One of my favorite things to do when we’re having a party is leave the room.
See, we live in this little hole in the wall. The silverware doesn’t match and the furniture has seen better days and no matter how much I dust, it seems like there are always corners that never truly get clean. I think the rug is 10 years old. That kind of stuff.
Whenever we’re having a party it seems like the rooms are too small. Most of my friends my age have houses, with guest rooms that don’t double as storage, with yards and driveways and sets of china without chips in every plate. Basements. Patios. Things like that. And every once in a while when we’re having a party and I’m trying to figure out which two people can make seats out of the one piano bench and whether I can steal a card table from work to make more places to set up board games and I’m feeling insecure because somebody somewhere has something better and always will, I like to leave the room for a second.
Because it reminds me the house is too small to contain the laughter. It echoes down the hallway, and hearing it fill whole other rooms reminds me that a house too tiny to fit all those I love is a wonderful problem to have. Plates that are chipped because we’ve used them for so many meals, that’s a prize, not a punishment. Throw another handful of pasta into the pot and risk it boiling over — that’s the reward for a new face, a new friend, and the walls seem to expand then, and take in more than I thought they could hold.
I hope you all have somewhere warm to go today, and someone you love to spend it with. And I’m thankful that here, in our little virtual house, you ignore the fact that the forks don’t match, and dig into the meal anyway.
A.