A Week in the Big Apple

I am so bad at this. Months go by and I can't begin to even think of sitting still for long enough to do anything but answer the necessary emails , glance anxiously at my desk and it's expanding piles of urgent to do's and hastily beat a retreat. I use every excuse in the book to get out of the house and on the road to somewhere. Escapism.....I am very good at it.

Since my last blog I have been in NYC where I wilted within overheated air conditioned apartments for an entire week before I escaped to The Hampton's, flung open the windows and slept like a baby while the wind gavorted around my room, snatching the curtains and clearing the cill.

My daughter thinks there is something wrong with me. I was still asleep when she came to my room in the morning, opening the door and nearly getting sucked into a vacuum that propelled her across the hall. "How can you sleep like this. It's freezing in here?"
She has a point. In NYC she is used to an hermetically sealed life, kept at a moderate 25 degrees. Nothing penetrates her world, except a daily influx of couriers, 2 PAs, 1 make-up artist, 1 hairdresser, 1 nanny, 1 housekeeper, 3 stylists from a fashion house, 1 personal trainer, 1 dog walker and the yoga teacher! Peaceful!
The first night in NY I may have opened the window a tiny crack, taken two deep breaths and closed it very quickly for fear of her noticing. The next morning she had three mosquito bites on her arm!
Looking accusingly at Grandma she asked the ceiling,  " How on earth did a mosquito manage to get into the apartment last night?"......luckily my small grandson diffused the situation by replying....."Yes Mommy. I wonder how it managed to press the elevator button!"
So, I think in sheer frustration come friday afternoon she packed Grandma, the two boys and Bob the yorkie into the car and drove us the three hours to Long Island.
I overheated in the car too. I was fine for a short while, but then I had to do things....  The boys were plugged into Madagascar 2 when something went wrong with the signal on one of the screens. We were unable to pull off the highway so it was up to me to heave my great bulk over into the back seats, manoeuvre my legs through the gap in the front seats and reach right to the rear of the vehicle in order to attempt to find the celery and carrot sticks Mommy had so thoughtfully remembered for such occasions.
Let me say in this instance celery and carrot sticks were as useful as a cattle prod and, an entire packet of M and Ms each would have done a better job. However here I was stuck to the roof of the car, overheated and trying in desperation to reverse back into the passenger seat. My daughter, between having hysterics over my contortions, while trying to remain on the highway and appease two little angry boys, was still trying to figure out what went wrong with the DVD. Eventually I landed  in a distorted heap back in my seat just at the moment when the Sat Nav advised us for the third time to take an immediate right onto Highway 54.  We missed it  completely and now she was mad as a meat axe, the boys were still mad, and I was very very HOT! Bob the yorkie finally came to rest on my lap after an episode of violent activity in which he catapulted from one side of the car to the other barking hysterically and, we finally discovered, it was he who intermittently turned off and on the DVD controls  as he passed between seats. Situation solved. DVD working again, boys happy, Mommy pissed off that she missed the turning and the journey would take an extra hour, Grandma cooling down having eaten the celery sticks, Bob harnessed to my lap......and somehow an unspoken but overwhelming feeling that it might have been all my fault written on daughters face.

So later as I lay comfortably in my windswept bedroom thinking of the swimming lesson I would attend with the boys that morning, I wondered how we Mothers of daughters always seem to get it so very wrong. Even though I brought up two children and managed to get them to an age where they were able to go it alone. Managed to prevent them being electrocuted, drowned, run over, burnt, and falling from great heights, I still don't seem to think quick enough for my adult daughter. I evidently have lost my skill at feeding infants..."You don't cut it that way Mum".....Pouring an orange juice..."They don't have orange juice at this time of day".....also my sense of impending danger has abandoned me..."You can't look at your Blackberry Mum when you are minding the children!" On this exclamation I was surprised to learn that I was minding the children. The nanny and I exchanged a glance. "But."....." No buts Mum.
You just have forgotten what it is like to have small kids!"

Later, at the swimming lesson, which was conducted at a friends' pool, I watched with the alertness of a mere-cat. But I forgot to amuse the little one while the bigger one swam, and when he ran for the swing, I forgot to predict that he might do this and propel myself across the lawn, placing myself in front of said swing. As I ran in an attempt to be there first, I could feel my daughter shaking her head in frustration.
I think the very important hedge funder, whose pool we were using, felt a little sorry for me, even though I was well outside his demo-graph, because he noticed me and asked where I lived?? Perhaps he thought I lived underground, or in an old peoples' home... but I told him I lived in the Cevennes. At this point he seemed resigned to the thought that I was probably senile and made no further attempt at conversation.
His wife, who had been talking to daughter while we sat by the pool, failed to notice my existence at all. To be fair they had just completed a 10 mile run in very bright lycra, and were probably both dazzled and exhausted poor darlings.
I decided not to attend the dinner they were giving that evening for fear of embarrassing them and my own kin but I am left with an overwhelming sense of the importance of colour in ones life.
Colour in all its permutations seems to live happily with those fortunate enough to have the time to notice it. For the less fortunate with little or no time to devote to anything other than accumulating vast wealth, I wonder if their lives may have become rather bleached!

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The next day I redeemed myself by cooking supper for all. I am good at this. I receive acknowledgement. Sometimes I am asked how to do things, even better I am asked to prepare things for the freezer to be eaten at a later date. I am constantly being asked for my Thai fishcakes and at Christmas I am much in demand for a Bouillabaisse and a moist and succulent turkey.

So it would appear that while my nurturing skills have diminished, my culinary skills have improved and disappointingly, along with them, my girth. This too is a subject for some ridicule amongst ones offspring but I figure it is far too late for me to don the neon lycra and sport myself in ungainly fashion over the troughs and jagged peaks of the Cevennes. At this time in my life I am far too busy thinking, and absorbing the colour of things . I like to talk about the salad man at the local market who hand picks an assortment of wild leaves and peppers his beautiful salads with edible flowers. I like to tell folks about the little man with the gruff voice who brings his artichokes to market and weighs them out on antiquated, but well polished, old brass scales, always adding a little extra as a "Petite cadeau." I cannot have these conversations in NYC. Everyone is far too busy being productive, and so I peep at my Blackberry when I should be minding my grandchildren, and pretend I have  a pressing and urgent matter!!!