Enjoying the Party....

The older I get, the greater my conviction that life is a party.

Of course there are bad elements tossed in with the good experiences. I'm not suggesting we should make light of life's tragedies but, in general, we seem to vascilate between making a big deal of  misfortunes and being grateful for the good things that happen.

I'm convinced the best of life occurs in between, in the messy, unpredictable, quirky, wonderful, magical, plain old ordinariness that often gets lost. There in the middle, a party is happening. If we take the time to notice.

I'm blessed to have several people in my life who share my love of celebrating. We plan parties for the big things, the little things, and the ordinary things. We even celebrate the unusual, and somewhat offbeat things. Which is why it seemed perfectly normal when my friends Debbie and Laena and I decided to have a small, intimate 1960s themed Christmas party.

The idea just sort of evolved. It started with a conversation about old family photos that my siblings and I found, merged with a suggestion that a retro theme party would be fun, and before we knew what was happening, we were caught up in planning a Christmas party circa 1962.

It was very important to us that this be a pre-social revolution sixties party. We weren't interested in the countercultural movement for this event. No beads and peace signs for us. We were going Camelot all the way. It was to be a casual party. An ordinary event from an ordinary time.

The goal was to try and make everything as authentic as possible so we could take photos. Lots and lots of photos. We work very hard at not denying our self-obsessed, narcissistic tendencies so pretty much everything we do serves as an opportunity to take photos. The retro party was no exception.

Of course, in addition to us, martinis and cigarettes would get top billing in all the photographs. There seemed to be a lot of those back in the day (martinis and cigarettes, I mean), so in keeping with authenticity, we felt it only right to include them.

At the last minute we decided someone had to be pregnant. Our theme era took place before the surgeon general got all fussy about things like smoking and drinking while pregnant so our photos had to show our 'with child' guest imbibing. The challenge to our gestational addition was that Debbie and I are too old and Laena's outfit didn't accommodate a spur of the moment pregnancy. The only other option was Anna. Game for her role as the preggers party guest, we immediately started padding her with towels.

But, a pregnant Anna presented further issues of authenticity. In the early 1960s a pregnant, unmarried, 17-year old would not have been socially acceptable. She would have been whisked off to live with a maiden aunt for the duration of her pregnancy. She would then return to her community with the story that she had attended an extended cheerleading camp and all would, semingly, be returned to normal. People of that era really hated to be bothered with truth and reality. Consequently, our mommy-to-be needed to gain a couple of years. We solved all of this by giving Anna a sophisticated hairstyle...and a wedding ring...making her impending towel-birth far less shocking.

It is worth noting that neither Anna's cigarette, martini, nor pregnancy was real.

As we progressed further into the evening we added some drama by creating a little back story about Anna's husband being Laena's ex-boyfriend:

And Debbie as the hard living, cigarette smoking, martini drinking, cocktail waitress:

 

I tried to adopt the role of depressed, bored, housewife:

But this attempt was mostly unsuccessful because Debbie kept making me laugh. We ended up looking more like Lucy and Ethel:

I admit, this probably isn't a typical way to spend a Friday night in December. But it was a fun way. And later, after our party ended, I started reflecting on the fact that 1962 wasn't all that long ago. And yet, it was a lifetime ago. My lifetime ago. A lifetime of joy and pain. A lifetime of success and failure.

A lifetime of extraordinary, but more often, a lifetime of plain old ordinary.

There are times when I'm at odds with my own life, when things aren't just as I want them to be or, worse yet, when I don't even know what I want them to be.

But as time keeps pressing forward I am learning to notice the messy, unpredictable, quirky, wonderful, magical, plain old ordinariness of life. And I like it.

I learned a few things from Friday night: Life is short, make it as authentic as possible. Laugh a lot. Take tons of photos.

And enjoy the party.