Different Slants

So, all the volunteers gathered, and started putting all the pieces together.

I schlepped all the food from home. Rana and Bruce, Dana Kruger, a grown-up childhood friend of Sarah’s older sister Rachel, was there, too.  Donna was commandeering the kitchen, doing six things at once.  Joy was setting tables and others were blowing up balloons with helium and making little table decorations in Sarah’s colors.

I did whatever I was told to do.  Bruce brought in the cake.  A man’s job.  All the place settings were distributed, carefully, making sure that family members who couldn’t stand each other weren’t sitting at the same table.  Then there was the Republican table and the Democrat table, and so on.  Complicated.

As we left the party room, Donna pulled me aside in the kitchen.  I didn’t resist.

She informed me that she wasn’t accepting any payment for her work at the party.  I was stunned at this news, and immediately protested that she was wonderful to make the offer, but she had worked so hard and deserved to be paid.  Besides, I told her, I already had the money ready for her.

But she brushed all that aside with a gesture of her hand and this “Don’t you get it?” look on her lovely face, saying,

“I believe in karma—what comes around, goes around.  Besides”, she continued, “you’re out of work now and I’m not.  Ya know you’re gonna need it.”  

Not willing to let her do this to herself, I persisted and told her I really wanted to pay her for making the party possible because there was no one else who could have done what she did for us.

Donna is Italian and Catholic, or is it the other way around?  She fixed me with this This-Discussion-Is-Over look in her dark eyes and said in that unmistakable Italian way,

“Don’t worry about it.  Enjoy your party.”

I did as I was told.  One thing I’ve learned is not to argue with a determined woman, Italian or not.

Catching up to Joyce who was going into the temple’s sanctuary for Sarah’s Bat Mitzvah ceremony, I said nothing about it, but, feeling a little disoriented by my unexpected moment with Donna, I thought to myself,

Where do people like that come from?

But, her tribe increased.

A week earlier, Sarah’s older brother David had filmed her riding a horse she liked very much at a place where she worked, periodically, taking care of other people’s horses.  This came about in a spontaneous way, when the person (whom I am electing not to identify) who gave the riding lessons, was somehow able to figure out that Sarah was not just another rich kid from Barrington or Lake Forest.  I found out about this person, and this situation, after the fact.

(Read on …)

 Part 4

We went to our giant local discount food source, Costco Market, and bought sixty chicken breasts, for the adult guests, and some vegetables.  $100.00.

Then we went to a party supply center and bought pink, red and black paper and plastic plates, cups, balloons, napkins and boxes of assorted plastic forks, spoons and knives for our estimated seventy adults and thirty children.  And a bubble gum pink, portable, disposable helium balloon-inflator.  Another $150.00. 

We ordered a cake we estimated was big enough—although only a single layer—from our local bakery.  A red velvet cake with a large full-color horse on it, because Sarah, our Calamity Jane, loves horses.  $110.00. 

Our avant-garde filmmaking son, David, Sarah’s thirty-year old brother, agreed to bring two of his break dancing friends as unconventional entertainment, mostly for Sarah’s friends who won’t expect it.  $100.00. 

There was a sale at Walgreen’s on Coke’s two-liter bottles. Four for $5.00.  We bought twenty for $25.00. 

Sarah’s older sister, Rachel, sixteen years older, took Sarah to buy a special dress with her own money. 

Sarah’s other older sister, never mind, Lisa, whose new baby Natalia makes Sarah Aunt Sarah (and who also makes Joy and I grandparents) had Sarah’s ears pierced and bought her beautiful earrings.   

Joy’s sister Gail’s daughter Erika brought a large fruit bowl for dessert. 

I was the photographer.  I actually am a photographer, but that’s not the point.  I’m not for hire. 

(Read on …)