My Saturday Evening Post
Rockwell and Renoir showed up at my house today. They mostly hung around on the walls or sat on the piano or held onto the Victorian organ in my living room. I had transformed my dining room into the scene from Renoir's "Luncheon of the Boating Party" with a sheet and orange streamers hanging like the outdoor canopy. Rockwell's aura graced the adjacent dining room, a green gingham cloth draped over the buffet table (i.e. metal camping table), a huge throw blanket of "Saturday Evening Post" from April 1926 as a backdrop for our group shot.
The rest of us--seven ladies--ate, chatted, laughed, and told stories that made each other choke and choke up. It's a Saturday I won't soon forget.
The occasion was a 40th birthday party--mine and Karen's, to be exact. We were born hours apart on the same day, in the same year, in the same city, but have different parents altogether. She is my twin sister in Christ, and we attend the same church and enjoy the same hobby: blogging.
But it wasn't Rockwell and Renoir whose presence made me happy; it was the people around my dining room table. I was so glad to have my mom at my birthday party; I am more aware all the time how many people at my age can't say the same. She told everyone my measurements--thankfully the measurements of me as a six-day-old baby. She said I was a tiny package and she wrapped a tape measure first around my head, then around my chest, and then around my hips. I was 11-11-11.
My baby sister, Jill, also attended and brightened my day. Fourteen years my junior, she was eight days old when we brought her home from the hospital and painted one dot of pink nail polish on each of her ten little fingernails. To this day she sports perfectly manicured nails.
Danielle sat to Jill's right. She is my newest friend, someone I've come to know better through her writing. She dressed up like a young girl in a Rockwell painting, complete with relaxed sun hat, red braids, striped shirt and rolled-up jeans. Someone remarked she looked a bit like Anne Shirley, and she sparkled with a smile just like the Green Gables gal. Danielle works at a downtown art museum, and today brought along an art game at my request. She had researched the lives of Karen's and my favorite painters (Rockwell and Renoir, respectively). Everyone at the table had to take a quiz and answer "Rockwell" or "Renoir" based on questions of lesser-known facts about the artists. Karen won. I gave her a notepad that contained a palette of colors.
Karen sat between Danielle and me. We were all in the middle of a conversation-starter game (as if we need help) in which each guest draws an index card out of a bowl and answers the question on it. ( I had written out questions last night, folded them, and didn't remember what question I wrote on which colored card.) Karen's said, "What three things would you like to try, learn, or master before you die?" She asked if I knew something she didn't? Should she be reading into that? Am I prophetic? Well, she said she's already been a stripper. Really--she worked in a printing office. And she's flown now without fear. She wants to publish a book. And she'd like to hook rugs. So we say, "Oh, great, you go from stripper at 20 to hooker at 40?"
To my right was Renee'. We met each other when our now-teenaged kids were in kindergarten (homeschooling) but didn't really meld until this past year when we co-taught high school English. Today she came dressed as a lady from a Monet. Thrift store Monet, but very classy nonetheless. Cream colored curtains wisped around her cream hat, and over her cream linen sundress was a cream silky blouse with covered buttons at the wrists. On her feet were clear high heels.
"Imagine what it must've looked like to your neighbors," she said, "when I climbed out of the old truck and got dressed in your driveway." We snickered. "And what's worse," she added, was Stephen was out there and when I asked him if I was the only one in costume, he seriously said, 'Uh, yeh, kinda.' (Renee' brings out the orneriness in Stephen. She was his teacher last year.) Bless her heart, today's weather was typical August in Maryland: 90 degrees and humid, without a breeze. We teased her about being like Karen: one's a hooker, the other's a hot chick.
Renee's question had to do with her favorite hymn or song. She said she had two, and that one was "song-y" and one was "hymn-ish." She told us about Stephen Curtis Chapman's song about trusting God in whatever circumstances you're going through--even the trial of being told that her little son had late stages of brain cancer. (It turned out to be a misdiagnosis, but she remembers how powerfully the song ministered to her.)
