Stay of Execution

Showers

So in about five hours I'm hosting a double bridal shower here. The brides are a pair of sisters, and lifelong friends of mine, and there will be about 25 guests. This has been conceived and planned as an outdoor lawn and garden party. It is raining right now, but looking at the radar I think we might have some luck with us, and it may be clear by the time the guests show at noon.

I throw a lot of parties and I've learned there are things you need to forestall. Mostly that's the early arrivers, and the guests who aren't sure about making conversation with new people so instead come in and offer to help you as you're getting everything ready. A good hostess will anticipate this, and have discrete projects for these people to make them feel helpful and like they belong and are part of things. It doesn't do any good to have everything perfectly ready (plus you generally can't) but you've got to have the big stuff ready -- the food, the tables, the beverages, plates and napkins and cutlery. You've got to have the drinks and ice and limes and cream and sugar in a place where people can tend to them themselves, because you'll be managing the people who want to help you and you don't want to be the gatekeeper for refreshments. You've got to have a pretty good handle on the timing of everything, so you can manage that without being thrown off by all the people arriving and telling you things and asking you questions. You've got to have figured out seating and placement and a way to get people to gather in the rooms you want them to be gathered in. And you need to have little projects you can delegate without it getting complicated (and without it mattering terribly much if the project doesn't turn out the way you would have done it). So I have platters, serving implements, knives, napkins, tablecloths, empty vases, etc. out, and when a helpful guest comes in looking to do something hopefully it will not become a scavenger hunt around my kitchen, with me endlessly directing them and they asking a million small questions ("Where would I find a knife?" "Do you happen to have a slotted spoon?" "Do you think I should use this bowl or do you think that's too big?") In summer I like to send my guests out to the yard and garden with a vase and a knife, asking them to come back with flowers for the tables. They love that -- it's a pleasant and fun project, it gets them out of my hair while I fill the ice bucket or stir the pot on the stove or whatever, it has a lovely and immediately evident impact on the gathering, and I can heap credit on them at the table. It also tends to make the table decoration more elaborate and pretty than I would do myself -- rose petals scattered along the tablecloth, etc. Nice. Sometimes I set up a little artsy-craftsy corner with colored paper and card stock and glitter and glue and scissors and colored pencils and ask people to make placecards. Again, we end up with hilarious and creative little cards, the guests feel involved and pleased with themselves, and it gets them talking to one another, and I don't have them milling awkwardly around the kitchen.

Anyway, the sisters and their mother are helping organize this, and I think I've got things set out clearly enough that they can usefully help with setting up and arranging without me having to direct them around the cupboards and drawers of my kitchen. On my own list is hitting the grocery store for some last minute items, brewing up the sangria, and, when the rain stops, mowing the lawn. Might bake a couple of strawberry rhubarb pies if I have time. I have managed not to get a gift for either bride, which is ridiculous and unacceptable. Cards and IOUs will have to do.

Against All Instincts

I went to a tanning booth tonight.  I wore a bathing suit, and SPF 15 on my face, and squirmed around for five minutes wishing I were someplace else.  It was like being in a space capsule.  Closing the door when those bright lights turned on and standing there in the glow was really hard to do.  I don't like the idea of fake tanning (hell, I don't like the idea of real tanning) and I don't particularly like the claustrophobic and sterile execution of the idea.  I like the sun on my skin, and even though I slather myself with sunscreen I admit that I like the gradual browning and freckling that takes place from a summer of being outside.  But it's not supposed to happen in a space capsule, leaving an even coloration and no lines at all.  Totally unnatural. 

But I'm a bridesmaid and my dress is strapless and I'm reasonably pale.  All that would be okay except that the ordinary activities of my life -- sailing and puttering around outside, etc -- mean that I get freckly and brown (or sunburned and red) on my face and my forearms and the V of my neck and collarbone that is exposed by V neck shirts.  While my chest and upper arms remain ghostly white.  Not so suave looking in a strapless dress.  I'll be standing alongside two tall, willowy, and stunning women.  Not being tall, willowy or stunning I figure I should at least take steps to have a uniform skin color.  So I'll be going back for another four sessions, against all my instincts.

More on Grandpa

What my uncle Ben said yesterday is posted here, and my dad's words are here.

[UPDATE: Ellen's, Susie's and Anne's words are now up as well. I particularly like what Anne had to say. She's an Episcopal minister and I was very proud watching and listening to her as she ran the service.

And there's one more tribute to my grandfather that my father gave to him three years ago.]

The Mooring

There's a lot to say about yesterday, which turned into an all-day affair. A happy affair, really. But I don't feel like talking about it just now; I think I need to turn things over a bit more.

We held the reception following the service at the yacht club, and relatives and friends of the family kept asking me to point out my boat. I did so again and again but I was distracted by something. There was an eyesore of a boat, a bit, ugly, graceless powerboat with clumsy lines and a thick clunky canvas dodger, sitting on my grandparent's mooring. I'd noticed it on Tuesday night. Nobody knew whose it was. It bothered me to see it there. You just don't tie up to an empty mooring without asking. And this boat, well, it was really the ugliest one in the harbor.

As I watched I saw someone on board. They put out some fenders, one hanging too high, the other dangling too low. A woman poked haphazardly with a boathook at the mooring. And after some fooling around I was relieved to see them depart. It wasn't right to have a boat like that on that mooring. And I'd been planning to move my boat to that mooring; I'd told my grandfather I would, and had been looking forward to it both for sentimental and practical reasons. The reception felt better to me once I could look out at the anchorage without being distracted by that thing.

