I just ate the first row of squares from the single origin Ecuadorian chocolate bar I purchased in Cambridge (Massachusetts) last week at L.A. Burdick and I have to say:  I am in awe. The satisfying clack when I snapped off a piece, letting that first, imperfect square roll around on my tongue and melt a little before finally allowing myself to masticate. That’s masticate, people. Get a dictionary. Ew. It means chew for crying out loud. I found the receipt this morning while cleaning the American money out of my wallet. Each bar was ten bucks. No wonder.

Anyhow, I digress. Because I actually have no intention of writing about chocolate. In fact I should not have done so because my husband, erstwhile ignorant to the charms of the two bars resting on my desk, will now be looking to get a piece of the action.

Rather, the topic of today’s post is something else that I find awe-inspiring. My ten-year-old daughter. This occurred to me Tuesday night while I was getting ready for bed. I thought about all of the things we had done during the day and more specifically, all of the things she had done. And it was pretty impressive, at least to me.

Last week, she missed an entire week of school because we had to haul ass to the States to visit schools in preparation for our eventual move back to the Boston area. The travel, the visits and the snowstorm, which somewhat interfered with our plans, meant that she was behind on homework when we returned to London last Saturday. Not surprising. Plus, there was the inevitable jet lag, that no matter what I do to counter it afflicts us all. I even went to bed at about 9:00pm every night in the US (I know, loser, right?), not only because I was tired as hell but also because I thought — ha! I will fake out the jet lag and not fully adjust to EST, thus making my return easier. Not so. Mother Nature had other plans. Just as she had other plans for Boston last Tuesday.

So, jet lag and staying up late to do homework Sunday and Monday meant one tired child. In fact, if I had not forced her to go to bed when I did, I am 100% convinced that she would still have been up at 2:00am on Monday, eyelids pried open à la Ulysses, trying to catch up for fear of the consequences of showing up unprepared. I know it is a good thing to be a conscientious student, I told her, but you are in fact TEN. No one will ever look at these grades again. And I can write a note. It is not your fault we had to go on this trip. So please please please go to bed. Eat the lotus and drift off blissfully. Succumb. Please. I wondered if she was worried about being unprepared for fear of letting me down. I hope not. Or was it fear of letting her teachers down? Or herself? Whatever the case, I thought, I need to remind this kid to be a kid sometimes. Lighten up, party, have a margarita and shit. Not really, but you get the gist.

Tuesday morning she managed to pull it together, somehow. After school, she came home and announced that she needed to do some sort of skit or presentation for Humanities, in which they are studying ancient Egypt (cool, right?), which involved dressing up in a costume, making a few props and serving food. Oh and by the way, she said, I need to prepare some food because I will be a servant, so we need to bake something. Today.

That, and she needed to finish up her final remaining school application (we had been slogging away on these things for what seems like ever, and they required what I consider to be a surprising amount of effort/time/focus from both parent and child). Oh and also catch up on her homework on which she was still behind. Oh and also do her newly assigned homework. And study for a test. And practice the piano. And the clarinet. And breathe. And put one foot in front of the other. It was already almost 4:00pm.

But she had been such a good sport about doing her applications over the past weeks (I have tried to spread it out so as not to overwhelm) and had been so great on our trip and at the school visits that I just could not say no. Ok, I caved, you can bake something. I convinced her, at least, to choose something simple. Enter Mary Berry’s (she is like the English Betty Crocker for those not in the know) fork biscuits, which are shortbread cookies requiring only butter, flour and sugar. I asked her if the ancient Egyptians ate shortbread, or, in fact, cookies of any kind. But undeterred, she said that it would do fine because they probably ate samosas or something snacky like that. So that is how she ended up baking two batches of cookies for her Humanities class, one plain with chocolate chips and one chocolate with butterscotch chips (I am pretty certain the Egyptians did not have butterscotch or indeed a Hieroglyphic for such).

And she did the whole thing by herself. I even let her put the tray in the preheated oven and take it out when I was in another part of the house. (For some of you this may be no big deal but I am sort of mental about letting my kids do stuff involving sharp knives or a hot stove unless I am physically present in the room. At what age does one stop worrying about supervising such activities? Let me know…)

Having safely removed the cookies from the oven, she popped upstairs and finished off the essay for that final application and started to attack her homework. At one point she appeared downstairs wearing a khaki, James Perse cotton dress of mine. She had apparently rifled through my closet for the perfect peasant outfit and found this to be suitable. And here when I bought it I had no idea that I was paying hundreds to dress like an ancient Egyptian peasant. I guess fashion really does come around every few thousand years. The next morning, armed with a tin of cookies, including a package of store-bought gluten free biscuits for a gluten intolerant classmate (totally her idea), wearing my “peasant dress” and toting a plastic axe (prop) off she went. And I thought to myself, damn, that is one capable kid.

Capable. That is what my mother-in-law said about her during our visit last week. And indeed it is true. She is capable. But there is so much time in the future to do all the stuff she is capable of and so little time left just to be a kid. When I try to think about what I was doing when I was ten I can’t really remember. I suppose that I was capable in my own way as well. But the details are fuzzy and life was very different. I remember being at school and the other children more than I remember what I did after leaving school, which I suppose isn’t surprising given that most of the day at that age is spent in school. That’s why it is good to write these things down. You can see what you were up to when you start to have premature senior moments, precipitated, no doubt, by the ADD that all of us now have due to overuse of technology.

All of this made me wonder about what it feels like to be ten. And whether that felt a lot different, developmentally, hundreds or even thousands of years ago. One of the pharaohs that Izzy is studying (Ramses II) was made an army captain at age ten. That seems crazy. I thought about it. Did the little dude still freak out and tantrum once and a while or just play with wooden swords and act like a child, or was he AFB (all-fucking-business) all the time? Did he ever tell his dad to shut up, or just start crying because he was too hungry or too tired, or did he just force himself to deal because that was what was expected?

I suppose that when the average life expectancy was fairly young and dying of old age was a rare occurrence, being very capable at ten might have been more the norm. Now, with people routinely living into their eighties and beyond, a ten-year-old needn’t be an army captain quite yet, or know how to drive, or run a small country. Yet so much is expected of our children today. The homework, the after school activities… The resume building seems to be starting younger and younger. And along with it, the anxiety and even physical manifestations of it.