Sandy sat next to Renee' and directly across from me. Behind her on the wall was a Renoir
painting called 'Dance at Bougival." It makes me reminisce about the few and precious times I've danced with Paul. (He might just say "few.") Sandy's question from the card was, "If you were to write a book, who or what would it be about, and why?" It didn't take her any time to reply. She'd write about education, particularly about our American educational system and the kids who have to be part of it. "I just have such strong feelings about education and children."
On a more personal level she would write about what it is have an adult child with severe autism. I've told Sandy more than once that she is one of my personal heroes. I've watched her sit for a two-hour church service stroking her 29-year-old son's hair to reassure him of her presence. I have wept thinking how her "invisible ministry" is one that most of us will never be chosen to do. Todd is incapable of expressing his appreciation and love in words to her. He often sings songs he hears on radio and tape, and I've heard him. His voice was deep, quiet, and monotone when I heard him singing along with a praise hymn. I told him he did my heart good. I have no doubt that somewhere in Todd's heart and mind is gratitude toward his family for how they love him, but unless God changes him here on earth, Todd won't be able say "thank you so much for all you've done" until he's in a new body. Sometimes I wonder if we aren't all spiritually autistic. Whenever I try to find words to express my love and gratitude to God, I realize how limited are these things we call language and emotion. How I long to live in heaven where I can give full, unfettered expression to the Lord. "Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer's praise!" It's no wonder that autistic people usually gravitate to music, can memorize it, play it, and sing it. No matter how it sounds to the rest of us, it must be absolutely delightful to the Maker of Music. Isn't it kind of Him to give music as a gift to everyone? Beethoven, when he went deaf, composed music that he heard inside his head.
My mom's question asked about her favorite place. "Well, it's somewhere I've never been."
I recalled what Dave Deurling had said after fire destroyed his house: "Home is a place I've never been." So I thought Mama meant heaven, but she went on to say that, Lord willing, she and Daddy will be standing by the Sea of Galilee in Israel in November. That's been her dream trip for as long as I can remember.
Jill's card prompted her to choose someone at the table and tell about one of their spiritual gifts.
I had written the card, but hoped to pick it instead of being on the receiving end. She chose me and honored me. I was humbled by her kind observation.
After some Kleenex moments came some Kodak moments. Karen and I blew out our candles together and then we all ate Ice Cream Cake (aka Premarital Counseling cake) and/or Six-Cup salad and/or donut holes.
Too bad Danielle and Karen couldn't have stuck around for a game of Win, Lose, or Draw. We had a riot. We moved into the living room where I had stationed an easel with paper and black Sharpie. I took the "creative cat" cards from our game of Cranium and sat it near the group. Each of us, in turn, would take a card and draw what it asked for--North Pole, ballerina, poodle, baby smoking, whatever. My mom drew what I thought was a buffalo beside a Bandaid. Turns out the Bandaid is a candy bar and the buffalo is a moose.
So.....chocolate mousse? Yes!
Jill drew the card "poison ivy" and decided to give a dude under an apple tree a while to sit on a vine and start itching. On the rear end. Then I drew a winner. The word was "nipple." I didn't immediately think of a bottle. In fact, I never thought of a bottle because, well, I breastfed my children. So here I am, drawing two side-by-side large circles with a dot inside each one. The guessers say, "Eyes!" I shake my head. I add a body. Nothing. Must've been too masculine a body. Under time restraint, I quickly draw a curvaceous, hourglass figure, and add two concentric circles to the front of it The breasts in my quick drawing were a mere millimeter below the shoulders.
I kept pointing to the "dots."
"Nipple!" someone yells.
"Yes!" I say, enthusiastically relieved of drawing a nude.
"But--" my mom wants to know, "why are her breasts so high?"
"Because," I say enviously, "she's YOUNG!"
