Here are some lessons in hospitality that my Mom taught me:
Rule number 1
When there are guests in the house, their needs and desires come first.
Rule number 2
Sweet treats go with hot drinks, salty treats with cold.
Rule number 3
When planning a party, establish the guest list carefully and early, before inviting any guests.
When I was in third grade, I really wanted to be friends with two perfect little girls, Susan and Terry. I thought they were amazing; they were pretty, smart, and somehow they never got dirty on the playground; their tights didn’t sag and their knee socks didn’t droop around their ankles. They were the leaders of the third grade A-crowd, and I desperately longed to be a member. But sadly, as little girls are wont to do, they excluded me from that inner circle and teased me mercilessly about my saggy tights and droopy socks. Try as I might, I could not break into that pre-adolescent aristocracy. But, as my eighth birthday approached, I had a great idea! If I invited them to my party, then they would be sure to like me. And if Susan and Terry liked me, so would everyone else. Without asking my mother, I invited the two of them to my birthday party and to my delight, they accepted! Caught up in my impending social ascent and with a spirit of overwhelming goodwill, I invited ALL of the girls in my third grade class! I was delirious with joy, knowing that I would be admired by all and that everyone would want to be my friend.
There was just one teeny weeny little snag.
When the time came to actually plan my party, my mother said that I could invite eight girls. She had a method: the maximum number of children at a party should equal the age of the birthday child plus one. So, for my eighth birthday, I could invite eight girls, and I would be the ninth person. I imagine that this rule came from one of her women’s magazines, probably an article in Family Circle titled something like “Keeping your cool: setting bounds on birthday bashes.” Whatever. Wherever it came from, that was her rule and she was sticking to it.
The problem of course, was that my actual friends were mainly the neighborhood kids – Barbara, Joyce, Jenny, April, and the twins Cindy and Cathy. With the six of them I could only invite two more children. This would have been fine, if I’d stuck with Terry and Susan, but I had invited ALL the girls in Mrs. Dunn’s third grade class at Charles Wright Elementary School. I don’t remember how many kids were in that class, but I must have invited about a dozen little girls in addition to my six actual friends from my neighborhood.
When my mother started writing the invitations, she sent them to the neighbors, of course, and then asked if there was anyone else I wanted to invite. I meekly asked if all the girls from my class could come, after all, they had all gone to Martha’s party the year before. My mother simply replied, “No. Eight friends.” I couldn’t find the words to tell her what I had done, and I couldn’t find the words to tell the girls at school that they couldn’t come to my party.
I hoped that my classmates would forget that I ever mentioned my birthday. I said nothing, trying to let that birthday fly under the radar, but of course on the Friday before the big day, Mrs. Dunn, smiling with generosity, asked all the children to sing “Happy Birthday” to me. In front of the whole class, she asked if I was having a party, to which I had to reply, “Yes.” So much for flying under the radar. After school, those girls were on me like a pack of hungry wolves, demanding to know where the invitations were, and what time the party was going to be. I pretended I didn’t know the details and ran home in utter mortification.
Running up Nott Street, across Wolcott Hill Road, down Morrison Avenue and cutting through April’s yard to my house on Ireland Road, I fantasized and hoped that Mom would take pity and call to invite the girls to my party the next afternoon.
But no. That was not to be. The party was planned and the plans would not, could not, triple overnight.
Although she was not pleased, my Mom did bail me out, at least as much as she could without compromising her conviction that nine was the perfect number for my eighth birthday party. She called all of the mothers and explained that my verbal invitations were well intentioned but unauthorized and that maybe soon we would arrange for their daughters to play at our house after school. Apparently, Terry’s mother informed mine that “That is just the sort of thing my Terry would do!” I took some modicum of comfort from that statement, although I doubted then and doubt now that it was actually true.
Funny thing is, that is all I remember about my eighth birthday. I have no memory whatsoever of the actual party. It was my second to last childhood birthday party. On my ninth birthday, my parents took us ice skating at Colt Park in Hartford and then returned home for angel food cake and hot chocolate. We moved to a new town a few months later and after that I celebrated birthdays with just my family.
But here’s the thing about that eighth birthday party. My mother was right. Not necessarily about the numbers, but rather about who should and who shouldn’t have attended my party. The neighborhood kids were the kids that should have been there. I did not need to buy their friendship; we were already friends that played together, fussed together, visited each other’s homes. I am sure that even if Terry and Susan had come to my party any boost in popularity would have been short-lived. I just wasn’t destined to be part of the A-crowd of Mrs. Dunn’s third grade class. Cindy, Cathy, Barbara, Joyce, Jenny and April had saggy tights and droopy socks and got dirty just like I did and somehow we all survived and even thrived.
My Mom’s crazy rule for party size may have been derived to keep mothers sane in the face of a bunch of sugared-up hyper children, but as I think about it, it also served to limit the party to the children who should be there- those that were bonded through real friendship and nourished by celebrating each others joy.
In the many years since Mom’s death, I often think of her and her rules of hospitality. The needs of guests come first, sweet treats with hot beverages, salty treats with cold. While I don’t abide by arbitrary rules on the number of people, I do try to be sure that those invited to my home are there for reasons of friendship and celebration. And, in addition to the carefully planned invitation list, there is always one more guest, at least in spirit. In one way or another Mom is always part of any celebration or gathering at our house– be it a large party, tea with friends, or a family holiday dinner.
Maybe I am silly, maybe sentimental, but when people I care about are gathered in my home, I always honor my mother and her memory by using something that belonged to her – that misshapen wooden bowl she used for salads, the painted plate she bought on a family trip to Fripp Island, the etched aluminum tray she made in her younger days, her recipe for spaghetti and meatballs, that little white glass bud vase – something.
When our oldest child, Eric, and Talia were married, they asked if we had any glasses of family significance that could be used for the traditional Shevirat ha’kos (breaking of the glass). I immediately thought of some etched water goblets that belonged to Mom. I don’t know the story of those goblets, but I do know that when Mom died exactly 15 years and 15 days before the wedding, they were in her cabinet, and they had been in ours ever since.
Perhaps they were a wedding gift to my parents in 1947, or perhaps they belonged to my paternal grandparents. Whatever their origin, I was delighted to contribute these goblets to be ceremonially broken during the service. I am absolutely certain that Mom would have be thrilled as well. In that way, she was able to be part of the celebration as I know she would have desperately wanted to be.
As I look around our home, I see the accumulation of 46 years of stuff. I am prone to disdain about that collection, but also feel connection to some of those things- the things that connect me to the generations that have passed- things I hope will someday do the same for our kids.
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