Yesterday was from hell, but in a good cause, and a great party.

My mother-in-law talked us into hosting a “surprise” birthday party for my father-in-law and 50 of his closest friends and relations. Here at the house. I didn’t blog anything about it for lo, these several months because there was a chance that he’d hear about this website from another family member.

Now the story can be told of events leading up to Our Living Nightmare. A good time was had by all, apparently, except us.

Some Questions

Q: Why did we let her talk us into this?
A: Because she’s a Jewish mom, and she can.

Q: Did he suspect?
A: Of course he did. His entire circle of friends always throw surprise parties.

Q: How high was the pile of coats on the bed in the guest room?
A: About six feet.

Q: How many times did you send someone on an errand during the party?
A: 2 – no, three times including the time I went along to “give directions” (escape).

Back when we first started furniture shopping and painting the wall in the family room (as described in pretty much the entire Home Truths category), the ultimate goal (at least from January on) was to get ready for this party. We didn’t want the family room to look like the blank slate (heh) that it was, if we were going to have a housefull of people.

Thing is, I was more interested in the way everything would look once we got all the furniture in, and didn’t spend any time conferencing with the other siblings on what we were actually doing collectively for the party. We had divided up responsibilities, but didn’t really talk about how we’d coordinate on the day of the party.

For example, David and I were providing the location and getting some catered food from Babuluci. Dan and Deb were bringing appetizers, along with the four kids, who would be dragooned into helping take coats and fetch things. Mitch and Gloria were bringing the cake, more appetizers in an Atkin’s vein, and Mitch also created a very funny DVD slideshow and movie about Dad.

I didn’t consider that I’d need to provide enough forks for both the dinner part of the evening AND the dessert, and also didn’t consider that I’d need small plates for appetizers and cake in addition to large plates. All were purchased at Factory Card Outlet Party Store, in various shifts.

People arrived, and soon the family room was packed out. Why they all crowded in there and not evenly distributed is beyond me. I spent the last 20 minutes or so before David’s parents arrived answering calls from people needing last-minute directions. One lady became hopelessly confused and kept turning the wrong way and driving miles and miles in various wrong directions. She called 3 times, but eventually I talked her in. My mom used to send me down to the corner when people were coming from out of town so they’d know where to turn – it’s the red hair being used as a landmark thing – and so it was natural for me to go stand out front with the phone and a glass of wine, watching an approaching car and saying “Do you see the redheaded lady waving the glass of wine yet?”

So Dad arrived, not surprised, and there was much laughter and congratulating going on. Everyone had been coached to bring gag gifts – some of them extremely funny and mostly not tasteless (this is a pretty funny crowd, after all – they’re good at gag gifts).

In spite of feeling a bit crazed about keeping things moving along and organized, I was having a good time chatting with everyone, until David came and got me to look at the Sternos under the food pans (we had 2 kinds of pasta sauce, a pan of pasta to go with, some calamari, and a pan of chicken Vesuvio). The flames were high and the food was sizzling hot (this was just before we served) and David was justifiably worried the food would burn. Fortunately, my long career as a travel agent stood me in good stead – I’ve seen a LOT of food such as ours served from just such a set up, and I knew it was a matter of finding the lids to the cans and covering them until just a quarter of a flame was coming out. The problem was in finding the lids – there was a little helpful house-elf that kept throwing out the lids to important containers, and we kept having to rescue the lids from the garbage.

All was well. Lids found. Dinner was saved – and served. That’s when it really got out of control. I woulda, shoulda, coulda arranged it a little better for traffic control, but everyone got their food pretty quickly, and then they camped out in front of every horizontal surface they could find, because the chicken required the use of knife and fork. Ack!! Oh, well. We all coped.

Mitch and I took off for once last run to get ice and forks, and it turned out we didn’t really need the forks after all. However, we both needed a break from all the hullabaloo – he had pre-show nerves for the debut of his masterwork, “Who Is Sheldon?” and I just needed to get away for a few minutes. Bad hostess. No. No. However, it was hosted jointly, in my mind, so off we went leaving the other siblings and spice in charge.

