The punch bowl with its sweeping silver handles and base and heavy, embossed glass is a beauty, but impractical and so rarely used. When filled with an icy beverage, the bowl sweats, meaning that to clean this contraption requires unscrewing the tiny bolts attaching base to bowl. Other than having sat for two decades on the breakfront in the dining room of the Palmer house and now another ten years in apartment cabinets, the bowl has no family history—I vaguely remember Kris buying it and several other pieces at some estate sale in Hendersonville. It does, however, serve as a reminder of parties and other special occasions.
I love throwing parties. I enjoy going to parties, most of them, but get a real kick from hosting parties of my own, inviting some friends or family over, cooking up some different dishes, and then watching people drinking, eating, and talking together. Parties involve some work: it usually takes me some hours to clean the apartment, and the food preparation, even for simple dishes like a quiche, can eat up a few hours. But a party gives me a reason to clean the apartment, and I’ve learned that the food, though important, should take a back seat to conversation and fellowship. Give me a maid, a cook, and a grocery store gift card, and I’d be whipping out a party every week.
I’m not sure where this affection for revelry originated, but suspect it stems from the large houses Kris and I occupied for so many years. The large old Chi Omega house in Charlottesville with its spacious downstairs rooms was available to us when the sorority girls were gone for the summer and holidays. The Palmer House also offered lots of space for guests. So in Charlottesville there were Independence Day parties and summer soup and salad gatherings, and in the Palmer House, when the off-season was the winter instead of the summer, we hosted a New Year’s Day party and smaller affairs whenever the mood struck us.
The New Year’s Day festivity was our longest-running party tradition. We usually invited my siblings and other local families, including Mary, Kris’s good friend, and Anne, a homeschool mother and veterinarian who later proved a fine counselor for me in the wake of Kris’s death. From Asheville came some members of the Catholic Association of Home Educators (CAFÉ): the Roberts, the Olignys, the Asciks, the Sadelsons, the Belangers, and others. Because some of these families included seven, eight, and nine children, the house was crammed with noisy adolescents and wiggling babies. We used to hope fervently for good weather so some of these younger ones could spill outside.
Everyone who came to this party brought a side dish and drinks, and we would push together some of the tables in the dining room and cover that long platform with all sorts of delights: casseroles, platters of chopped fruit and vegetables, salads, turkey and ham and croissants for sandwiches, chips and dip, cookies and cakes. The smaller children sat at a couple of tables at the end of the dining room, but the rest of us carried our food to sit in the living room or stood in the dining room and kitchen, balancing drinks and plates and chatting up a storm.
Usually at some point during this New Year’s Day party the men and women would separate into groups, the women sitting and holding babies and toddlers in their laps and the men standing together holding bottles of beer or glasses of wine. Frequent topics of conversation among the men were sports and real estate, subjects in which I, often to my detriment, have no interest. I haven’t followed sports for forty-five years, and discussions of money, interest rates, and land values draw a curtain across my brain. While they were discussing the upcoming Super Bowl or the cost of a lot in Beaverdam, I would be thinking of ways to slip away without giving offense.
A side note: Although there are plenty of exceptions, I find women make more interesting conversationalists than men. So I’d circulate from group to group, but was more attracted to the female conversations. Some of these centered on children and chores, which held little interest for me, but a lot of their talk centered on matters like homeschooling or religious faith, subjects in which I had a keen interest.
Besides being New Year’s Day, January 1 is also the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, a Catholic feast day celebrating Mary’s motherhood of Jesus Christ. At several of these parties, we halted the revelries for fifteen minutes to pray the rosary. The Protestants either listened or prayed along with the rest of us, and we’d get through the Joyous Mysteries and then go right back to partying.
Parties are one reason I love being Catholic. Priests don’t just offer Mass—they are celebrants—and the Church recognizes dozens of feast days. The Christmas season doesn’t end on Christmas Day; that’s only the beginning of the celebration, which lasts until the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6. Mardi Gras is a Catholic holiday. This past Christmas, my daughter gave me a book, Drinking With The Saints, a great compendium mixing Catholic history and lore with various drink recipes. There are even special Catholic toasts, as on the December 27, the Feast Day in the Roman Church of Saint John the Evangelist, in which you raise a glass and say: “I drink the love of Saint John,” to which the response is: “I thank you for the love of Saint John.”
