, inter­rupt­ed the tutor after per­haps the first ten min­utes of the class had gone by and said, “You know, I have no hear­ing at all in this ear, and very lit­tle in the oth­er. I have not heard one word you’ve said.” Silence. What could we do? “You’ve got to throw your voice, you know,” she con­tin­ued, “throw it right to me. And if any­one else speaks, I can­not pos­si­bly notice.” Hmm. The tutor said that she would try to speak up (writ­ers are noto­ri­ous­ly soft-voiced, Dalia point­ed out!) and then game­ly sug­gest­ed that if any­one want­ed to make a com­ment, to raise a hand in warn­ing. “But you see,” per­sist­ed the lady, “If I’m try­ing to read your lips, I can­not pos­si­bly also be look­ing for peo­ple putting their hands up.” Oh dear.

And before we could think of a solu­tion to this, anoth­er lady said polite­ly, “And please, no writ­ing on the board, or if you do, you must please tell me what you’ve writ­ten. I have no sight.” The tutor looked tru­ly dashed at this point, and a man in a wheel­chair said kind­ly, “We’re mere­ly talk­ing about access issues here. Per­haps for our deaf friend we can all speak very firm­ly, and for our blind friend we can make sure we do not com­mu­ni­cate in a way that requires sight. It’s all just access issues.” All these peo­ple have my com­plete respect because I feel cer­tain if I were sim­i­lar­ly chal­lenged, I would just stay home and shriv­el up. The blind lady had a fas­ci­nat­ing com­put­er sys­tem where­by she typed what she was hear­ing into a lap­top and then some­how the lap­top spoke back to her what she’d writ­ten, in lit­tle head­phones. And she explained that hav­ing this process occur when­ev­er she wrote was actu­al­ly very instruc­tive, because hear­ing your own words spo­ken to you gives a whole new per­spec­tive on what you’ve said. Now that’s a pos­i­tive attitude.

Well, I think my exper­i­ment in enjoy­ing rather than dread­ing has paid off! I’m feel­ing quite cheer­ful. We’re head­ed to the skat­ing rink with Avery and Jamie, and then off to Rich­mond tonight to see “Shad­ow­lands,” with Charles Dance who is one of my favorite British actors, and I’ve just been read­ing some fan­tas­tic reviews. I’ll be sure to report. TGIF!