June 2, 1956
This entry was posted on 6/4/2006 9:34 AM and is filed under blather.
My parents celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary this year.
My family doesn't go for pomp and circumstance. We don't really do events. Tell us where the food and beer will be and when to show up and we'll party til dawn, but that's about it.
A perfect example was Jay's fiftieth birthday last year. He didn't want a party so I didn't plan one. Two days before his birthday, his brothers informed me that they were coming over with food and booze and Jay could show up or not, but they were gonna celebrate his big 5-0, dammit. Oh, and if I wanted any of my side of the family to come I'd better call them. Two days later, we had a hundred people drinking and dancing on the back deck.
Jay has since sworn off tequila forever.
Or until he turns 100.
But a fiftieth wedding anniversary??
My sister Katie decided that such a monumental milestone should not go unheralded. So last December she started sending out emails suggesting a party. An event. With a caterer and everything. The rest of us did our damndest to ignore her. Emails went unanswered, suggestions were not volunteered. Billy went so far as to email her "A caterer? I'm out."
But Katie persevered. Like a gassy wedding guest she just kept cranking out ideas and the rest of us tried to politely pretend we couldn't hear her. It's not that we didn't want to throw a party, it's more that we don't know how. Pretty soon Katie just started delegating. Heidi and Mary Jeanne were assigned invitation duty. Margy was pumped for pig roast info. Woody and Kathy were put in charge of beverages.
I left town.
By mid spring, plans were in full swing. Andy had been put in charge of organising the 5:00 Saturday evening mass at my folks parish. The mass would be in their honor and Hubbell siblings would do all the readings, be the Eucaristic ministers and grandkids would be greeting mass goers at the door and another mob of them would bring up the gifts. Hootie and Logan would be altar boys. It was taking on the dimensions of a Mickey Roony-Judy Garland movie.
I left town again.
I could run but I couldn't hide. Eventually the edict reached me; I was to order a cake.
That's it.
Order a sheetcake. Make it good and big and make sure there's lots of frosting. We like frosting.
Okay. I could do this. Any idiot can order a cake. So two weeks ago, I went to Sam's club and ordered a huge white cake with buttercream frosting and lots of golden roses and a big "50" on top.
Done.
Three days before the party I started having nightmares, all of which ended with me standing in Sam's Club in tears, wailing "all I had to do was order a cake, and I blew it!"
Ordering a cake gave me anxiety nightmares. And you wonder why we don't do events?
To be on the safe side, I started making bars. Several big pans of different kinds of brownies and desserts. Let me tell you, in this family, having no desserts is worse than having no beer.
Much worse.
But it all turned out okay, the cake was ready right on time and I delivered it to my parents house and we cleaned and decorated and by Saturday all was in order and ready to go.
The party was going to happen and it was going to be a smash.
As we all ran home to shower and change for church, Katie, responsible for this entire shindig, would stay at the folks house, deal with the caterers when they showed up, put all the last minute touched on the house and yard, light the tiki torches etc. to make sure that all was ready before the crowd descended. She had worked like a zealot for months to pull this off and she had to make sure that no last minute snafu undid all her hard work.
So she stayed at the house with the two four year olds, Vince and Molly, while the rest of us went to Mass and took over the old home church. The mass was beautiful, everyone looked great and Mom and Dad got to show off their incredible crowd of grandkids to the parish and all their friends who came to church. I panicked in my role as Eucaristic minister and I'm pretty sure I gave communion to Tucker and Jeff before it was consecrated but asside from that, it all went well.
An enormous convoy left the church and headed for home.
When we got there, the caterers had everything set up beautifully in the driveway, the tables in the yard were artfully sprinkled with gold confetti, the torches were lit...Katie had once again outdone herself.
In the house, Molly and Vince were on the dining room table, busy scraping the last of the golden roses off of the cake and frantically shoving them into their mouths as Katie lay passed out on the kitchen floor, her face comfortably nestled in what was left of the coconut bars, an empty bottle of vodka still clutched in her hand. All we got out of her as we shoveled her into a bed downstairs was "haaaapy b'rfday, (UUrrp) daaaaaad....."
At least it wasn't tequila.