I contemplated some of the application questions that my kid was asked to address: At your graduation from high school (that would be EIGHT years from now) what do you hope will be said about your accomplishments and your contribution to the community? If you could replace any activity you now do with something else, what would it be and why? And I ask you, does a ten-year-old need to be tackling these issues? One of my favorite questions was to design your perfect Saturday. Now that, at least, is something a ten-year-old can get her head around. Sigh.

We all want what is best for our children. We want them to be successful. But the most important thing is for them to be happy, isn’t it? To remember to be children. To be challenged and to reach but to have fun along the way. To figure out what they want to be, with many missteps, and perhaps changes of course. Not to push them into what we think they should be, possibly get them “there,” and then realise too late that we have contributed to making them miserable.

One thing I know for sure: once we have moved back to Boston, I will take the kids to Burdick’s for a cup of dark hot chocolate. We will try to snag a table among the deliberately shabbily dressed Cambridge academia, slightly stand-offish and smug, discussing oh-so-seriously their theses, the future of the world, or whatever, between sips of cappuccino and forkfuls of “Harvard Square,” which is a sort of elitist brownie confection. We will block out the drivel and focus inward, on laughs and the present moment and that inimitable cup of liquid gold. On being happy. On the short-lived deliciousness of being a kid.

It is Saturday. My husband is away traveling in the United States (San Francisco). The kids and I are living the London life. Unfortunately, that involves the occasional trip to our local branch of *%$@, festering turd of a bank that finds itself acceptable.

Have you been to a bank in America?  You get in line, go to the teller (that’s “counter service” here) and get your shit done, whatever that may be.  It’s pretty straightforward.  Generally. If you need something more complicated done, you see someone and sort it out. I have never had a big complicated problem. Never.

So why is it that every time I go to the local branch of our UK bank there is some problem?  I mean every time.  I am not exaggerating even though I am, admittedly, prone to hyperbole.

The first time I went there to pay our UK taxes and was sent elsewhere because my husband was not physically present and they needed him even though I am on the account too. Perhaps they were concerned that I was some crazed vindictive bitch who wanted to pay lots of money to her majesty’s revenue just for the fun of it, against my husband’s will. So they had better have him present.

The second time, I went to open a bank account for my seven-year-old daughter. So that we could put her modest 4 GBP/week allowance in there via direct deposit and start teaching her some financial responsibility. I had filled out the application, vetted such for what would be required, shown up with passport in hand, all pleased with myself for thwarting, in advance, any stupid English bullshit likely to ensue. But wait.

I got there and they said I “needed an appointment.” I had a mini hissy fit and then they finally talked to me and said that I could not open the account anyhow because my 7-year-old needed to be physically present in case I was trying to open an account for money laundering purposes by creating a fraudulent child.

Um, are you fucking kidding me?  I informed them that I had opened just such an account for my other minor child only months before without her physical presence. “Yes, the rules have changed, madame,” I was informed.

I then asked them if they thought it would be particularly fruitful in my criminal career if I were planning to launder a mere 4 GBP per week, at which the woman allowed herself at least a somewhat sympathetic look.

I mean SERIOUSLY.

Plus it would have been an awful lot of trouble for me to get a fake passport for said child. I demanded to open the account. “I am supposed to be a premier customer,” I said.  “You know us; you have all of our information. I have an account here. It isn’t like I just wandered in off the street with my fake kid’s passport.”

The woman finally agreed to help me. But I had to queue (of course).

Finally some lady beckoned me over.  We got pretty far into the process and then she asked for my kid’s visa, which of course is no longer in her passport but in the form of a super convenient separate biometrics card that I did not have on me because it did not occur to me that I would need THAT to open the damn account.

So there I was, foiled again, and ended up leaving without having opened the account.  I had to go back on Monday with the biometrics card to do it. At which time, of course, there was a computer “fault” and the woman had to call the help line, which didn’t appear to be a different number or procedure than had she not been internal to the bank. I sat there, dumbfounded, wondering whether Lord Nelson was at that very moment turning in his grave at the complete incompetence and breakdown that has ensued in this country since the English beat the French at the Battle of Trafalgar. And finally, finally, the damn paperwork was done and I walked — no, practically ran — out, hoping that the account would eventually be activated and that I would receive notice of such in the post.

So after a couple of weeks the damn thing did show up. Yippee doodle.

Today, said kid’s soccer match was canceled on account of rain, so I said “not to worry, dearie, we will head to the local bank branch and deposit some money for you.” Figured I would teach her a little about how it works.

I checked the hours and confirmed that the bank was indeed open until 2pm. So we counted coins (yes got a good math lesson in there to boot), put them in the correct plastic baggies which I had obtained in advance, and headed up there.

When I opened the door I knew right away that my luck with this branch was not about to change. The shades on both tellers’ windows were drawn, and there was a tired, lazy, sorry-looking bunch of people slumped in the handful of chairs against the wall, waiting to be “helped.”

I managed to get some lady’s attention and said “excuse me, but isn’t there any counter service? We have just come to deposit some cash and do a transfer for my daughter here.”

“Oh there is no counter service on Saturdays. You can’t deposit the cash today.”

I blinked, maybe a few times, and then I forget what I even said. But the response was that there had not been “counter service here for eight years, madame. Because it isn’t a working day.”

I bit my tongue when the desire to remark “well YOU are working today” rose up in my throat in a bilious gurgle. And then we walked out the door.

You know, I have lived here for over three years. And yes, I am not English, and still don’t “get” certain things. But damnation these people are ridiculous.

I can’t even fully do it justice by describing the episodes in this blog. I cannot. You would simply have to come experience it for yourselves.

And if you English readers are clucking and shaking your head and thinking “oh you just don’t understand about how things work here,” well I’ve got news for you, lads and lasses, you are RIGHT. I don’t get it. I don’t get it at all because THEY DON’T fucking work. It’s a miracle that anything ever ends up getting done here at all.

So we headed out to run other errands and have a nice lunch, plastic baggies of coins still in hand.

And to think I had that fake passport made all for nothing. Sheeyit.

Here I am staring down at your onion with a 10-inch blade in my right hand. I’m going to cut into it but then I stop and think — maybe I shouldn’t. I consider not using it. Then it will be gone and I won’t have it to remember you by. But that doesn’t seem right, either. Better that it become part of this marinara than it dry out slowly, becoming too wizened to use and ending up in the rubbish. My choice in this matter will not affect the outcome, which is that you are on a plane heading to the United States, leaving your London life and me, and us, behind.

