Sometimes I’m amazed I’m still a journalist. When I graduated from college, I figured I’d do this for a few years, and then embark on a real career. This is what many of my friends have done, and it’s not like any of them have ever come to me and said, “Oh, I really miss working at a newspaper.” Nope. They all seem quite happy, and I don’t doubt that I could leave newspapers and be happy, too. The problem is, I can’t imagine doing anything else. But last weekend I finally made some strides. I realized I might have a promising second career as a caterer.
It’s no small thing to throw a surprise 60th birthday party for your parents, and my sisters and I began plotting months ago, when we stole their Christmas card list. (“How did you find all these people?” my astonished father asked during the party, as if such subterfuge and trickery were beyond us.) From the outset, it was clear that the party had to be a surprise; only this month did I begin to question that premise. Sure, the surprise party my friends threw for me before I moved out of town at the age of 14 is one of my fondest memories, but I worried that my mother might die of shock. Then I worried that she and my father would be angry. Then I worried that my head gasket would blow while I was driving to Maine, and that I would miss the party altogether. (Of these three fears, only one was realistic. Can you guess which one? See below for the answer.)
I took Friday off and went to New Hampshire to meet one of my sisters. After borrowing a 15-passenger van from the YMCA where my sister works and filling it with tables and chairs, we headed to the grocery store. Here, we basically had two conversations, the “We have too much of that” conversation, and the “We don’t have enough of that” conversation. Example: “We don’t need more potato chips! Put that bag back!” “Seventy people are coming to this party! Do you really think three bags of cherry tomatoes is enough?” As we discussed how much shrimp to buy, one woman remarked, “You guys are having way too much fun,” which really threw me for a loop, since it seemed like we were having anything but fun.
I kept waiting for the party to make me nervous, but it never really did. There was so much to do, and so many details to keep track of, that I couldn’t waste my energy being nervous. We wondered if our parents knew about the party, because our father kept saying he wanted to hold a party in June to celebrate five years of living in Maine. This struck us as highly suspicious, since our parents never throw parties, and so we figured our father either knew about the party, and was trying to mess with our minds, or didn’t know, and really did want to hold a party to celebrate five years of living in Maine. We kept our mouths shut, and played it by ear, enlisting a family friend to visit the weekend of the party and get our parents out of the house on Saturday morning.
As soon as they were gone, we got to work, setting up chairs and tables and putting out the food. There was the occasional irrational argument — “We do need to set up the badminton net!” “We do not!” — but arguments are inevitable when you plan an event with your sisters, and we actually kept our arguing to a minimum. The guests arrived on time, although there was a brief scare around 1:45 when the family friend text messaged to say they were leaving the beach. (“Go get ice cream!” we text messaged back. “Nobody’s here yet! Stall!”) Given my fear of public speaking, there was only one aspect of the party that made me nervous: delivering the toast. I couldn’t think of anything to say about my parents — they’re my parents, after all — but I gave it a shot, scribbling some notes on a piece of paper. The best joke was provided by a family friend, and I used it as my opener. “I promise this will be shorter than one of my dad’s sermons.” It went over well, as many of the guests came from the various churches where my father had served as pastor. Of course, there’s nothing like a little clergy humor to bring down the house.
I spent some time talking to my cousins, whom I hadn’t seen in years. A few weeks ago I wrote a post, which you can find here, about my realization that you don’t have to keep things forever. What I was unaware of is that Fosses do not throw things away, and that my inability to discard old clothes and knick-knacks has a genetic underpinning. Next to a photograph of my parents taken at least 20 years ago, my sister wrote, “They still own these clothes!” and my cousins found that perfectly believable, as my uncles have apparently never thrown anything away, either. “Do they still have pieces of the old slate roof up in the attic?” my cousin Skip wondered, and I confirmed that, yes, the slate roof is still in the attic.
All in all, we survived. As for my future career? Well, what do you think of Three Sisters Catering? It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
Answer: The head gasket. That could blow any day. I drive a 1997 Subaru Legacy with 175,000 miles on it. My goal is 200,000, which my friend Jack likened to flying to the moon.
