From Russia with Love

October 17, 2010

I got a fine case of the giggles the other night. Around 7:30 Friday evening, as I was being serenaded on my patio by a robust Russian woman singing folk songs in her native tongue, I happily wondered how I had gotten to this point.

Parties are strange beasts formed by cheese balls, both edible and human. From scanning the Sunday papers, I know that not all parties end up on a happy note. But it seems that the ones I go to--not that my list is long or enviable--always end in fits of laughter and earnest hugs.

How is it that we can manage to have fun together, how can we come up with something new to say when we spend so much of our time together each day? Surely, we already know each others' back stories, recalled and revealed over lunchtime leftovers, sometimes, repeatedly. Just as certain, though, is the element of surprise that teeters in the background when people gather to unwind.

Who'da thunk that I'd walk into my own living room, hardly recognizing the furniture in its new, if not temporary, spaces? I suppose I could have been appalled by the newly uncovered dust bunnies that surfaced, the candy-wrappered secrets now revealed by a couch that no longer harbored them. But, mostly, I spent my time trying not to pee my pants in delight. In my circles, a well-timed prank is like a love song. And I felt very loved by my furniture-moving peeps.

I didn't even mind that Parabi, the teacher from Bangladesh, wooed Hobbes the Hobo Dog with frightening amounts of brownies and barbecue chips, the threat of doggy diarrhea still pinched in a not-so-distant future. She seemed so happy and content to do this one thing in a land that otherwise was so foreign to her, that I could hardly begrudge her these acts of disaster-laced canine kindness.

When a party is in the works, few things can be planned for, beyond parts of the menu and a fresh supply of toilet paper. True, as the host, I get to set the time and date and invitation list. Yet, I could not have known that I would meet two Russians and an Egyptian, when the annual East High Fall Staff Bash began at my house Friday afternoon. I could not have anticipated the glorious overabundance of brownies, each uttering its own siren song, luring me to the table time and time again. I could not have known that John, with his impeccable party radar, would once again sense when to head to my house, unannounced yet warmly received.

And I could not help but be amazed that, even though I have known some of these people for most of my adult life, the conversations would be fresh and new, the moments together both anticipated and surprising. That they left willingly before my 9 p.m. bedtime was just the icing on an already excellent cake.