Last night when we said good-bye after a somewhat raucous family dinner atop the dog-eared astroturf-floored dining room of a Primrose Hill pub, where the lamb was cooked medium-well even though it was ordered medium-rare, but we didn’t care and ate it anyway, I was steady and cheerful. We were silly and the evening culminated in a strange assortment of “party tricks.” Who can wiggle their ears? Pick his nose with his tongue (I’m not mentioning names here), make her pecks dance like a male body builder, raise an eyebrow one at a time? But then today it hit me. You really are gone.

It hit Bill at the same time, What’s App’ing me from the high street when he passed some Ibérico jamón and it dawned on him that you were really leaving. So I stood here in the kitchen, making a simple dinner for the kids, blubbering before I had even cut the onion. It’s in the sauce now, bubbling away. I can see you choosing it, maybe from the little grocery store around the corner or the small food shoppe around the other corner, a lock of jet hair falling in front of your eyes as you stoop to pick it up.

And I will just miss you so much. Your enormous, kind, intelligent eyes, your doll-like forearms, the way you stand with your toes pointed slightly inward, hands in pockets, smiling. A subtle waft of Byredo Blanche perfuming the air.

Your charming omission of articles, of which I am reminded constantly because I am reading The Goldfinch and there are Russian characters who do the same thing.

Long walks during which I had to slow down so that you could keep up, chance meetings on our street or in the neighborhood during which you would always smile when you saw that it was I, walking toward you. Your bemused, nonjudgmental air as you observed that I was heading down the street on my way from the gym, headphones in, lip-sinking something frivolous and aimed at a much younger audience.

Patience and tolerance as I flopped unapologetically on your sectional, bald, un-made up, haggard and irritable, suffering from (or I should say inflicting) the latest ‘roid rage from the steroids I had to take after chemo. I would wait for the second week during which I always felt better and then dive into something spicy, delicious and nourishing that you had cooked, without a recipe, savoring every bite. Blissful relief from the bland week of baked chicken breasts and steamed broccoli that had preceded this delicacy.

Throwing out your two-year-old baking soda, shaking my head, as I helped you make a cake in the Cuisinart, of all things (which actually turned out pretty well!). Remembering your welcome intervention at Thanksgiving when I tried for the first time to make gravy.

Standing on the sidewalk as my older daughter bounded down the street, beaming in anticipation of a play date with your daughter. Fighting a wave of sadness as I realized it would be the last time I watched her do this.

Passing your house, knowing I might never again set foot in it. Knowing that its contents are all packaged up — either already gone or waiting to be taken. That the house is sanitized, devoid of your presence. Meaningless.

Allowing myself to feel this pain, I who am not very nostalgic, I who can adapt to anything. Fallible me. Wondering where you will land and when I will see you again.

It was a gift. These last years. Having you all on the same street where we live. Your family. Your dinners. Chris, his epic barbecues, his ruthless yet surreptitious topping up of wine glasses. His unnecessary yet much appreciated comments on our strength. Your whole family and their loveliness. Your beautiful children. Your son happily playing legos with our daughter almost three years his junior.

Oh, my friend. I miss you so. To think I will not be able to text and then magically cause you to appear minutes later. To think that you are thousands of miles away.

I long to hijack you, a girls’ weekend… a getaway. Something. Something that will make it be “till we meet again” and not “good-bye.” Anything but that.

I started writing this the day before Hallowe’en but now of course Hallowe’en has passed and I am not as timely as I would have liked to be. Oh well. Give a girl a break. Just roll with it and if you please transport yourself back to October 30, 2013…

It’s that time of year again, folks. Sneaks up on me every year and used to be my favorite — wait why is that red-underlined?  STOP IT!!!! — holiday as a child. Because we are talking Hallowe’en I am doing American spelling in this post and my British spellcheck will just have to chillax. Anyhow, as I was saying, Hallow’s Eve is upon us. Like, tomorrow.

And naturally I don’t have my act together, haven’t finalized costumes, haven’t decorated the house, haven’t bought pumpkins. Typical. But at least this year it is because I have been flat out for the past two weeks doing a project for my interior design course and not because I was schlepping around to doctors appointments undergoing unpleasant draconian treatments to stay on this side of the dirt. So that’s an improvement.

Luckily my children are classy and have not asked whether I will buy them some slut outfit that isn’t even appropriate for much older kids. I mean, seriously, one year my husband’s friend’s daughter asked him if he would purchase, online, a costume called “Pocahottie.” WTF. And um, NO.

Yes we have a black cat for the nine-year-old (she likes classic, old-school costumes.  Last year she was pleased as punch being a red devil and the prior year a ghost with a simple white sheet with holes for eyes) and we have the six-year-old in a Red Riding Hood get-up. I was thinking that because we have our nanny, my husband and myself kicking around we should all get into the fairy tale spirit. So I am going to be the wolf, and we are planning to dress Agnieszka up as the grandmother. But we are having a hard time finding a granny nightie (Marks & Spencers didn’t even have one) so we are hitting the thrift shops today to deal with that situation. My husband can be the hunter although it would probably be ill-advised for him to walk around northwest London armed — I mean not even the cops here carry guns much less an axe (though some of the rioters reportedly had machetes) — so we are still working on that one.

But let me get to the point, which is, that one of the things I enjoy so about Hallowe’en, aside from the occasional mini Twix (but where oh WHERE are my Reese’s?), is the memories it stirs up of Hallowe’ens past.  Like the time we dressed our infant (Isabel) up as  peas in a pod even though she was clearly pissed to be zipped into what probably felt like a green polyester straight jacket.

Or the time I decided to dress myself up as a ballerina and wore a leotard and tutu even though I was about five months pregnant. It really is hard to embarrass me, I guess.

But my most favorite Hallowe’en memory is from four years ago. We were living in Wellesley, MA at the time and it was October (duh). Bill and I found ourselves out shopping on Route 9 (think long, unattractive strip mall in suburbia, if you aren’t familiar with that neck of the woods) with the girls, then five and two-and-a-half.

We wandered into Sleepy’s to look at mattresses. There is always some fucking weirdo working at Sleepy’s. I am sorry, but in my experience it’s the truth. If you work at Sleepy’s and are offended then I am sorry but send me a selfie and I will decide whether you have a leg to stand on. Chances are you don’t and therefore you won’t. Once we went into a Sleepy’s in a basement shop in Manhattan and the salesman (who was alone in there, underground and breathing heavily) scared us so much we hightailed it right out of there. And we didn’t even have kids at the time.

