A Garden Party

"After every storm the sun will smile; for every problem there is a solution, and the soul's indefeasible duty is to be of good cheer." -William R. Alger

In two days, it's Mom's 60th Birthday. We celebrated a couple of weeks early. I have two amazing sisters who can put together beautiful parties. Every detail is carefully thought through, and the food is always absolutely delicious.

Here is the watering station. Just about every kind of flavored water you could think of.

Here is the dessert table, complete with darling Swedish checkerboard cookies and Swedish gingerbread cookies. The cupcakes were divine, just the right amount of almond extract.

And here is the candy table, featuring many of Mom's favorite candies. She is a sucker for black licorice. 

Everything was decorated in beautiful teals and burlap. Angie and Alicia had raided Mom's scrapbooks and printed beautiful photos of her life.

The spread was fabulous. Delicious BBQ, veggies, salads, salsas, corn on the cob, and corn bread. One half of the table was more Mexican fare, and the other half was more Southwestern. I frequented both halves.

The venue was Alicia's darling backyard, where the shade and privacy is plentiful.

There stands the birthday girl with all of her daughters and daughter-in-laws but one.

What I have not mentioned and failed to get a single photo of, was the massive cloud burst that hit about 45 minutes into the shin-dig. Our family doesn't make big plans very often, but when we do, you can almost always count on a crazy storm. The weather forecast assured us that all would be well, but this is the Fellows family we're talking about here. We remained confident, as it began to sprinkle, that this minor inconvenience would quickly move along. Tony put up his awning over the food table, just in case.

Suddenly, without warning, oh I suppose there was warning, we were just too busy enjoying our tacos and sandwiches to notice, the heavens dropped every ounce of moisture they had been harboring onto our little celebration, as the wind began to rage. Part of the group made a run for the tiny back porch, the larger part sought shelter under the tiny awning. And then the rain really came. About twenty people were trapped under this tiny awning with two tables of delicious food. The rest of us stood on the patio in stunned silence. No one dared make a run for it. We were all in our garden party attire, and a sheer drenching was imminent. Some of Mom's co-workers had showed up at the party just as the cloudburst hit and were stuck under the canopy with family members. They began to introduce one another and get acquainted.

It became apparent that the rain was not going away anytime soon. I was in Alicia's kitchen, putting the cupcakes in a safe dry spot, because heaven forbid the desserts get ruined, when I looked up at the window to behold quite a sight. The awning was coming toward me, as were the twenty people under it, as were the two tables of delicious food. The frantic guests, after getting to know one another better, had devised a plan to get themselves, as well as the food, to shelter. Everyone grabbed a table corner or a canopy post, and on the count of three, everyone lifted and began walking briskly toward the house. The cackling coming from us porch onlookers must have rung through the neighborhood, because it was hilarious. 

Any formality that the guests might have been suffering from before, had completely dissipated, and everyone now worked quickly to move the food and the party into the house. The beautiful garden party was now a tiny living room party, but no matter. The food had been preserved, so we were all happy.

The rain did eventually stop, then we all worked together to move the party back outside. The men messed with burlap, trying to get it to look as pretty as it had looked when they arrived. But none of that was important. It was getting dark, and the temperatures were now cool and comfortable. The evening began a garden party, and it ended a garden party. Mom was able to blow the three candles out, each candle representing two decades, on her lovely marzipan cake. She and her sister were probably the only ones who enjoyed a slice. As children, their mother would come home from work, on their birthdays, holding a marzipan cake from the bakery. The rest of us ate about five cupcakes.

Mom joked throughout the evening that the crazy storm was a fine representation of her 60 years of life. Since her childhood, Mom has made delightful plans for her life, only to have them altered by severe storms. She has always had the remarkable ability to pick up the remnants of her dreams, move them to another location, and begin work on a plan B. Mom's life is the beautiful  execution of one Plan B after another. It is her resiliency that allows her to shed a small tear for the dreams unrealized, begin work on the new dreams, then look back and laugh at the comedy of it all in the end. And that is why I love her. And that is why I loved this garden party gone wrong, but not really, everything about it went completely right. A vast majority of the delightful people at that party would not have been there if it weren't for the storms and the Plan B's of Mom's life. The night couldn't have gone more perfectly! Happy Birthday, Mom! We love you!