Company For Dinner

I am a bad blogger. Bad, bad. My last post was TWO MONTHS AGO. Probably no one will even read this because you've all given up on me and stopped checking ages ago. If blogs could have cobwebs, this one would be covered with them. Okay, enough self-flagellation. (and I actually looked that up to see how to spell it. One doesn't often use the verb "flagellate".)

So last week we had a couple of friends over for dinner. You may think I'm saying that casually, as if it happens all the time. It doesn't. If I may use the 'cobweb' thing again, then my good set of dishes should also have been covered with them. Anyway, these two friends are at the very least well-off, and one is actually what you call 'rich'. We, on the other hand, although comfortable, are neither well-off nor rich. Our condo is nice, but kind of small, and we're not really in the habit of entertaining. However, these lady friends of ours are so wonderful, and so comfortable to be around, we had no qualms about inviting them over. And I sure wasn't worried about the dinner part. My husband is a great cook. He's Sicilian, and I think they are all born with an innate ability to throw some garlic, onions, and olive oil in a saute pan and begin creating delicious things to eat. No problem there.

We did all our prep work the day before, and had a ball. He lets me say "we", and he even graciously shares credit with me, when in fact I'm more like the surgical nurse handing him tools and implements.
Him: "Pan."
Me: "Pan."
Him: "Olive Oil."
Me: "Olive Oil."
Him: "Knife."
Me: "Knife."
Well you get the picture. (I did make the dessert, which is my specialty, and if I do so say so, it was really good.) Anyway, we had fun, and it gave us a very good feeling of being prepared, and a calm sense of knowing we could enjoy the day and their good company.

Now don't be expecting me to report a big disaster at this point, because there wasn't any. Yes, it would probably make for a much more interesting story, but I'm pleased to report that dinner was a big success, and we had a wonderful day. I set a nice table, using all my best stuff, the condo was in good order (I'd been using some vacation time to get in the corners lately. Trust me, that doesn't happen often either. Some people do Spring Cleaning. I do Decade Cleaning.) I got to use all my wedding gifts, and we even had some really good coffee to offer with dessert. It was a fine day.

The funny thing is, I kept trying to put my finger on how it made me feel. I was kind of proud of us, and pleased that our guests had a good time, but it was more than that. And then I finally figured it out: IT MADE ME FEEL LIKE A GROWN-UP. I'm almost 55 years old, and I still think like that. For so many years we were immature musicians on the road, unmarried, renting one place after another, using borrowed or hand-me-down furniture, and indulging in bad habits, and partying till dawn and on and on. Now, all these years later, it still occasionally feels so recent, and I'm still getting used to being a grown-up. I gotta tell you, I LIKE being a grown-up. And I thank God we survived to get to this point. And you know what else? We are
rich. We love and respect each other, we feel blessed to have a place of our own, and we know God is always with us. Someone once said, "He is rich who knows he has enough". That's us.

So maybe we'll invite somebody else and do it again. We've kind of got the hang of it now, and what the heck, the place is still almost clean.