Moving out of the Palmer House ended the New Year’s Day parties, and now at least six months have passed since I last invited friends into my apartment for a party. Sitting here, thinking of that punch bowl and recollecting those good times, I have determined to rectify this situation. From this point forward, more parties are in order.
Time to clean the apartment and throw together a few quiches.
I’m not sure where this affection for revelry originated, but suspect it stems from the large houses Kris and I occupied for so many years. The large old Chi Omega house in Charlottesville with its spacious downstairs rooms was available to us when the sorority girls were gone for the summer and holidays. The Palmer House also offered lots of space for guests. So in Charlottesville there were Independence Day parties and summer soup and salad gatherings, and in the Palmer House, when the off-season was the winter instead of the summer, we hosted a New Year’s Day party and smaller affairs whenever the mood struck us.
The New Year’s Day festivity was our longest-running party tradition. We usually invited my siblings and other local families, including Mary, Kris’s good friend, and Anne, a homeschool mother and veterinarian who later proved a fine counselor for me in the wake of Kris’s death. From Asheville came some members of the Catholic Association of Home Educators (CAFÉ): the Roberts, the Olignys, the Asciks, the Sadelsons, the Belangers, and others. Because some of these families included seven, eight, and nine children, the house was crammed with noisy adolescents and wiggling babies. We used to hope fervently for good weather so some of these younger ones could spill outside.
Everyone who came to this party brought a side dish and drinks, and we would push together some of the tables in the dining room and cover that long platform with all sorts of delights: casseroles, platters of chopped fruit and vegetables, salads, turkey and ham and croissants for sandwiches, chips and dip, cookies and cakes. The smaller children sat at a couple of tables at the end of the dining room, but the rest of us carried our food to sit in the living room or stood in the dining room and kitchen, balancing drinks and plates and chatting up a storm.
Usually at some point during this New Year’s Day party the men and women would separate into groups, the women sitting and holding babies and toddlers in their laps and the men standing together holding bottles of beer or glasses of wine. Frequent topics of conversation among the men were sports and real estate, subjects in which I, often to my detriment, have no interest. I haven’t followed sports for forty-five years, and discussions of money, interest rates, and land values draw a curtain across my brain. While they were discussing the upcoming Super Bowl or the cost of a lot in Beaverdam, I would be thinking of ways to slip away without giving offense.
A side note: Although there are plenty of exceptions, I find women make more interesting conversationalists than men. So I’d circulate from group to group, but was more attracted to the female conversations. Some of these centered on children and chores, which held little interest for me, but a lot of their talk centered on matters like homeschooling or religious faith, subjects in which I had a keen interest.
Besides being New Year’s Day, January 1 is also the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God, a Catholic feast day celebrating Mary’s motherhood of Jesus Christ. At several of these parties, we halted the revelries for fifteen minutes to pray the rosary. The Protestants either listened or prayed along with the rest of us, and we’d get through the Joyous Mysteries and then go right back to partying.
Parties are one reason I love being Catholic. Priests don’t just offer Mass—they are celebrants—and the Church recognizes dozens of feast days. The Christmas season doesn’t end on Christmas Day; that’s only the beginning of the celebration, which lasts until the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6. Mardi Gras is a Catholic holiday. This past Christmas, my daughter gave me a book, Drinking With The Saints, a great compendium mixing Catholic history and lore with various drink recipes. There are even special Catholic toasts, as on the December 27, the Feast Day in the Roman Church of Saint John the Evangelist, in which you raise a glass and say: “I drink the love of Saint John,” to which the response is: “I thank you for the love of Saint John.”
Moving out of the Palmer House ended the New Year’s Day parties, and now at least six months have passed since I last invited friends into my apartment for a party. Sitting here, thinking of that punch bowl and recollecting those good times, I have determined to rectify this situation. From this point forward, more parties are in order.
Time to clean the apartment and throw together a few quiches.