As all good things must, our party came to an end. Renee' had long since stripped off her silky togs except for the sundress. She walked to the driveway carrying curtains under one arm and broccoli salad under the other. Sandy left a generous plateful of yummy quesadillas for my crew. Mama and Jill pitched in to help clear the tables. We exchanged hugs and thanks, and then I went and picked up my dog from the neighbor. (They had agreed to keep her so that she wouldn't be in everyone's way during the party. She's overly affectionate.)
Molly, our strawberry-blonde retriever, had put the "damp" in "damper" when I got word from Sarah that Molly had peed on the neighbor's carpet. Fast as I could, I changed out of my 1800s boating party clothes and put on carpet scrubbing clothes. I apologized to Mitch and Cindy and said I was willing to clean it up myself or pay to hire a pro. They were very gracious:" don't worry about it, we caught her before she actually went, and tossed her outside....it's just normal for a dog in a strange house with two other dogs to do that (even though they said she hadn't done it?)...she's a sweet dog...." I said I wished I had kenneled her today for ten bucks and probably next time would. "Don't do it, "Mitch said firmly, "she's welcome back anytime." The people who weren't at my party made it as special as those who were.
That's my Saturday Evening Post.
The rest of us--seven ladies--ate, chatted, laughed, and told stories that made each other choke and choke up. It's a Saturday I won't soon forget.
The occasion was a 40th birthday party--mine and Karen's, to be exact. We were born hours apart on the same day, in the same year, in the same city, but have different parents altogether. She is my twin sister in Christ, and we attend the same church and enjoy the same hobby: blogging.
But it wasn't Rockwell and Renoir whose presence made me happy; it was the people around my dining room table. I was so glad to have my mom at my birthday party; I am more aware all the time how many people at my age can't say the same. She told everyone my measurements--thankfully the measurements of me as a six-day-old baby. She said I was a tiny package and she wrapped a tape measure first around my head, then around my chest, and then around my hips. I was 11-11-11.
My baby sister, Jill, also attended and brightened my day. Fourteen years my junior, she was eight days old when we brought her home from the hospital and painted one dot of pink nail polish on each of her ten little fingernails. To this day she sports perfectly manicured nails.
Danielle sat to Jill's right. She is my newest friend, someone I've come to know better through her writing. She dressed up like a young girl in a Rockwell painting, complete with relaxed sun hat, red braids, striped shirt and rolled-up jeans. Someone remarked she looked a bit like Anne Shirley, and she sparkled with a smile just like the Green Gables gal. Danielle works at a downtown art museum, and today brought along an art game at my request. She had researched the lives of Karen's and my favorite painters (Rockwell and Renoir, respectively). Everyone at the table had to take a quiz and answer "Rockwell" or "Renoir" based on questions of lesser-known facts about the artists. Karen won. I gave her a notepad that contained a palette of colors.
Karen sat between Danielle and me. We were all in the middle of a conversation-starter game (as if we need help) in which each guest draws an index card out of a bowl and answers the question on it. ( I had written out questions last night, folded them, and didn't remember what question I wrote on which colored card.) Karen's said, "What three things would you like to try, learn, or master before you die?" She asked if I knew something she didn't? Should she be reading into that? Am I prophetic? Well, she said she's already been a stripper. Really--she worked in a printing office. And she's flown now without fear. She wants to publish a book. And she'd like to hook rugs. So we say, "Oh, great, you go from stripper at 20 to hooker at 40?"
To my right was Renee'. We met each other when our now-teenaged kids were in kindergarten (homeschooling) but didn't really meld until this past year when we co-taught high school English. Today she came dressed as a lady from a Monet. Thrift store Monet, but very classy nonetheless. Cream colored curtains wisped around her cream hat, and over her cream linen sundress was a cream silky blouse with covered buttons at the wrists. On her feet were clear high heels.
