Vergil’s Coffee

We had this plan to invite our friends over for a joint-birthday party. We were going to send out “Save the Date” postcards or e-cards with something like “The Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything.” But as we got out of September and then on to the week of Thanksgiving, Lori asked me “So, are we going to do this or not.” I hedged and then said something like “Let’s decide later on.” And later on became no.

This month, Lori and I are turning 42 and we thought it would be fun to have a little get-together with people we liked in celebration of our birthdays with a Douglas Adams theme (he’s the guy who wrote The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in which the answer to the Ultimate Question is simply 42). Instead, by ignoring the planning and all, we had a small family gathering last night with food and a few gifts.

It was a nice evening.

Apparently as you get older you are supposed to get wiser (or at least talk more like you know more with more contemplative pauses and slight starring off to the side pondering stuff…or perhaps trying to remember what you were talking about in the first place). I think Lori thought I wanted a party to celebrate this getting “wiser” thing, but I really meant it when I said “No really.”

Perhaps it’s just thinking about the planning that goes into such an affair and I wonder if that’s the reason why I didn’t have many birthday parties growing up.
I can only remember two times when my Mom planned a birthday affair for me: once in 3rd grade–the same year when I almost got my eye shot out with a BB gun that my brother was shooting in the house at a green-glassed wine jug filled with spare coins; the other, when I had to un-invite Jeff Graves from my party in 6th grade.

The one in third grade was supposed to be a surprise party in which I walked in on (apparently there wasn’t a “look out” and I waltzed in on the “setting up” portion of the surprise party). And I think the point of a surprise birthday party is that the birthday boy (me) is supposed to be surprised by the “Surprise” because, well, he’s not to know what’s going to happen when he opens the door to a celebration of his birth.

Instead, I opened the door of the atrium, saw my brother and sister setting up the streamers and the bear-themed place settings, figured out that they were doing something that I shouldn’t be seeing and quickly closed the door, tiptoed down the concrete steps and walked down to the end of Washoe Court where it met Neotomas Avenue. (I think I felt bad that I had interrupted their fun that was going to be my fun). I then, somehow, got very loud as I approached the door (for the second time that afternoon), and was told to “Wait a moment” by my mother. Eight minutes later, I was invited in and “Surprise! Happy Birthday!” to which I was just happy to eat some Safeway store-bought cake (I wasn’t really a fan of the bear theme). But the balloons and bear-themed place settings (yes, we even wore the bear-themed hats and the bear-themed party favor noise makers) were all planned by my Mom and as I think back on it, that took a lot of energy to pull off.

So I guess I was surprised in 6th grade when she said I could have some people over from school for a birthday party (aka the “friend party”). I had changed schools that year and my new school was a small private school and my class only had 23 people in it. When my Mom said I could have a friend party, I thought it best to spread the news by word of mouth. So at recess and lunch by the monkey bars and swings and during games of kick ball, I personally invited every one of the boys in my sixth grade class to my house for a birthday party for me.

These were my new friends and I was happy to hear that most of the boys said “Yeah, sure” to my invitation. And then one night, let’s say the Tuesday before the Thursday-scheduled friend party, my mom started to get the details of my birthday ( and I want to say that I didn’t have to remind my Mom that I was having a friend party in two days; I’m sure she knew about it). And now we get to the one detail of the story that Jeff Graves will remind me of every 2 or 3 years…and with good reason: My mom asked how many she should plan for and I said “15, I think,” and she said that would be too many and perhaps I should only invite 10 boys to my party. I could un-invite Brad Frost, my neighbor friend, and just tell him that it was going to be a school friend party (I think our relationship took a turn downward after I started at the new school). I then counted up how many boys were in our class and I came up with the number of 11 boys that said “Yeah, sure” to my verbal invite.

So, as I went down the list and was making my hand-drawn Snoopy invitations, I decided on keeping Paul Connors D’Arcy and axed Jeff Graves from the list. And as I handed out the hand-drawn Snoopy cards the next day, every boy in Mrs. Addis’ 6th grade class got the official document…that is, except Jeff Graves.

The party was, fine. Everyone who was officially invited came, and we ate cake and it really wasn’t very exciting (I don’t think we—me or my mom—had a plan for the evening and so there was a lot of standing around and a few “What should we do now?” comments). But, as the boys in my class were at my house for my party, one boy, Jeff Graves, stayed home.

Jeff Graves went on to be my best friend through high school and I’m really not sure whatever happened to Paul Connors D’Arcy (I think he was from a foreign county…Canada, perhaps?)

We have “friend” parties for our boys and those parties have become quite the ordeal. In short, there is actual planning of the two or so hours of friend time measured out on an agenda that accounts for each moment from friend arrival to friend departure. We’re not that uptight; we’ve just learned that too much unstructured time can turn into chaos and more clean up later. So, it’s no wonder that when the “Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything” party for Lori and me never made it’s way out of the discussion stage. I think I would have enjoyed the design of the invitations, but the rest of the planning and the actual inviting and RSVPing and wondering if anyone would show up wouldn’t be that fun.

Instead, we ate lasagna and bread and salad and had Ghiradelli chocolate brownies for dessert along with some coffee.

Sometimes I wonder what today would have been like if we had the party and how we would have been relieved when people actually showed up and we would have actually enjoyed having friends over to the house and the boys getting to see a birthday party for Mom and Dad and remember some reference to a Douglas Adams’ book. And, I wonder if Jeff Graves would have reminded me of the time I didn’t invite him to my 6th grade party when all of the other boys in our class got to go.

Instead, I’m sitting at my sons’ piano lessons and I’m listening to Evan sightread “Greensleeves” while Colin watches “Fiddler on the Roof” on the portable DVD player in a corner in the hallway to the front door.

Maybe 42 isn’t the only answer.