turn up the vol­ume: we’re home

Good­ness, was it just a week or so ago that I was describ­ing our sense of relax­ation, nay, even peacefulness?

Well, we’re home.

How do they do it? The pow­ers-that-be in our Lon­don life, suck­ing the self-con­fi­dence right out of me, send­ing me back into a “what now?” state of nerves.

Don’t mis­un­der­stand: I’m hap­py to be home. I love hav­ing “Balder­dash and Pif­fle” turn up on the BBC, call­ing our atten­tion to the devel­op­ment of col­lo­qui­al Eng­lish with phras­es like “a Glas­gow Kiss,” or “spiv,” or “tak­ing the mick­ey.” I’m thrilled too to have my trip to the local super­mar­ket turn up absolute­ly incred­i­bly sweet and flavour­ful toma­toes under the for­get­table moniker of “lit­tle plums,” just a fan­tas­tic qual­i­ty of pro­duce with no flashy head­lines. The same for the blue­ber­ries and chicken:no spe­cial label, no big price tag, but just an acci­den­tal encounter with per­fect ingre­di­ents. I’m not sure what hap­pens to a lot of Amer­i­can raw ingre­di­ents, could it be the breadth and width of the coun­try and oceans that stuff has to tra­verse? Maybe the small­ness of my adopt­ed island means that the food­stuffs are just bet­ter, auto­mat­i­cal­ly. I love it.

And the grey skies, with the occa­sion­al flash of blue between scud­ding clouds, are a pret­ty welcome-home.

A glo­ri­ous after­noon’s catch-up with Becky, with the easy short­hand of friend­ship where a cou­ple of sen­tences suf­fices to describe some­one, or the exchange of news about some­one else, or reports of our sum­mer activ­i­ties. Avery and Anna of course were bliss­ful to be reunit­ed, and it was so cosy to sit in Beck­y’s kitchen like a lazy lout while she made piz­za and pas­ta and fed every­one in sight: all the lit­tle girls with new hair­cuts, and lord knows in my jet­lagged state I was more than hap­py to be fed.

No, the nervy-mak­ing thing is… school. And not even my school, it’s my child’s school! First day today. I must have resid­ual first-day anx­i­ety from my own child­hood (lord knows I have resid­ual any-kind-of anx­i­ety for any sit­u­a­tion!), because every first-day of school of her life I’ve felt stressed. It used to be sep­a­ra­tion anx­i­ety (for me! not my hard-heart­ed child), then it was con­cern over all-day school (again, only me), then the move here, now, I have no idea what would make me anx­ious. I think it might be the rel­a­tive unfa­mil­iar­i­ty of all these oth­er par­ents, and the sense that I real­ly don’t have a place. Part­ly because the school isn’t real­ly all that inter­est­ed in parental involve­ment, and part­ly because the cross-sec­tion of par­ents in the school, per­haps par­tic­u­lar­ly our class, is so mind-bend­ing­ly var­ied! I feel still a bit out of my depth social­iz­ing with every nation­al­i­ty, reli­gion, socio-eco­nom­ic pro­file under the sun, with peo­ple who can speak many lan­guages flu­ent­ly, have lived all over the world, have three chil­dren old­er than Avery and so have seen all these exams and process­es many times before. Some­how all my own dubi­ous accom­plish­ments desert me at these times and I just stand, sil­ly with intimidation.

At the meet­ing tonight to pre­pare us par­ents for “the hard­est five months of your daugh­ters’ lives” (sure­ly this can­not be true! how about PhD orals, or dare I say it, preg­nan­cy and labor?), I felt com­plete­ly over­whelmed. Not just with infor­ma­tion, but with the sense that this is all way more impor­tant than I can ever real­ly con­ceive it to be. Or (pos­si­bly) I have the right idea in think­ing school issues to be less than earth-shat­ter­ing, but I’m in the tiny minor­i­ty? The head­mistress always scares the liv­ing day­lights out of me (can she be real?), and the unquench­able perk­i­ness (and yet stun­ning­ly Eng­lish com­po­sure) of the teach­ers just makes me feel like a child myself. When we got home John said, “Why do you feel that way? You’re plen­ty smart…” I don’t know what it is, but I always do just fade. We stood around the kitchen when we got home, ana­lyz­ing my paral­y­sis, while I chopped up some gar­lic and fried sage leaves in but­ter, to pour over ravioli.

Ravi­o­li in Sage Butter

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

Lunch yes­ter­day with Vin­cent at Fish­Works in Maryle­bone, much catch­ing up over sum­mer activ­i­ties. For him, a spa in Switzer­land and a trip to the south of France to vis­it his par­ents. Who ARE these glam­ourous peo­ple I’m sur­round­ed with? I had the most sub­lime grilled scal­lops with a hol­landaise sauce, fol­lowed by a whole lit­tle seabass grilled with rose­mary under its skin. And a side of cavo­lo nero, which I have to say I do not love, not being a fan of leafy greens. I know, I know, they will save my life some­day, but I find them… chewy.

I am think­ing: is a sofrito the Ital­ian ver­sion of the French mire­poix? Each of them being a dice of car­rots, cel­ery and onion, with vari­a­tions of gar­lic or pep­pers? It always makes me laugh when all I have going in the kitchen is gar­lic sim­mer­ing in olive oil, and both John and Avery say, “Some­thing smells real­ly good!” It does­n’t take much to make them happy.

Let’s see, today is a trip to Har­rods for Avery’s school shoes. Like clock­work, as soon as every­one else in Lon­don has descend­ed on John Lewis to buy school shoes, she dis­cov­ers that hers don’t fit. So we end up some­where else. I think John and I will walk over there today and work off all that but­ter from last night. We’ve got to get set to play ten­nis here, since we got so enthu­si­as­tic over the sum­mer. Becky and Vin­cent both rec­om­mend the Har­bour Club, but I fan­cy out­doors, actu­al­ly, so we may be look­ing more at just Regen­t’s Park. We’ll keep you posted.