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February 24, 2010
Living In London
We were going to live in London for a year. I still remember the feeling when my parents told me that. It seemed like a sudden bubble incased me, and I started bobbing through my life, muffled bumps guiding me along. Everything we did, every decision we made took London into the equation. We would not buy it unless it was going to London. Could we use it in London? Funny thing was, not much was going to London. The list of restrictions was long. We could not bring our dog; the quarantine was a no go with my “I love animals more than humans” mother. Then there were the weight rules. No box or trunk or suitcase over certain # of lbs per person. That began the onset of my brother’s arrogance. Though he was only 5, the discussion about how he was as important as an adult, due to the luggage allowance he provided, was the basis for the ensuing ego bloat. Not only was I being stripped of my belongings, but now I had another full person to contend with.
Due to the strength of the dollar against the pound we ended up in quite a ‘posh’ neighborhood. Every adult conversation I heard over the first few months included a comparison of the $ and pound. Lucky us, we apparently got a lot more stuff because of our buff money. Good thing, I thought. At least it helped balance the ribbing I got for having a ‘peanut farmer for a president’. Weird what they focused on. Yeah, we lived in a neighborhood that was famous because it was home to a very popular serial on television. I believe it is early evidence of successful reality television. I liked it for other reasons. We got deliveries of milk in a bottle every day. There was an awesome sweet shop on the corner, and a pub down the block that I could actually go in. The location was fab, because it was central to everything. Inside it was so- so. I had to share a bedroom with my brother, but there was also a long skinny hallway with no windows that was perfect for a super game of dodge ball.I was enrolled at Sarah Siddons School. Its students were from all over the world. Some were diplomats’ kids or children whose parent’s business moved them to locations for long periods of time. For us it was a ‘teaching sabbatical’. My father had 12 students with him from the college where he taught, and his courses would continue that year. We would have school uniform guidelines: Dark blue skirt, Light blue blouse, and the dark blue sweater was optional. I made a lot of friends. The two I remember the most were Zoe Taylor from Australia, and Shima Choudhury from Bangladesh. Nothing was a familiar experience from my upstate school life. I took public transit by myself to and from. A subway (the tube!), and a bus (double decker!). I wore a uniform, and I became a ‘star’ in rounders. That was the game of the playground. It involved a tiny bat and 2 trips around the bases. I loved it. I began studying the flute in earnest, taking examinations at the Royal Academy of Music. I learned my way around the city and knew where all the best stuff was. I picked up the proper accent, but would entertain all the Americans with my dead on cockney. I rode horses, and went to museums and I had a kiss with a Greek boy at the base of a statue in a park on the river Thames. I learned to love Indian Food, and marveled at how ancient things could be. Building’s ages were measured in centuries, and the history in them was fantastic. We had a Queen, and she lived in a palace with her Princes. It was a dream, for a twelve year old girl. I felt like I was blooming when I should have been. It was really joyful for me to be opened up to all of these new experiences and possibilities at such an important stage of my life. For my 13th birthday, my Mammy and Baba came over for a visit. We all made a trip across the Channel and I had dinner on my birthday in Paris. It was as close as New York to Pennsylvania. I talked about all of these wonderful things in depth with a writer friend of my parents. She was following a few Americans living in London for a possible story. She even took my picture in front of Buckingham Palace, grinning to the extreme.
That was an amazing year. I grew up so much and got a whole new set of dreams. My brother and I got another, as our Alexander was born at Westminster Hospital. I was so excited to go back and share it with all my friends. I loved Art and Music. Big cities were thrilling and there was always something to do that was open. Indian food! Skinny corduroy pants, and the high heeled clogs I got in Florence during another family country jump. My accent and my new cosmopolitan hair do, the long tweed coat I wore everywhere. Leaving there was hard; I knew how much I would miss it and my friends. I cried a lot, and made a ton of promises to never forget. But I could not wait to go home and shock them all with my womanhood.
That first day back I entered the school with my high heel clogs clacking on the shiny floor. I suppose I did notice a couple of girls with disdain eyebrows. My stomach didn’t drop with a chill until I saw the front case. The locked glass one that every school has to show off its accomplishments, its trophies. There was me, dead center, a mounted article from a scholastic monthly, the photo of me in front of the palace prominently displayed. A younger grade had even made a colorful banner title: “Our Queen, Lauren”. Ugh, the crash as my two worlds collided. Luckily, the mortification didn’t last forever. The accent disappeared with the clogs, but a lot of my new dreams stayed intact.
Years later there was another collision of my two worlds. I was making my first television pilot, “The Antagonists”. An actor named Chris MacDonald was cast as a police officer involved with my character, the young DA. I was excited as he was an actor I had seen in many things. On the first day he brought his college yearbook. He wanted to show me my picture on one of the opening pages: it was of me eating an ice cream cone, not knowing that it was dripping out of the bottom on to my dog’s head. You see, my father had been Chris’s professor, and he was one of the 12 students with us that year in London. Cool.
