House Party

Inspirational song: Over the River and Through the Wood (Lydia Maria Child)

When I was a very little girl, I was lucky enough to live in Germany for a few years. When we came back to the States, before we moved to our next home, we spent a couple months bopping between family houses, spending a little time with my mother's parents, my father's parents, and my father's brother. These long house parties felt like an extended Christmas or Thanksgiving holiday. They made a huge impression on me, and I have so many very specific, clear memories from these two months, like I lived extra hard while we were with family. I remember turning my cousin's giant collie Zorro loose into his room to wake him one morning. I remember seeing Jaws for the first time in Oklahoma City. I remember going to Sunday School at my grandmother's church and having a lesson about elections, in which we voted between George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. And I remember having a stomach bug and lying on my other grandmother's couch, wishing I could just die already, when my mother and brother came in and ate particularly strong-smelling potato chips. To this day, I still hate Pringles.

Last night's surprise party was wonderful, but the after party was in a whole different category. My aunts and uncles, plus two couples my parents go RVing with all the time came back to the house, and we stayed up drinking and telling stories well into the night. Everyone spent the night here. All the beds were taken, including in the two RVs parked outside. I was relegated to a pull out couch in the living room. And it was glorious. It felt like one of those big family holidays all over again. Even this morning, they just handed me a cup of coffee in bed, and pulled up to sit with me on the couch bed, or with their feet on the mattress, and we kept talking for hours. I learned a lot of new things, reminisced about a lot of old stories, and felt like it was one of those special times that I plan to remember forever. I tried to tell the man the story I heard about where the replacement fan clutch in my first car came from, and he didn't believe my father's friends actually managed to make an aircraft part fit in that space. It was one of those kinds of nights.

This party ends for me tomorrow and moves to the kids and football weekend. It's bittersweet. I have much to look forward to, and much to remember fondly.