Dinner Party

Sometimes it all comes down to a handful of old friends sitting around a table enjoying dinner, celebrating a birthday, and conversing in the easy way folks do when there’s a common frame of reference and a long spell of shared history. In this case, the get-together is preceded by a drive past San Augustine and up a ridge at sunset, and we pull over for a moment to watch the sky glow crimson as the sun slips behind the black silhouettes of the hills and dips into the sea.

When we reach the house we maneuver our car so that it is pointing outward for easy exit later in the dark, and I step out mincingly in my inappropriate outfit…I am wearing a silk blouse, a short straight skirt, and a pair of high-heeled brogues –– my naughty librarian shoes. Jeanne and I often joke about the way we dress (or don’t) around here, but this is an occasion. There are two birthday honorees, each having turned or about to turn sixty.

The collective age of this small group, in fact, is surprisingly substantial; three have already rounded the corner of that particular milestone, and even the youngest are well into their fifties, and the funny thing is that we are still vaguely surprised about this, because weren’t we all so recently…young?

Time has indeed been marching on, taking its toll on all of us, but we’ve seen enough to know we’re lucky to still be here, and we lovingly remember an absent few who were taken far too soon. As is typical of our generation, many of us are currently facing the difficult challenges posed by elderly parents in accelerating decline, a topic that is broached at this gathering more than once. There are other shadows in the room: in the last two months alone, death visited two of our families; a dad and a brother are both suddenly gone. We feel vulnerable now, understandably so, and everything is a bit poignant. But we are also left with greater clarity, and profound appreciation for life in all its brevity and wonder, and if there is an opening for laughter, we will take it.

Besides, there is a baby on the way…soon this circle of friends will include a pair of grandparents! I smile, remembering the about-to-be father as a newborn in his mother’s arms here in this very kitchen, and a few years later as a "free-range ranch kid" (Lincoln Hollister’s expression) jumping out of a secret fort with an oak branch musket pointing at me as I rode by on my bicycle, and as a sixth grade boy stuck in my classroom and yearning to be elsewhere…probably the surf. Yes, they grow up, and they generally leave you.

But here we are, weathered and frayed, present and grateful.

Among those seated at this table are four talented artists, and the talk drifts to painting and places to paint. Which leads to the topic of walks, remembered or planned, maybe walks to secret waterfalls and sandstone pools, and Gary is still accusing us of returning without him to a certain mossy grove under cloak of storm and stealth to plunder the chanterelles he had his eye on.

But the truest treasures are the eggs laid by the Sacate hens, and we acknowledge our good fortune at living near The Egg Woman, and Jeanne reveals that when Gary buys eggs from the handcrafted wooden honesty box she has set up by her gate, he always leaves a sweet little note along with his money. Gary doesn’t deny it.

Even more telling about the age and stage of this group is the fact that the iPod soundtrack, left on random shuffle and amplified through a little portable speaker, has repeatedly been coughing up the likes of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, and even at one point (gulp) Donovan. The Donovan song seems over the top in its saccharine sentimentality, but there are no flinches or winces at all, since Monte, who might have flinched and winced, has somehow managed to tune it out.

In fact, Kit gets up and returns with an actual Donovan album (remember albums?) from his collection – it’s called Fairytale, and he’s had it since its release in 1965. He then tells us about Donovan's recent performance at the Maverick Saloon in Santa Ynez, and hands me a signed book of Donovan’s poems, in case I have a hankering to read it.

Now Bev brings out the birthday cake, a chocolate thing with six candles, one for each decade of the birthday boys’ lives, and before too long, it’s after eight, and the party seems to be winding down, not that it was ever wound up.

“Reminds me of the New Year’s Eve party,” says Gary, “when everyone left before nine. We couldn’t even make it to the countdown in New York.”

“We did!” I say. “The television was on…remember? I saw the ball drop on Times Square! That means we lasted until at least nine. We lasted 'til New York New Year!”

“Wasn’t that the party when Lee brought that box of Cuban cigars?” someone asks.

“That's right,” says Monte. “He was just back from Cuba. He said those were a gift from Fidel Castro.”

“From Fidel’s hands to our lips,” I say, remembering that we actually smoked them, and there is visual documentation of Bev and me doing so. (But we didn’t inhale.)

“Isn’t that the party Miranda and Xander came to? What did your daughter think when she saw you smoking that big cigar?”

“I guess it was another one of those, ‘Oh Mom’ things…”

“I still think it ended before nine,” someone else chimes in. “Because the surf was big…remember? And all the guys had to be up early the next morning for that. Yvon left first and came back in because his car was blocked, so a couple of people had to move their cars, and once you go outside to move your car, you might as well go home.”

“Yeah,” Kit concludes. “Everyone left all at once. Early. It was a Ranch thing.”

Come to think of it, if we were watch-wearers, we’d have been looking at our watches right about then. This dinner party was on the verge of wrapping up. There was a yawn or two, some clearing of plates, some gathering of bags and belongings, and a gradual drift toward good night.

Our car was in a good position, facing out, and clear, but once someone starts to leave and you get up to say good-bye and you’re right near the door, well, you might as well go home too.

We drove back along winding roads beneath a starry sky and a half moon waxing, and soon were reading sleepily in bed.

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