Party Manners

Next week our baby boy starts college. He’s not going far, and he’ll be living at home at least for the first semester, but it does mark a big sea change in his life– the end of high school and all its constraints (even at a prestigious high school for the arts) and the beginning of a brave new world. There was no graduation party for him– there wasn’t even a weekend available for that in May. So tonight, we launched Julian, complete with a few Chinese lanterns and a single perfect, dramatic firework.

It was a grand party. Not huge, but companionable. His friends ranged in age from 17 to 70, and I think that speaks well of him. Though we spent the last several days madly cleaning and scrubbing and polishing the house, the party was entirely outside in the garden. But we’d spent a lot of time there too, picking up fallen apples, stringing lanterns, making sure there were no ugly surprises left behind by resident dogs.  Though we live in town, we’re on three city lots– and that makes for considerable yard work.

It was the kind of evening that leaves you glowing but contented. We are rich in our friends– this was something of a core group here tonight for me too, many of these same folks were at my 50th birthday party last winter. Like any party, we were missing a few– and that’s the nature of social events. Busy people are busy.

Still, it was a magical evening and we could not have asked for things to have turned out better. People were happy. There were no heated arguments. The weather was perfect– warm, but not beastly. Very little wind. No rain. We didn’t run out of anything, in fact if there was an off-note at all, it’s that sitting on top of the gas range tonight are six boxes of uneaten pizza. (Not to mention the two boxes I sent home with Julian’s friends.)It’s such a waste. I can’t give it to the soup kitchen. I don’t have room in the freezer, and with the diet, you know I’m really not interested in eating six pizzas. I ate more today than I should have, anyway.

I had asked Julian to confirm as many of his friends as he could– but it’s tough, these last weeks of summer. Some kids are already far-flung to colleges around the country. Others have family obligations before they leave. Others are well, a little flaky. That goes for some of my friends too, I guess.

I understand, completely, having prior commitments. Or that things come up unexpectedly. I understand (and sympathize entirely) with one friend who was totally felled with a migraine. What I don’t understand, at all, are people who received both hand-made written invitations and reminders via Facebook who did not bother to respond at all. I’m sorry to call you folks out like this, but some of you are repeat offenders and really, isn’t this beyond the pale? You could have at least said you couldn’t make it.

My mother always told me to appreciate the guests who made the effort and ignore the others and she’s right. I didn’t give a single thought to the absent all evening long. Why should I?  I guess those people just weren’t interested. And their lack of interest has been duly noted.

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Today’s target: 72 (yes!) 4629 steps

Breakfast:  egg and cheese on a biscuit. Lunch: two hard-boiled eggs. Strawberry. Dinner: 2 slices of chicken-spinach-bacon pizza, cupcake, slice of brie. Late night: 😦  two slices of veggie pizza.

Playdate

1968 playdate. We’re still friends.

This morning I slept in. I did a little work on the laptop, then jumped in the shower and got dressed to go to the theater this afternoon with my friend Rita. I forgot to eat. Wrote a couple of graduation gift checks as I raced out the door, as my son had a couple of playdates of his own. We saw Wicked. During the intermission, I cobbled together a “brunch” of trail mix and coffee with cream and sugar. While we were sitting and talking Rita asked about my pedometer, and in horror, I realized that I had not clipped it on. Rats.

Wicked was very good. Plenty of political allegory there and some interesting questions about race. I will be thinking about it for a long time to come. Rita has great seats at the best hall in town and I was delighted to be her date for the afternoon. It was over too soon. She dropped me off at home and I went racing up the stairs to get the pedometer and clipped it in its usual spot on my bra, and dashed out the door to the graduation party for Rob, son of our friends Jeff and Tracy.

Came home, and rummaged around the kitchen, finding little for supper. Ate Almond Pecan Cashew Clusters. Great snacks, probably less great as a meal replacement. Put my feet up to watch some bad television, then back to the computer to edit photographs, and here it is after one in the morning again. I guess this day was a wash, but I had a lot of fun. That’s worth something too.

