Our English Thanksgiving

With much to be thankful for— in particular the chance to live on the other side of the pond for nearly three months in a comfortable flat with views of said pond on two sides. We’re also thankful for Sam’s Grand-mère, who arrived here just a few days before Thanksgiving. Sammy now has an additional playmate, and the parents now have a live-in babysitter :-). What does Grand-mère get out of it? Fresh material for her poetry, coming straight from the mouth of her granddaughter. On Grand-mère’s first afternoon here, we watched the sun set into the English Channel (at about 3:50PM!) while Sam narrated the whole thing. Grand-mère captured some of it, but I remember one bit:

Sam: “The horizon is putting the sun down to bed. The horizon is the sun’s mommy and daddy.”

This mommy and daddy had made the sad decision not to take the whole family to Scotland for the Thanksgiving holiday (AC is treated as a US employee, so he got his usual T-giving vacation). Too long a trip and not enough time. So we’ve spent this holiday in Brighton, taking a couple of day trips.

(Sam and Grand-mère sort coins on the train to London)

Thanksgiving Day: we took the train to London Victoria station and then walked to the Science Museum in South Kensington. The walk was interesting because it took us through fancy Belgravia with its private parks and stately, stiff houses. A few minked women teetered past us on impossible heels. But the Science Museum was fabulous. My favorite exhibit was “The Secret Life of the Home,” which demonstrated how household technology has developed over the years: everything from furnace-sized vacuum cleaners to early toilets and ice boxes. My favorite way to do science– through history! But we very nearly didn’t get to see that exhibit, or any other, because we made the mistake of going to the hands-on children’s section first. Oh my. There was an interactive water display. With chutes and lochs and pools and nozzles. And tiny boats.

Sam loved it.

That we’re all not still there at the water activity, haunting the halls as ghosts, or stuck in some London lock-up because we wouldn’t leave the museum, is a testament to our awesome parenting skills. Or just dumb luck. Somehow we managed to lure her into another hands-on area for children, and that clinched it. She understood suddenly that the entire museum housed one room after another of touchable, pushable, pullable, swingable things. This wasn’t just an ordinary looking museum, this was a doing museum.

And thus Sam was bitten by the Science Museum bug that must have infected her father so many years ago. There doesn’t seem to be a cure.

We stayed until they kicked us out at 6PM. Sammy cried. We then made our way back to Brighton, via crowded London Tube and crowded rail service. Our Thanksgiving dinner was fish and chips, peas and salad, with vanilla milk shakes for dessert. Like the Pilgrims, we are far from home. Like the Pilgrims we are thankful for food and shelter. But we are also thankful for science. And milk shakes.