Well anyhow this Sleepy’s was manned by a very tall, very big man with a mustache. And when I say big, I mean VERY big. Like 400 pounds at least. And I am not exaggerating. That he could walk was impressive. So we entered the shop and the girls were thrilled because of course it was a large square room full of mattresses. They immediately went mental and started running around and jumping on all the mattresses to test them out. The man said this was fine, which was pretty cool of him, and didn’t seem phased by it at all.

So, while the kids tried to break their necks, Bill and I tried out various mattresses. We even underwent some stupid test where you lie on this thing and it tells you what kind of firmness you need and such. Of course we were told we each needed different support. And I was not about to leave and order a Sleep by Numbers or a Craftmatic Adjustable Bed for crying out loud. So we started arguing (albeit not heatedly) about which kind of mattress could work for both of us. Meanwhile the kids engaged the very big man in conversation. Or was it vice versa. I don’t remember. The gist is that he asked Isabel what she was going to be for Hallowe’en and confessed that he, himself had not yet decided what his costume would be.

Isabel ran off and explored more mattresses with her younger sister, who ran around yelling “hoissss!” (that’s hoist, if you didn’t figure that one out), because she still had trouble climbing up onto some of the higher ones. Then Isabel did a 180 and ran back to the man, stopped in front of him, looked up at him, eyes wide and brimming with excitement and said, “I know what you can be for Hallowe’en!” The man listened intently. “A pumpkin! A BIG. FAT. PUMPKIN!” She looked at him with a completely earnest expression.

At this point I was grateful that I wasn’t eating or drinking anything because I would have either choked to death or spewed it all over the Tempurpedic mattress I was rolling around on. Bill and I looked at each other, clearly at a loss for words in trying to mitigate this innocent yet potentially highly offensive suggestion from our child.

We didn’t want to scold her too badly and make it even worse, plus because she didn’t mean anything by it, it would not have been fair. Also, it was absotively fucking hilarious. There was just no denying that. But there was no way we could allow ourselves to burst into laughter either.

So we did what any good parents would do, and we purchased the Tempurpedic mattress and a Tempurpedic pillow to boot. You might think we were just trying to make the best of a bad situation but we really did like the mattress (we still have it today).

And you know what, the very big man was a totally excellent sport. He did not appear in the least offended. He laughed and poked some fun at himself, and mentioned that his size had certainly turned quite a few heads and elicited a number of comments in his day. But still, we did feel bad about it and were relieved that it had blown over rather painlessly.

After we’d wrapped up our purchase and were ambling toward the door, kids and new pillow in tow, Isabel turned to waive and exclaimed, loudly, “BYE, MR. BIG FAT PUMPKIN MAN!”

Ah, well.

Happy (belated) Hallowe’en to all you pumpkins out there, whatever shape or size you may be. xoxo

It isn’t what you think. I am not talking about mine here, people. You see I was on the tube the other day contemplating the meaning of life (which is what I almost always do when I ride the tube alone for any period of time) when a big — very big — middle-aged woman dressed in a large-print floral blouse and tan trousers bustled into my car and grabbed the pole just above my seat.

I looked up at her. She was about six feet tall and had an enormous bosom. In fact, her boobs resembled loaded weapons and they were pointed right at me. That’s right, classic torpedo tits. It was somewhat disconcerting and then the thought popped into my mind that it would be funny to take a picture of the enormous pointy bosoms with my iPhone.

I spent a short amount of time trying to position the phone so that it would not be obvious that I was attempting to capture an image of this lady’s gazongas and then, naturally, I came to my senses and didn’t do it. I mean it would have been pretty hard to pull it off and make it look like I was just fucking around with my email or something. I was worried that if she noticed she might sit on me or knock me over with one of those mamas.

Then I had a second thought (I often have two or more in the same day!) and that was how I wished to hell all the people who have ever told me to just not think about boobs, cancer or boob cancer could have been there to see these suckers bearing down on me. Oh sure, I thought. I just won’t think about tits, even when there are two boulders hanging over me that would have impressed even Sisyphus.

I thought again about taking a picture just so I could post it (with the face hidden of course, I am not a mean person — well I am not that mean and I don’t want to get sued or beaten up) just so I could post it on my blog and show people why it is sometimes hard not to be reminded of breast-related issues. But then a seat opened up across the way and she heaved herself, along with her bosoms, into it. And that was that, so…

I have many times revisited the question whether I miss my old boobs. When I wrote Boob Retrospective over one year ago, the honest and immediate answer was that no, I did not. This, because foremost in my mind was that my old boobs were planning to kill me off and they had therefore ventured over to the Dark Side.

But now that I have more perspective on my retrospective, I must admit that I have been missing them quite a bit (well, their precancerous iterations, anyhow) indeed. Sometimes I look at old pictures of myself and focus longingly on the more generous, soft shape that once graced my torso. And I admire bosoms on other people, for instance when they are bouncing around in the gym or jiggling down the street.

These are not thoughts that keep me up at night. I will get on without them. (What choice do I have anyway?) But it is too bad that they were taken away so soon. It has caused me to see myself differently. Angelina Jolie may have written that she doesn’t feel like any less of a woman with her new bionic tits. But I don’t know. Boobs are so symbolic of both motherhood and sexuality. And I definitely feel like less of myself to some extent. Perhaps this is because I never was and am still not an A-list Hollywood movie star married to another A-list Hollywood movie star and didn’t have the luxury, if you can call it that, of sparing the bits on the outside that make boobs look like real boobs.

I think I have noticed that men don’t check me out as much as they used to. And it does make it easier to deal with that I am not on the market and that my long-suffering husband is both present and understanding. But it must be hard for him, as well. I am sure he misses the things that I miss.

Perhaps some day they will figure out how to grow fat cells in a petri dish and can cultivate a couple of real doozies for me. Or I could eat a lot of chips and get a fat tummy so that we can upgrade with an autologous tissue procedure (which is where they make a boob out of a chunk of fat and/or muscle taken from elsewhere on your body).

But I figure I’ll just settle for the memories. It’s like being forty and longing for your twenties. You can look back and remember fondly, but you will never be twenty again, no matter what. That’s life.