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Target number 56. Steps– well, the recorded ones are 1635, but I think I missed about 2000. I will figure out what to do about the screwed up count before Monday’s day of reckoning. Today: trail mix, coffee, banana, small slice of cake, pulled pork sandwich (a modest one, on purpose) quarter cup of coleslaw, two cups of watermelon, one cup of cantaloupe, fun size Twix bar, three pieces of celery, five slices of bell pepper, a Ritz “crackerfull” and a quarter cup of “nut clusters.”  Tomorrow is another day.

Rhapsody in Blue

Six years ago, we vowed to move so that our son would not have to attend the local rural Montana high school. Montana didn’t fit us very well anymore, anyway. We’d outstayed our welcome. My husband had been there 35 years, 18 for me. Our son was born there, but it never quite felt like home. It isn’t the fault of anyone, really. That’s just the way it works out sometimes.

We sought out a public performing arts high school for Julian, and found an excellent one in Dayton, Ohio. He auditioned; they said yes, we moved. It’s a complicated thing to move literally lock, stock and barrel 1800 miles across the country. It took more than a year for the three of us to be living full time together in the same house again– no marital strife there, just logistics.

Julian started 8th grade at the Stivers School for the Arts in the fall of 2007. It is a place unlike no other. Julian has made friends from every walk of life there. Despite the fact (or perhaps because of it) that many of the kids are considered economically disadvantaged, and more than half of the students are “minorities,”  the school regularly makes the list of the Top High Schools in the U.S. It has produced more Gates Scholars than any school in the area. Last year, Stivers’ students carried off tens of millions of dollars in scholarships. The Jazz Band has won the National title three years out of the last five, they are always among the finalists.

The work the students produce in every discipline is breath-taking, far exceeding what anyone might think of when they think of “high school art.”

Tonight we sat and listened as our son, and 70 or so of his colleagues played their very last concert together. They played  Mozart and Ravel and Stravinsky. There were times when the violins were just a bit off. I’ve never figured out why the violins struggle so. During a brief pause when some musicians left and others arrived on stage, my husband leaned over and whispered about the violins. I shook my head.

“Think about Park High,” I whispered, and he laughed a little to himself. His older daughters went to Park High– one of them played in the high school band. Every performance was a trial of one’s doting parenthood. Stivers’ violin section on their worst day would play rings around them, well, it wouldn’t even be a contest. But then no ordinary high school could begin to compete with what the faculty and students of this school have wrought.

The school truly has given these kids wings. They’ve learned self-confidence, self-discipline, to hone the perfection that is in each one of them. I’m proud of my son, and I know he will go on along his own path, steeped in adventure and history and music. I am so grateful he found his artistic “home” at Stivers, it was perhaps the very best gift that we could have given him.

Tonight, after the Vivaldi, and John Williams, and Ravel and Stravinsky, the orchestra played Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. They’ve played it before and I was quite amazed then at their remarkable rendition. It’s not an easy piece for professional musicians, let alone an enormous ensemble of teenagers. But tonight, tonight was bittersweet, so exquisite. This was their last performance together, the last one with the orchestra’s extraordinarily talented clarinetist, Matt Quinn and the last performance with their incredibly gifted pianist, Christine Hoy and the last for Devon Kloos and Erica Harvey and Brady Hangen and Christian Stargell and Erin Pennington, and Paige Stoermer. And it was the last performance with them for Julian.  All seniors now, sporting medals on black and orange ribbons around their necks– all bound for glory somewhere else tomorrow. Some of these kids will play together again, but not in that hall, not in that school and not as the group they were tonight. The ephemeral quality of those bright and shining moments– it’s just about enough to break your heart.

This is the nature of children. They grow up, they astound us, they far surpass us in their dreams and plans and abilities. And we, as their parents, stand back and watch them fly away.

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Sorry, none of this is about weight loss or fitness, but occasionally you have to make room for real life.

Target today was 56. Steps 2463. Breakfast was yogurt with granola, a slice of toast. Later, a piece of baklava. (Honestly, someone get that stuff out of the house.) Took Julian out for a sandwich at Smashburger, I had a grilled chicken sandwich with a piece of avocado smaller than my thumb and a slice of bacon. Dinner was 4 oz of trimmed corned beef, and two cups of braised cabbage. We went out after the concert for an iced coffee, my husband and I split a cruller. Later, a cup of blueberries.