So a little later I went down to the dock in my dark suit and took off my fancy shoes, accompanied by some curious non-sailing guests, and we took the launch out to my boat and brought it over to my grandparents' mooring. And just as we approached who did we discover returning through the anchorage, approaching the mooring, but the Ugly Motorboat. I was sort of hoping they would come over and force an altercation, but the launch drivers waved them away and they skulked off to take someone else's unoccupied mooring instead. I tied up to the Fowler mooring.

I love seeing my boat there. It's a little thing but the geography of the anchorage has a meaning to me I probably can't explain. As a kid I grew up sailing little dinghies through a maze of moored boats, and the names on the moorings and the locations of the boats there literally gave me my bearings in the fog or the rain. I loved going past my grandparents' mooring, seeing Cadenza or Counterpoint or Firebird there, or seeing it empty or occupied by a visiting yacht and knowing my grandparents were off on a trip. When you know the boats within an anchorage, and the families who use those boats, each mooring has a story and a meaning attached to it.

I guess that's why some interloper in an ugly boat choosing to tie up to this mooring upset me. If they had asked us we probably would have said yes. Or I could have let him use the mooring I have further out. But they didn't ask, they don't know us. They have a really stupidly ugly boat. I want to step into that mooring space, to be the Fowler that people note is out sailing if they pass the mooring and it is empty. It's not just a place to tie up; to me it represents the legacy in my family of loving the water.

I expect this all sounds stupid. And I imagine it sounds impossibly yacht-y and snooty.

Oh No.

Perhaps people who find me on their Google searches for "Scheherazade" are actually searching for these. I'm sorry. I do not, myself, embody the best traits of a monkey, a cat, and a dog. Maybe the worst traits. So I'm not the Scheherazade you're looking for.

Psalms

I'm dressed for this memorial service and have no idea what to expect. I've only been to one before, a distant relative. The church was full of people I didn't know (a cousin I hadn't met before was introduced to me and exclaimed, "Scheherazade! Yes, we don't quite know what to make of having a name like yours on the family tree." What do you reply to that?). Anyway, this will be different. I don't know what it will look or feel like. I don't know what my role will be. At the post memorial reception my role will be the person who deals with details, I expect.

My aunt is an Episcopal minister and will be officiating at the service. She's asked my cousin and I each to read a psalm. The one she assigned me is Psalm 46. I'm practicing this morning. I don't know quite what to make of the psalm. I guess it doesn't speak to me in a particularly personal way. I'm not sure that matters too much, but I've been thinking about it anyway.

Hard Questions

The friends who ask hard questions are indeed the best kind. And who tell you gently but firmly if they don't buy your answers.

Hopelessly Un-Erudite

I'm ashamed to admit I have not (yet) read any of these important books. And lots more. I'll get to them eventually. But you can feel smug and smarter than me in the meantime; I'm sure you deserve it.

Ulysses by James Joyce. Also The Dead.
To a Lighthouse. Mrs. Dalloway
The Iliad
Gravity's Rainbow or even Vineland
The Tipping Point
Pride and Prejudice
On the Road
The Art of War.
The Prince (I've tried, though.)
David Copperfield
Moby Dick, for heaven's sake.
.....

I've become too depressed and self-conscious to continue. Everybody else has read all of those books, and all the other ones I've thought of including but got too morose to list. Do I get any points for having read Infinite Jest not once but twice? I never finished Crime and Punishment. Never read War and Peace. I've only dipped my toes into Nabokov's works. Hardly know any poetry.

I wish people would stop talking about "Bloomsday." It makes ignoramuses like me suffer from low self-esteem. Ignorami. See what I mean?

More About My Grandfather

My mom has written a nice piece on her blog about my grandfather.

Another cool thing was that when I called caterers I spoke with one who, as it turned out, knows my grandmother quite well. I ended up comforting her, but my own eyes filled with tears as she told me how much she loved and admired my grandmother, and how she knew well how strong my grandparents' marriage was, and how full of joy and positive energy my grandparents have always been. Cool. She said, I'll move whatever I have to aside to make sure we cater this. I know my grandmother will be so pleased to know that even the catering for the reception will be done by a friend. Three generations of our family have deep roots here, and turns out to be a great comfort. I feel prouder than ever to be part of this tribe, as I go around town and people mention to me that they've heard the news, they remember my grandfather fondly, and they're wishing the whole family goodness.

I Almost Forgot

It's All Request Day and I've already spent too many paragraphs gushing about sleeping aboard a boat, but one of my favorite things is at nighttime, just before bed, being out on deck to do something that involves the water. Maybe you need to get something out of the dinghy or put something (a bag of trash?) into the dinghy. Or maybe you need to dump the mussel shells or the lobster shells from dinner into the water. [Those of you who wish to take me to task for littering, just think about it for two seconds and then tell me where the sin is in this.] Or you had a bucket of ice that's melted and you want to pour the water out. One of my favorite things is being on deck under stars so bright you are amazed to look up, and doing something that stirs up the water and seeing the phosphorescent plankton glowing. I don't know the science about this but there are plankton with phosphoresence in the Maine water, and when you stir them up they sort of sparkle and glow. It's so great, to be on deck doing some kind of silly errand, the equivalent of taking out the garbage, and to cause this sparkly glow in the water, under these clear skies full of sparkly stars. I always take a minute to poke around at the water with an oar or something, just to stir up the little glowing critters.