It’s been a month since my last blog post. Every time I write something like that (or even think it) I feel like I’m in confession… although not being a Catholic I have never been in confession so I’m just guessing what it feels like based on TV and movies.

Here I am in the United States of America in the final week of our vacation. In three days the girls and I (Bill has already gone back) fly back to London, which seems a world away. Actually, it is a world away. I have not spent a great deal of time reflecting on our life there since we have been Stateside because that life resides in a discrete department of my brain. When I’m here I use the American part of my brain. When I’m back in London then I’ll switch back to the European side. It’s sort of like partitioning your internal hard drive. Just select restart and hold down the appropriate button… Easier to allow the two to coexist peacefully in their own compartments than to try to marry them. That might cause… complete system failure.

It had been nearly a year since the girls and I had been in our home country. And let me tell you — I needed a good dose.

Since we’ve been in America we have immersed ourselves in things American, including beginning our trip with a stint in New York City, my home on separate occasions for a number of years. We did touristy things like visit the Empire State Building. I took our nanny, Agnieszka, who is from Poland and had never been to the US (or outside of Europe for that matter) on a Circle Line Liberty cruise to see the Statue of Liberty and the developing downtown skyline featuring the Freedom Tower with its newly erected spire. Gazing at the new skyscraper as the boat circled I was transported to an alternate reality. I remember the old skyline so well both with and without the twin towers. I need time to digest this new, rather sexy, angular structure, so different from the rectilinear monoliths that preceded it. There is still much empty space to be filled downtown where other buildings will be erected. But it’s a start. It’s different but it works. I decided I like it.

Some combination of the five of us also visited FAO Schwartz (I turned and looked at the people entering the store and every one of them, without fail, cracked a big grin — how could you not?), briefly traipsed through Central Park, waded through crowds in Times Square in the sticky heat (I have to admit to missing, slightly, the sleaze of years past), waited forever on the subway platform for the N train, inhaling that distinct, gritty, stale, heavy New York Subway air (I loved every minute of it even though I was sweating like a pig), did a fly by at the MOMA where my kids and I had lunch with my cherished friend, Susan, following which my older daughter had the pleasure of viewing — in person — Starry Night, by Van Gogh. “This is my favorite painting!” She exclaimed, as we came around the corner. Jackpot, I thought, since I hadn’t known it was her favorite painting and she hadn’t known that we were about to see it.

We stayed at the Carlyle (well, they were having a stay two nights get the third night free special which made it fit neatly into the hotel budget I was given so how could we have passed that up?). I loved it. We all did, really. I almost thought I might run into Marilyn or JFK waiting for the elevator (but not together, of course). The place just reeks of old New York and is at once both intimate and grand. I knew we had arrived in New York City when we walked in the door and there was a rather quirky lady sitting in the lobby with her Maltese in a stroller. She started chatting with the girls, as New Yorkers do. And when she wasn’t talking to someone else she was talking to her dog.

The night we landed I cabbed it across the park to the West Side and had dinner at the little Italian place in the New York Historical Society with my wonderful friend Kath, who was at HLS ahead of me. Bill and I were able to sneak off for grown-ups’ dinner on not one but two nights. I had a variation on a Manhattan (with a foofy name like Mannahatta or something) at Gotham Bar & Grill, which was delicious. I have the recipe. I’ll give it to you later. If you’re nice. We hit one of our favorite little brunch spots in the West Village (“good” — and it was, still) where we were assured to see many of the old standbys on the menu (try the homemade doughnuts and pear pecan coffee cake and the breakfast burrito is tasty as well). We ended our NY trip with a visit to Serendipity on East 60th to take in some Tiffany lamps and have their famous frozen hot chocolate (it’s still yummy, overcrowded, loud, bursting with ice cream sundaes drenched in chocolate and butterscotch spilling over the sides of glass dishes, but they don’t serve those fat sesame bread sticks in a glass anymore). Good Lord. Rereading this I guess I have to face the fact that my life always seems to revolve around my next meal. I can live with that.

After three nights Bill took Amtrak to Boston for a week in the home office and we girls, laden with luggage, piled into a Suburban (muy americano, no?) and headed to Hamden, Connecticut to visit my mother in the house I grew up in. The heat wave started that day but I didn’t really mind because it was American summer heat. The girls drew on the driveway with chubby pieces of chalk they had remembered were stashed in the garage and dipped toes and fingers into the little fish pond at the edge of the patio. We had lunch outdoors with family and neighbors shaded by a now well-established Star Magnolia tree (I remember when we got that tree). We defied the blazing sun by swimming in my stepsister’s pool nearby where we met an Italian woman with her grown daughter (also Italian, as it turned out) and a man from Taiwan. Who knew Hamden was so international?

On July 17th I drove my mother to the hospital to have her second hip replacement. It was nice that the timing coincided with our visit, nice that I could be there with her as she was with me and us when I had my surgeries in London. But all of that is locked in my other partition and I’m not going to think about it right now. I remain firmly in the American side of my brain. So much so I am even ignoring — no rejecting — the UK spell check that keeps trying to change my “z’s” to “s’s” and my “ors” to “ours.”

After being assured that my mother’s surgery was successful and spending a little time with her in her room, I hijacked her station wagon and drove to Wellesley, Massachusetts, where we lived for seven years prior to our international move. We arrived at my in-laws’ house in time for a casual supper on the relative cool of the screened-in front porch with its ceiling fan, because the heat wave hadn’t yet relented. I did a drive-by of our old house, which is across the street from the public school Isabel attended from kindergarten through second grade. Felt kind of surreal. The second day I met my dad for lunch at The Cottage in Linden Square where I encouraged him to try the tortilla soup and fish tacos (he did) and brought him back to the in-laws’ so he could see the grand kids and listen to Isabel play the piano.

Friday morning I played tour guide while Agnieszka and the girls and I drove around Boston and Cambridge and walked around Harvard Yard (for about ten minutes because we were melting). After seeing the sites we headed to Legal Sea Foods near the Harbor for lunch after which I deposited the trio at the revamped New England Aquarium while I went for a doctor’s check-up.

The girls enjoyed some time with old (I use the term very loosely) playmates and we had a  poolside barbecue with friends where we drank good rosé and ate barbecue-flavored potato chips in wet bathing suits.