"Imagine what it must've looked like to your neighbors," she said, "when I climbed out of the old truck and got dressed in your driveway." We snickered. "And what's worse," she added, was Stephen was out there and when I asked him if I was the only one in costume, he seriously said, 'Uh, yeh, kinda.' (Renee' brings out the orneriness in Stephen. She was his teacher last year.) Bless her heart, today's weather was typical August in Maryland: 90 degrees and humid, without a breeze. We teased her about being like Karen: one's a hooker, the other's a hot chick.
Renee's question had to do with her favorite hymn or song. She said she had two, and that one was "song-y" and one was "hymn-ish." She told us about Stephen Curtis Chapman's song about trusting God in whatever circumstances you're going through--even the trial of being told that her little son had late stages of brain cancer. (It turned out to be a misdiagnosis, but she remembers how powerfully the song ministered to her.)
Sandy sat next to Renee' and directly across from me. Behind her on the wall was a Renoir
painting called 'Dance at Bougival." It makes me reminisce about the few and precious times I've danced with Paul. (He might just say "few.") Sandy's question from the card was, "If you were to write a book, who or what would it be about, and why?" It didn't take her any time to reply. She'd write about education, particularly about our American educational system and the kids who have to be part of it. "I just have such strong feelings about education and children."
On a more personal level she would write about what it is have an adult child with severe autism. I've told Sandy more than once that she is one of my personal heroes. I've watched her sit for a two-hour church service stroking her 29-year-old son's hair to reassure him of her presence. I have wept thinking how her "invisible ministry" is one that most of us will never be chosen to do. Todd is incapable of expressing his appreciation and love in words to her. He often sings songs he hears on radio and tape, and I've heard him. His voice was deep, quiet, and monotone when I heard him singing along with a praise hymn. I told him he did my heart good. I have no doubt that somewhere in Todd's heart and mind is gratitude toward his family for how they love him, but unless God changes him here on earth, Todd won't be able say "thank you so much for all you've done" until he's in a new body. Sometimes I wonder if we aren't all spiritually autistic. Whenever I try to find words to express my love and gratitude to God, I realize how limited are these things we call language and emotion. How I long to live in heaven where I can give full, unfettered expression to the Lord. "Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemer's praise!" It's no wonder that autistic people usually gravitate to music, can memorize it, play it, and sing it. No matter how it sounds to the rest of us, it must be absolutely delightful to the Maker of Music. Isn't it kind of Him to give music as a gift to everyone? Beethoven, when he went deaf, composed music that he heard inside his head.
My mom's question asked about her favorite place. "Well, it's somewhere I've never been."
I recalled what Dave Deurling had said after fire destroyed his house: "Home is a place I've never been." So I thought Mama meant heaven, but she went on to say that, Lord willing, she and Daddy will be standing by the Sea of Galilee in Israel in November. That's been her dream trip for as long as I can remember.
Jill's card prompted her to choose someone at the table and tell about one of their spiritual gifts.
I had written the card, but hoped to pick it instead of being on the receiving end. She chose me and honored me. I was humbled by her kind observation.
After some Kleenex moments came some Kodak moments. Karen and I blew out our candles together and then we all ate Ice Cream Cake (aka Premarital Counseling cake) and/or Six-Cup salad and/or donut holes.
Too bad Danielle and Karen couldn't have stuck around for a game of Win, Lose, or Draw. We had a riot. We moved into the living room where I had stationed an easel with paper and black Sharpie. I took the "creative cat" cards from our game of Cranium and sat it near the group. Each of us, in turn, would take a card and draw what it asked for--North Pole, ballerina, poodle, baby smoking, whatever. My mom drew what I thought was a buffalo beside a Bandaid. Turns out the Bandaid is a candy bar and the buffalo is a moose.
So.....chocolate mousse? Yes!
