The Ancient Shindig

I have told this story before.  And I’m sure, by the time I have run out of words, I will have told the same stories so many times, my children will be able to build a simulacrum out of the bits they remember. 

Anyway.  As I have said, my father is a craftsman.  His hands have always ached to bring things into being the same way mine do.  Hey—maybe we also think in pictures, somehow, and it’s a little like my not knowing what I’m thinking till I say something out loud, or write it.  Like throwing paint on an invisible cat so you know where it is.  But then, you’d have little cat prints all over the couch and the countertops.  So I can see by this that embodying things may not always be the wisest thing?  My point here is, maybe we make the things that we have in our heads so that we can hold them in our hands and see what they are.

The day of the shindig.  Odd light, after storm light.  Sun breaking through heavy clouds.

Can anybody say “tangent”?

One of my father’s treasures is whimsy.  Apropos of this, I realize that I have no idea how he first discovered The Christmas Carol, and when he fell in love with it.  I know when I fell in love with it, and all my discovery is tied to that lilting recitation of my father’s.  I need to ask him about that.  I wonder how many things I need to ask him, but won’t even think of until it’s too late to ask?

At any rate, whimsy and a traditional feeling of Christmas do very well together.  And so it was natural that tiny creative drives should yield tiny created things.  And on that scale, the things become ornaments.  I think I was the one who actually started the ornament ritual in our family.  Dad did gifts.  I did ornaments.  Fancy, crazy felt birds, straight out of Better Homes, the first time—when I was in junior high?  And those later morphed into very small felt singing birds with fancy embroidery on their wings.

We were actually afraid people wouldn’t make it through the snow.  Note grown kids who like to hang with the old folks.

You shoulda seen Phil in his hat and duster.  The leather vest was only the beginning.  The Canadian cowboy.

Using the hearth as a couch.

When I left home for university, mom and I started the tradition of making ornaments for each other every year.  Mom was interesting: her gift was to create and maintain order, I think.  She seemed to love plainness and orderliness.  But maybe I’m wrong about that.  Maybe she was frightened by the Woman’s Impossible Job—as I have been, and held it back with a whip-and-chair combo of irons and organized closets?  Or maybe she was left blinking by staying home to be the housekeeper and needing to balance all that potentially empty time—she had been a scientist in school, active and social and dynamic.  There is a guilt that comes with filling days with reading or doing entertaining things, and maybe the antidote could be ironing sheets while she watched Mike Douglas?  I had my own antidotes.

Now that I can’t ask her these questions, I’m beginning to think I really didn’t know her very well.  I never took the time.  She was mom.

She didn’t create things spontaneously.  I think she didn’t.  But she enjoyed making things when she had a pattern.  The things she made didn’t take on life.  But the love that went into the making still remains in the things I hang on my tree every year.  So my tree has both my mom and dad hanging on it, and their things do say something about the difference between them, and about their love for me.

Deb’s elegant silver trees

But I meant to talk about the shindig.  When dad was bishop, he and Mom started this ornament party, and they held it every year for a while.  The guests – and they did this mostly just with the bishopric couples, so it was a small group – each had to make a hand made ornament and wrap it – then they’d do a white elephant thing with the gifts, opening and stealing from each other by rule.  (By the way, what’s the deal with adding “no gift over three bucks” to the concept of white elephant, which is supposed to actually be some weird thing you’ve inexplicably had lying around the house forever??) 

The sweater is a half cheat, as the garment itself was purchased.  But points to Les for finding it and adding the rest.  The star actually collapses into a tiny book, bound by Chaz – a secret treasure.  Phil’s Canadian birch bark canoe, leather trimmed.  Just like the real thing.  Except it won’t carry anything.

The best ornament they got out of it was this popsicle star painted red on one side, with the words “Wrong side. Turn this side toward tree” brush-written on the other side.  Yeah—I’ve told you about that one before, but nobody really remembers what I write anyway, and I really, really liked that ornament.  The one they treasured most was a plain red ball with the word “love” on it, painted in  small, crudish letters.  I was pretty disdainful of that ball when I saw it, but my parents just said, “You’ve got to know this sweetest woman.”  Which taught me a thing or two about myself.