My gag gift went over pretty well – I found a great “Slow Moving Senior” golf cap that was actually well made for a silly gift. It included a really obnoxious bike horn over the ear, and is also a really dandy goose-scarer (we know, we tested it that morning on a pair of flying rats in the front yard). Dad wore it all evening, and I’d be in the other room and hear the horn honking and know he was having a good time.

He also wore it this morning when he went to breakfast with friends, apparently – right in the restaurant and everything. I wondered if he’d get better service if he honked or not.

It was a good party for us, because it forced us to visit with a lot of people (we tend to do our own thing a lot too much) and in fact we’ll probably go to dinner to Babaluci with one couple who were raving about the food. It continues to boggle my in-laws that we and Mitch and Gloria are willing to socialize with their friends – the anniversary dinner we hosted together for my in laws was the first example of this. Apparently my mom-in-law gets a lot of kudos from her friends over this, but it just works out this way – David and I are lucky enough to have a “friends” relationship with his parents, and so do Mitch and Gloria. Dan and Deb are on a more traditional “adult child of parent” relationship footing with them – this may be a consequence of their being the most traditional “family” of the 3 sons and daughters-in-law in all senses of the word.

I haven’t really said much about Dan and Deb and their kids in the blog. It’s hard for me to connect with them, because aside from the family connection we have little in common – and the same is true with everyone else in the family. They’re quite conservative in their views about everything (politics, religion, family, work, gender issues) and are thus out of step with everyone else in the entire extended family. They’re a military family (at least, Dan is in the Naval Reserve, but full time) and the money is tight, but they manage. They chose to pull the kids out of school a few years ago and homeschool all of them, which has been one of those “elephant in the room” issues between them and the rest of us. However, they’ve recently made some big changes – moved off-base to a nice new rental house, registered two of the kids for school, and Debbie has a part-time job now. So we’re breathing a little easier, because one of the things that had most concerned David’s parents (and his mom the most, because she’s a retired teacher) was that the kids’ education wasn’t what it could be. Fortunately, the move to the new house put them in a really good school district – the district the base is in is very bad – and the two kids that needed the most help are now about to start or starting next fall.

Melissa is the oldest, and in a couple of years time, she’ll be the youngest. There’s a whole suite of things that are not right with her, but the biggest thing is that she’s borderline mentally retarded. If that’s not the correct term for it, I’m sorry – it’s that her condition has never been spelled out for us, since they tended to call it “developmental delays” until it became sadly apparent that she’s been stuck at about age 7 or 8. Her youngest sister is about 5 and will surpass her in math beginning next year or the year after. Fortunately, Melissa seems to accept herself as the one in the family that gets the extra help. Unfortunately, she seems doomed to a lifetime of being the babysitter for her sisters, and after that, for her sister’s kids. She’ll probably always live with one of her sisters, rather than in a group home setting. Sh’es very excited about starting school next week – she remembers going to school before and is even a bit blase’ about assesing her new special education teacher and counselor – it’s same old, same old to her. But she’s really happy about getting new school clothes, and excited to meet new kids.

Josh is next oldest, and entering high shool next fall. He’s ready to go to school and has been chafing at the homeschooling bit for a while now, apparently (a lot of this we find out a little at a time, because Dan and Deb don’t really let on about the schooling issue unless there’s something positive to report).

Jennifer is the former baby, now relegated to middle child status. She often gets overlooked because of this – Josh is the son, about to start a new and exciting phase of his life; Melissa has her special needs, Naomi (AKA “The Baby”) gets special attention of her own. Jennifer, thusly, ends up being the “afterthought kid.” However, she’s bright and interested in lots of things, though unfortunately she does NOT want to go to school (she’s never been to school, so probably fears it a little). I get a kick out of Jennifer and enjoy talking with her, although the noise level at family gatherings is usually too high for normal conversations (side question: why does everybody talk so loud???)