Saturday the 20th the five of us squeezed ourselves and our luggage into the Jetta wagon (seriously, successfully packing the back was comical and took several attempts) and drove to Bill’s folks’ Cape house in East Orleans. I had the pleasure of sitting in between the girls’ and their booster seats in the back because I have an unusually small ass. What? I do. It’s okay to be honest about these things. Anyhow, small it may be but I could still barely stand up once we got there I was so stiff. But I didn’t care. We were greeted by Bill’s parents and by some biting green head flies, whose purpose in nature is a mystery to me, unless they are tiny incarnations of the devil. “What did we ever do to them?” Isabel kept asking. I told her that’s not how things work in nature. Or at least not always. Luckily, they find Bill’s blood a great deal sweeter than mine (actually it has to do with how much CO2 you “respire” and I like to say he has a larger carbon footprint than I do) so I didn’t get many bites because they were all on him, of course.

On the way to (well and from as well to be technical) the private part of Nauset Beach where we go there is a sand road you have to cross at the end of the wooden walkway and for some reason there seems to be a rather large number of those biting flies and various other flying insects that sting or bite in this area. One day toward the beginning of our time on the Cape we were heading back from the beach with Bill leading the charge, in characteristic fashion, having been relentlessly attacked by green heads. I watched as he got to the sand road up ahead. As he crossed, his lengthy arms began to flail violently about his head and the next thing he was running back and forth up and down the road (with arms still a-flailing). I couldn’t see from where I was standing what was after him but whatever it was stung him on the index finger which he held up for my inspection after the incident was over. That’ll teach you to flail, I thought. “I’m never coming to the beach again,” he proclaimed. Of course we went back the next day and every other day except for maybe one or two cloudy days. But I admired his conviction because I am sure he meant it at the time. My only regret is that I failed for the second time in a row (this has happened before, although the first time the sting-y thing chasing him was as large as a small bird and visible from a nautical mile) to capture it on video. Alas.

You may think I am mean but really I am laughing with him, not at him.

In addition to beach-going and arm-flailing we did a good deal of cooking, including charcoal grilling, and of course, eating. We visited Yarmouth and spent a glorious lazy afternoon with our very close friends the Roosevelt-Churchill clan (no I did not make that up) and everyone picked up right where they had left off, parents and kids alike. I have long believed that this is a true test of friendship. The ability to pick right up and have it feel natural and easy after much time between visits has elapsed and much life has been lived. If you find yourself hemming and hawing you know you have grown apart or that you never really had much to begin with.

The kids stood on the dock and scooped up moon jellyfish while the grown-ups chatted and moved boats around and that night for dinner we had spaghetti squash with pesto topped with diver scallops (who knew such a combination existed or could be so tasty?). Isabel spent the night and then the next day demanded to spend the night again which she did because why not, after all? It’s summer vacay.

Agnieszka returned to London on Wednesday the 24th with one more suitcase than she came with (compliments of my mom) packed with her stateside purchases (these included American jeans, New York and Boston Starbucks mugs and a Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt from the restaurant in Times Square). Then Friday Bill’s parents, who had gone to Wellesley for the week, returned to the Cape, and Bill’s brother, Phil (yes, Bill and Phil) arrived from DC. Friday night we had a dinner party with the aforementioned persons, Bill and me and the girls, of course, and then Bill’s work colleague, Brian and his wife Alison, who drove in from Boston in traffic so bad that we plied them with drinks and demanded they spend the night, which they did. To round things out, my best childhood friend, Beth, drove up from Connecticut to spend the weekend on the Cape at a nearby resort and she made it in time for dinner too.

Following a tasty meal of chillied flank steak, sweet and regular potato “fries,” chipotle mayonnaise (all recipes stolen from the Roosevelt-Churchill annual New Year’s Eve blow-out) and salad, and a strawberry-rhubarb crisp for dessert, which I made because Carol had never liked rhubarb having been forced to eat it “plain” by her mother and I wanted to see if she would like it in a baked dessert with other ingredients, I discovered that our six-year-old daughter, Charlotte, apparently has the makings of a go-go dancer. Seriously we are going to have to keep an eye on that girl.

Char started DJ’ing and rocking out, and Isabel joined in, with a hula-hoop. I have to say that they both have some pretty fierce moves. And no one broke a lamp even though there was leaping (while hula-hooping) involved. What really would have made the night would have been an indoor slip-n-slide lubricated with mojitos but you have to draw the line somewhere.

Sunday morning Bill’s parents left for Wellesley and that evening Phil made phenomenal fish tacos (Martha Stewart) and then headed back as well because he had to return to work on Monday.

Enter cousins Abigail (five) and Lydia (two going on three) and Bill’s sister, Lib. Grammy Carol and Lib and her girls pulled in Monday afternoon after not so great traffic during which they were saved from hysteria and boredom by the serendipitous presence of the Sound of Music CD in the car, which kept the girls entertained for hours. The cousins reunited, and we quickly became aware that both Charlotte and Abigail knew most of the lyrics to the songs, so the next days were sprinkled with performances, sometimes in falsetto, of songs the words to which I confess I never fully learned (until now).

There was more cooking and eating and beach going and then a week ago today, I left the gang at the Cape and headed back across the Sagamore Bridge to take my father out to dinner. Caffè Bella is a great little Italian restaurant in Randolph that’s been there for many years and to which we’ve been meaning to go for a few years ever since my dad moved to Massachusetts but we never managed to get there. He had fresh figs stuffed with blue cheese on prosciutto and capellini with fresh lobster meat. I had sautéed soft shell crab and a delicious capellini with capers and fresh vegetables. And we shared a chocolate cake and a piece of blueberry cheesecake for dessert. There was so much food I sent my dad home with my leftovers and he was able to have “a whole ‘nother” meal out of it. I also made him try my soft shell crab thinking that being a Southern boy he might never have tried such. When I explained why the shell was soft he said he wasn’t sure he had wanted to know that, but at least he had already swallowed the bite.

After dinner I drove to Wellesley to spend one night and then headed to Sudbury for the memorial service of Kate’s father, Jonathan Roosevelt. Again, I felt lucky to be present in person on this occasion so that I could support my generous and treasured friend. I drove back to the Cape the next day and we spent another lovely few days at the beach. Did I mention that the heat wave did finally break? It was so lovely. Isabel taught herself to boogie board (I’m a loser and don’t know how so she had no choice but to teach herself) and enjoyed body surfing with her cousin, Abigail. Charlotte and Lydia played in the water some and dug in the sand building sand castles or mounds of sand that were supposed to be sand castles and burying body parts (still attached) and random objects.