Jill drew the card "poison ivy" and decided to give a dude under an apple tree a while to sit on a vine and start itching. On the rear end. Then I drew a winner. The word was "nipple." I didn't immediately think of a bottle. In fact, I never thought of a bottle because, well, I breastfed my children. So here I am, drawing two side-by-side large circles with a dot inside each one. The guessers say, "Eyes!" I shake my head. I add a body. Nothing. Must've been too masculine a body. Under time restraint, I quickly draw a curvaceous, hourglass figure, and add two concentric circles to the front of it The breasts in my quick drawing were a mere millimeter below the shoulders.
I kept pointing to the "dots."
"Nipple!" someone yells.
"Yes!" I say, enthusiastically relieved of drawing a nude.
"But--" my mom wants to know, "why are her breasts so high?"
"Because," I say enviously, "she's YOUNG!"
As all good things must, our party came to an end. Renee' had long since stripped off her silky togs except for the sundress. She walked to the driveway carrying curtains under one arm and broccoli salad under the other. Sandy left a generous plateful of yummy quesadillas for my crew. Mama and Jill pitched in to help clear the tables. We exchanged hugs and thanks, and then I went and picked up my dog from the neighbor. (They had agreed to keep her so that she wouldn't be in everyone's way during the party. She's overly affectionate.)
Molly, our strawberry-blonde retriever, had put the "damp" in "damper" when I got word from Sarah that Molly had peed on the neighbor's carpet. Fast as I could, I changed out of my 1800s boating party clothes and put on carpet scrubbing clothes. I apologized to Mitch and Cindy and said I was willing to clean it up myself or pay to hire a pro. They were very gracious:" don't worry about it, we caught her before she actually went, and tossed her outside....it's just normal for a dog in a strange house with two other dogs to do that (even though they said she hadn't done it?)...she's a sweet dog...." I said I wished I had kenneled her today for ten bucks and probably next time would. "Don't do it, "Mitch said firmly, "she's welcome back anytime." The people who weren't at my party made it as special as those who were.
That's my Saturday Evening Post.
7 Comments:
I had a great time with all of you ladies! Your sister was sweet and so was your mom, I enjoyed meeting them. Thanks for inviting me, Zoanna.
I am soooooo jealous! Really wish I could have been there, friend. Happy Birthday to you. May you be blessed beyond your wildest dreams!
Thanks for going to Ordinary Mother so faithfully. I wondered if I was going to have to tell people I actually posted. Thank you also for your comments. You are in a unique situation to have toddler and teen roaming about.
Zoanna you have captured the feel of the party perfectly. It really was fun. Thank You for all the work you put into it. You definitely have the gift of hospitality. Thank you also for my blanket, very thoughtful. I was reading the comment you wrote on Glory Be. You're not going to believe this but I lived with my grandmother for a couple of months when I was first born because my mother had surgery. Freaky. Thank you again for including me in the party.
You are so welcome. Thanks for contributing your artistic ability, your humor, and your white chile. I appreciated the gift, too. Yeh, when I saw that blanket I knew it was for you.
Your grandma took care of you when you were newborn cuz your mom had surgery, huh? That really is freaky. I can't wait to tell my mom. Do you remember what you weighed and how long you were? I was either 6 lb 9 oz or 13 oz.
Laurie, we missed you, too, and everyone else who couldn't be there. We'll have to have another party, that's all there is to it.
I told the group "how about a guinea pig party" My idea is to help us mortify the fear of man (or woman) by bringing a dish we've never made before, whether it flops or not. Our friends would be our guinea pigs. Of course Karen, I think, had to say something about guinea pigs on a skewer. Yuck.
Ahem. I didn't mean to crash the party. with 7 women there, I would have been intimidated indeed!
that was so much fun!! I wasn't even there but just reading your post, I had fun!!! lol!!
I love to get with my friends for any kind of get together, we always do nothing and have the greatest time! I am sure you understand.
Thanks for visiting my site, I have really enjoyed yours and will be back
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