Naomi, “The Baby,” is a whiny, clingy, chubby child. She’s five. I’ve never warmed up to Naomi, probably because she was born about the time that my “childfree” self-image crystallized. It was about then that we noticed that Dan and Deb were highlighting their status as the “grandchild producing” kids in the family – it’s their niche and their sticking to it. If something can be expressed as a sort of whiny grunt instead of a sentence, Naomi will simply make a sound like “uuuuunnnnnnnnnggggghhh” until she gets what she wants. Yet she’s capable of normal speech, although she mostly just keeps to herself and clings to Debbie. She’s a little less clingy and whiny than she used to be, though. However, when she’s tired, it comes out in spades, as she was last night. It turns out that she has quite serious asthma, as do a couple of the other kids. I hadn’t known this – it came out in conversation when Debbie and I took off for one of the errands before the party.

Dan and Deb themselves are kind of like throwbacks to an earlier era. Dan is the kind of guy who would say “I’m goin ta da Jool. Wannennythin?” without irony. He’s the only conservative Republican in the family – there were at least 4 “Anyone But Bush” buttons last night and no anti-Kerry ones, but he would be the one exception if he bothered to get a button. Debbie is totally wrapped up in her family, also very conservative. They got married pretty young, and Dan’s been in the Navy nearly 18 years. He’ll retire at 2/3 pay in 2 years, and thinks he’ll get some kind of civilian position doing much the same thing he’s been doing for some time now – personnel and scheduling for the Naval Reserve.

They’re religious and attend synagogue with the kids, and observe holidays. The rest of the family are mostly not, other than gathering for the High Holidays. In a way they kind of wave the “more Jewish family than you” flag, which the rest of us mostly shrug off.

There are two other telling details about Dan and Deb that set them off from the rest of us sons and daughters-in-law. One is that at any gift-giving function, they will always give something with a picture of the four kids on it (last night’s present to Dad was a mousepad. Another year, it was a “World’s Greatest Granddad” T-shirt). The other is that at any function where a speech or announcement is called for, Dan will always mention that he and Deb are the ones that gave Shel and Leah their grandkids. Or he’ll graft an announcement about the kids or their family onto a completely different celebration. One year at Hanukkah, he got up and announced that their present to his parents was the news that Dan was able to get re-posted to the Chicago-area Naval base again, so they wouldn’t be uprooted and posted to a base on the West Coast. Thus, the grandkids would be near their grandparents, and so that was their present for Hanukkah.

Um. Anyway, getting back to Party Business – everyone worked very hard, especially Debbie and the girls. Gloria, Mitch’s wife, brought an elderly relative and looked after her, and helped out with logistics and appetizers. Everyone was really great about getting things organized – the biggest problem was that there were simply too many people in the house.

Fifty is too many in our house. We can handle 30 easily, maybe 35 at a stretch, but 50 made it almost impossible to get where you needed to go in order to set things up, restock the wet bar, or even just take time to eat some of the damn food and mingle with people. David never did get any dinner – he snacked on appetizers and circulated in the living room. He’s sacked out on the new sofa for the day now, watching the extended version of “The Two Towers” and dozing between noisy battle scenes.

And I’m here, blogging away. I’m mostly recovered from yesterday, but have made a vow – no more big family gatherings of more than 30-35.

Never again.

Although, I’d definitely set up the buffet differently next time, and designate somebody to be the bartender, and set up a conference call for logistics and planning before the party…

Oy. Nope, never again – even with perfect set-up and no flatware foulups, fifty is too many. So when my beloved mom-in-law calls in a few years to ask if we’ll help her host something, I must repeat this endlessly: Never again, never again, never again.

Maybe it’ll be enough to overcome her Jedi Jewish mother mind tricks. Maybe.