I stood on the beach, feeling small but not necessarily insignificant, taking in the beauty of this favorite place. This stretch of sand and open ocean, this feeling of being one with the earth. I embraced my ability, here, to let all things momentarily fall away, to relax and simply be in the moment. I inhaled it, tasted it. It’s where I will go in my mind when I feel the stresses of life pushing in on me, or whenever I get that feeling that I should be stressing about something because I’m done stressing about whatever I was stressing about. I’ll use it to clear the mechanism. In fact I think I’ll give it its own partition. So that I can reboot and be there if I want to.

Monday I drove the wagon back to Hamden and visited my mother, who is recovering well from her hip replacement and walking better than before the surgery. The weather was gorgeous, perfect, bottle it and keep it kind of weather. Dry and not too hot. The summer insects intermittently humming, the birds chirping and there were other familiar sounds… Someone mowing the lawn. The tic-toc of the grandfather clock in the living room. The soft whoosh of cars driving by on the street where I grew up. The deck was peppered with tiny acorns that have already begun to fall from the big old oak. And the temperature dipped pleasantly in the evening making it excellent sleeping weather. I like to turn on the window fan and pull up the quilt. Each morning when I opened my door I was greeted by a friendly meow from one of my mother’s two cats who jumped up on the bed, rolled over and displayed his soft tummy. And the other one sat and watched me do yoga for forty minutes.

Last night we went to L’Orcio in New Haven and ate on the patio. We had burrata with roasted tomatoes and arugula and then my mom had filet mignon with gorgonzola sauce and I, linguine alle vongole and a side of spinach. No room for dessert. It was the best steak I have tasted in years. And my clams were divine.

This morning I took a cab to the train station and was standing on the platform waiting for the Acela which was ten minutes late. I looked around and noticed signs and vending machines. Trash and recycling containers. Things I never paid much attention to. Vending machines stocked with every imaginable American treat. Pop Tarts and Doritos, Smartfood and Reese’s. Snickers and Utz. And I found this, this glass and metal box full of junk food, somehow beautiful and comforting. I felt the same way staring at the pristine white rows of Pepperidge Farm cookies at the grocery store. It’s just so… American. Familiar.

Now I am on the Acela, speeding from New Haven to Boston on another glorious day. The ocean is glittering and the grass and plants are bright and lush. People on the beach wave as the train hurdles past. I am passing Noank, where I spent time as a child because my grandfather lived there, right on the water. It makes me think of docks and lobster rolls and Boston Whalers. Slippery rocks and barnacles. The slightly mildewed, musty yet not entirely unpleasant smell of old life vests. Playing in the crab water. Watching Isabel take her first steps in his house after she played in that same crab water eight years ago.

And my summer vacation is drawing to a close but not yet over. I have a little more to do, a bit more traveling. Time to be alone with my thoughts on the train and in the car. More time with family and friends. A few more precious moments to enjoy this partition. To really remember that this is who I am. I am an American. This is my country.

Oh how I love it so.

No, like, literally. I am. Or at least I was, Sunday.

I used to ride horses when I was a little girl. I don’t remember quite how it all started but my dad reports that he took me to ride when I was a wee one (maybe three years old) which basically involved him pulling a nag around with me on it in the 100 degree soupy Houston heat through the muck for an hour. Sounds tempting, don’t it?

Apparently the horse I was on started to buck a little and he was about to grab me and pull me off when one of the stable hands said “oh no, leave her own thayuh,” so he did even though I was crying a little. And at the end he figured he would never ever have to take me to do that Godforsaken thing again. But then of course I loved it and asked when we could repeat the experience. Kids are funny that way.

Reminds me of the time when I was a teenager and I offered to take the neighbour’s boys to AstroWorld, which is an amusement park in Houston. They were pretty young, like maybe six or seven and eight or nine. And they wanted to go on the Texas Cyclone, which is a very large, very scary, very high wooden roller coaster that has a couple major drops in it. I was like “are you sure — are you 100% sure you want to do this?” They nodded, eyes wide. So we went.

Naturally we could sit only two across so the older kid had to ride next to a stranger and I climbed in next to the smaller one. I kept looking over at the little guy during the ride and he looked absolutely terrified. Like catatonic. And I remember thinking “oh, shit. My neighbour is going to kill me because I fucked up her kid for life and he will have PTSD and will become a mute and never be normal again after this death-defying experience.” I imagined being unemployable due to my utter disregard for finding age-appropriate activities for children under my care; ivy league schools would pass me up. People would walk by me on the street and whisper and point: “there’s the girl who ruined that dear little kid’s life…” you get the idea.

So when the ride finally ended and the coaster ground to a halt, we stepped off and I dropped down on one knee and looked right into this kids’ eyes and said “are you all right?” And he was totally unresponsive. Colour drained from his face, eyes bulging with terror, mouth agape. For about a tenth of a second, that is, until he piped up, having hardly shifted his expression “let’s do it again.”

Anyhow, big digression but I hadn’t thought of that in a long time and it still gives me a chuckle. So, back to horses and such.

I took lessons on and off (mostly just in the summers) for years and stopped around the time when I was in junior high. I went riding once when I was in college with some friends but that doesn’t really count.

Fast forward to the present day. It came to pass that my younger daughter, Charlotte, was invited to a pony party for a classmate’s birthday. I knew that the mom of said classmate was an avid rider and horse enthusiast so I (rather sheepishly) emailed her the morning of the party and asked if I might get on a horse during the pony party myself, seeing as I would be there for the duration, if it wasn’t too much trouble.

When we got to the stables each child was set atop a darling little pony and there in the ring waiting for me was a full-sized horse. Not huge, by any standards, but a horse, not a pony, nonetheless. Meet Choco. That’s “chalk-oh” not “chough” as in dough. Choco still had most of his winter coat because it has been so friggin’ cold here that the poor thing needed it up until now. He was about 15.2 hh (a hand is four inches if you don’t speak horse) with a long back and had a blue roan coat.