Terri’s petit point.  She does incredible work, and my quick and dirty photo did it no justice.  Rosemary’s spool tree (you have to wind them yourself), and Tricia’s Deer Valley Ent.

So I stole the idea.  And thirty years ago, I started that very kind of party for ourselves.  It was the second year we were married.  The first year, we had no carpet.  The second year, we had carpet but no furniture (which pretty much describes us for that whole first decade), but were young enough to invite people who didn’t mind sitting on the floor.   We set the eternal tone for the party from the beginning—it was a mix of friends (we had no family up here) from all the different corners of our lives—old roommates, musician friends, neighbors/ward members.  The group was really little back then, but we had great fun.  So we did it a second year, and added a couple more people.

Danny gets Quint’s regift of the famous pot lid xylophone.  It sounds really beautiful, by the way.  The addition of gold painted wooden spoons for striking.  A leg full of Steven’s politics.  Notice how egalitarian.  And Lorri’s adorable Frank, on his way back up the chimney.  We won him.

Thirty parties later, and the core is very much the same as it once was.  People have come and gone, and the group got too large at one point and had to be re-designed to accommodate the fam.  But the pattern has always been the same: some fam, some friends who are like fam.  The guest list is limited by tradition, the actual time it takes to get through the game (which can be exhausting if you are not up for it and could last a week if we weren’t fairly stern with each other) and most severely, by the size of my living room, which is anything but grand.

Bob’s hand carved captive balls.  Rachel’s charming embroidered cottage (no, she is not still on drugs).  Gaye’s “little stitchery” – applique with embroidery.

It’s a motley crew.  Many musicians, some artists (like those categories are mutually exclusive – ha!), some moms, some dads—some employed, some winging it—we’re funny and egotistical and wry and silly and generally full of good cheer.  Certainly, we are very willing to like each other very much.  Friendships that would probably never have happened otherwise in time and space have happened because of it, like this party is a tiny crucible—and Dick who is really old is buddies with Chaz and Murphy who are just babies, and so it’s all been wonderful for all these many years. If I had a bigger living room, we’d just schedule a week for this thing and make sure everybody we loved was there.  It would last almost as long as Hanukkah then, and we’d have to add on more bedrooms, then, too.

Cam’s incised Coke can.  He has this high speed carving drill, and he cut the reindeer out of the metal, then backed it with translucent material.  You set it over a light and it glows.  We won that one, too.  And Steve’s beautiful dove of peace, wood carved.  We have a collection of Steve.

Before the actual game, we went around the circle, just out of interest, and asked how long people had been married to each other.  Forty-six years.  Thirty five years.  Thirty four years.  Thirty, twenty six—and on it went.  If nothing else, we at least seem to be stable folks.  Sort of.

Rachel’s son Colin’s soft white bunny (as sweet as he is) as rendered by Brian, whose love for all is evident.  Danny and Rebecca’s miniature picture cubes of the party itself.  YAY!!

A benign Dick ornament this year, a regifting of Marvin’s whales, made over into a pod.  And a pun.  Melanie’s tiny blocks, symbols of the Christ with legend, and Johanne’s cheat: asking her twelve year old son to come up with something for her – but he did great.  I charge food fines for things like this.

Rachel, preserving her sanity – no, her immune system.  Or trying to manipulate everybody by playing the pitiful card???

My snowflake and G’s fly-tied beaver.  Phil opened it, leaped to his feet and declared, “This is a Canadian Beaver!! The noble symbol of Canada!!!  Oh, well done!”

As you can see, I took pictures.  Last year, I started taking shots of the actual ornaments.  I keep a journal of ornaments.  Laugh.  Go ahead.  But I have my tree catalogued by year and maker.  At least, I think I got last year’s on the list.  This is because when I die, I want the kids to know where all this junk they inherited came from.  And it’s always nice to have an answer to, “Where the heck did we get THIS one?”

            Conclusion: it’s lovely to have friends.  And to make little shiny things.  And to eat fun food.  And to have something to look forward to.  What would I trade for all this?  Everything I have traded for it, I guess.  Whatever those things were, I think I got the good end of the stick.