So I climbed on fuzzy Choco and was led around for a while to get my sea legs. It was both familiar and unfamiliar. I felt comfortable and perfectly balanced but I could not remember certain details such as when I should post (rise while the horse is trotting), when the horse’s inside or outside leg was leading. The nice young man leading me around refreshed my memory and when he realised I wasn’t a total loser he let go and allowed me to proceed alone. Choc’ wasn’t the most energetic fellow and every time I got him to trot he would stop around the corners. I attempted to improve my technique for about twenty-five minutes and did a lot of squeezing and kicking and then when asked if I wanted to join the kids in their pony games (these are like reindeer games but with ponies, in case you were going to ask that) I said “sure.” Such games involved relay racing (by walking) to a fence post and once there, touching one’s head, shoulders, knees (yes, you guessed it — and toes) and then the horse’s ears and tail before trotting back to the starting line. I participated in this and was completely unembarrassed as the children and other parents looked on. I mean, why not, right?

I was starting to feel pretty confident and then when it came time to dismount I sort of forgot that you have to drop both stirrups before swinging your right leg back over the horse and I almost fell off like an idiot but then mid-swing it felt wrong and I sat back down and did it the right way. Some cowgirl I am. Pathetic.

Once on solid ground again I had that bowlegged stance and could barely walk. And then when I got home I discovered some interesting chaffing in certain, ahem, areas. And some more chaffing on the insides of my calves where the seam of my jeans had rubbed against the stirrup straps.

And man oh man oh man was I (and still am) sore as the deuce. Listen, people, if you want firm thighs and buttocks, get you on a horse. It may have been only 30 minutes but squeezing with your legs for that long will do it for you. I guarantee it. That and mechanical bull riding, which I plan to delve into next week.

So here I am, still slightly bruised, no longer bloodied, plenty chaffed and sore. And I can’t wait to do it again. Only next time I am going to wear padded underwear or Depends or something and chaps. On the upside, I don’t have to worry about a supportive bra. Because let’s face reality: Jane and Marjorie aren’t going anywhere.

After this enjoyable experience I thought about whether I might have liked it even more because of the shit year I had last year and my “new perspective” on “living life to the fullest.” Maybe. But I cannot lie and claim that the old me would have been embarrassed by playing Simon Says on horseback with a group of six-year-olds on ponies no larger than a Great Dane. One of the best parts was how delighted my daughter was that I had been riding “by myself” on a “huge horse.” It really is all about individual perspective, dontcha think?

For the past couple of months, our six-year-old daughter has gone through most of the day with one of her index fingers in her mouth, wiggling a tooth in the hopes that she would finally lose one. Countless admonitions (“get your dirty hand out of your mouth!”) to no avail. You see, our older daughter lost her first tooth at age five, closely followed by a second tooth at the same age. So the little ‘un feels like she has to play catch up. I suppose it was ever thus with siblings.

Lo and behold the other day I reached in and had a wiggle and one of the lower front teeth was ever so slightly loose. Progress. Then in the past week out of nowhere this big honker of an adult tooth broke through behind that little tooth and started shooting up like Jack’s bean stalk.

This led to more wiggling, which led to more looseness, until finally two nights ago I determined that the tooth was so loose it might be time to help it on its journey.

“You know,” I said, “I could get that pretty easily if you want me to.” She grinned and said “do it.” I admired her spunk and courage. So I grabbed a wash mitt, dampened it, and did the ole grasp that sucker with a damp cloth and twist routine. Quick and (relatively) painless. Though of course there was the requisite blood mixed with saliva which always gives the appearance of more blood than is actually there.

Out that little blighter popped. Naturally, now that the moment was upon us, the special tooth box was nowhere to be found. So we put the delicate thing in a cupcake-shaped box with a hinge, along with a note, drafted by the older daughter, acknowledging that the extraction was “very painfull [sic]” and “could you please give me some fairy dust.”

The cupcake box was gingerly placed under her pillow, whereupon my child rested her head on the pillow and squeezed her eyes tightly shut so that sleep would befall her as soon as practicable and the Tooth Fairy (hereinafter sometimes referred to as the “TF”) would arrive. In the night, the TF visited. She deposited into the small box one pound, a tooth-shaped note and some fairy dust. While we all slept, of course.

The next morning we were awakened by a small voice attached to a small face. I blinked and came to, waiting for my eyes to focus. The small face wasn’t smiling. In fact it looked… rather surly! A little hand slapped the pound coin down on my mattress and that’s when the scowl came into focus.

“What is it, sweetheart?” I asked the child. “The Tooth Fairy only left me a pound,” she said. “Such and such (name protected for important reasons) got twenty pounds for his first tooth. Twenty!” I was momentarily speechless. (Yes I know — a real shocker.) I mean she might have even had her hands on her hips. But I don’t remember.

Ummm, are you fucking kidding me? Twenty pounds for a tooth? It wasn’t even a molar. “Well, sweetheart,” I said, “a pound sounds pretty great to me. And oh look; you got fairy dust as well — how cool!.” She brightened a bit. I told her to put that pound right in her piggy bank and that cheered her further.

After she left the room I allowed the ridiculousness of the situation to sink in. I mean, come on, people. Twenty quid for a fucking tooth? What the hell is wrong with you? Why don’t you just buy the little smeller a Mercedes right now and be done with it. Since when was the tooth fairy really about the amount of money involved? Ridiculous. Preposterous. Disgusting.

Oh and if your TF routinely overpays for lost teeth and you are reading this right now you ought to be ashamed of yourself. You aren’t doing your kid any favours overdoing it like this. You have to give a child something to look forward to, for crying out loud. Even when my older child had her canines pulled out, which was in fact painful and unpleasant, the TF brought only five pounds per tooth. Not twenty. Geez. “Oh here, Sweetie, you lost a tooth, here’s a ski trip to Gstaad for you and five friends.” WTF.

But wait there’s more. I have a larger point to make. That being, it sure is lovely to be around to witness milestones such as my younger child’s loss of a first tooth. I am sorry if that sounds corny and cliche, but after the past year and five months, anything of this nature takes on a different level of significance for me. I cannot help it.

I bask in the glory of the moment, delight in the ordinariness of this little slice of life, this right of passage. And here my child’s initial outrage at the perceived inadequacy of her prize made me relish that moment even more. I found it absurd, somewhat troublesome, yet amusing all at the same time. And then my mind did this thing it does where time suddenly fast-forwards and I see her picking out a wedding dress, with me standing beside her. Noticeably older, perhaps thinner and a little diminished in stature, but still very much present.

And that, my friends, that… is priceless.