377 days - blog #143, Anticipation

It’s 5:58 when I start this.  The point of the day when I’ve finished all the prep work and cleaned… enough that I’m okay with showing my house to visitors. I’ve showered and gotten dressed.  I’ve even turned up the thermostat.  All the lights are on – Christmas lights.  I actually plugged in all the candles in the windows, a completion I’ve only done a few nights this week.  I have a glass of wine as I sit in front of the fire.  And wait.

Anticipate.

It’s like those few minutes when you wait behind the curtain or in the dark for the lights to come up and start the first scene of the play.  Or the last hours of waking before going to sleep on Christmas Eve as a kid.  You know something exciting is coming.  Unpredictable.  Something to which you have looked forward for a while… and worked a bit to make it just right.  Well… sort of just right.

This is the last supper club of 2014.  It draws to completion five years of supper club dinners.  I have missed a few – and had two in a couple months.  But that basically means this is somewhere around my 60^th consecutive monthly dinner party.

The theme is the twelve days of Christmas.  I have claimed the verses for 1, 10, and 11.  I’m baking brie with pear and caramelized onions.  I tried to make a clumsy decoration of a tree and a bird with the crust… but decorative pastry is not my forte.  For 11 pipers piping, I’m making flautas, a Mexican dish that are supposed to resemble flutes (or pipes).  For 10, I found an idea on the internet.  In the Elizabethan times, a roast beef was called a baron of beef.  I’m make a rus with capers… for the 10 lords a leaping.  Oh – and because the person who claimed 2 canceled, I did pick up some Dove chocolates at the store yesterday.

I’m curious to see how my guests interpret the other verses.  

That’s part of what has been fun about this routine – seeing how my guests imagine a connection to the theme. 

Five years.  Wow.  A lot has happened/not happened/changed in those five years.

But I really only have a few minutes before I need to go back to those last minute cooking preparations.  So I’ll save the reflection for the next one – our official anniversary party.

I was prompted to start this blog not so much about the anniversary, but the thought of how this is what Christmas spirit is about.  Having a meal with friends.  Letting conversation linger over glasses of wine.  Sharing hopes and thoughts and laughter.  Connecting with other human beings in a very real way.  No phones.  No internet.  Just the organic moment of talking and being present with one another.

I don’t expect a lot of wrapped items under the Christmas tree this year… but I am pleased to know that sitting in front of it will be a group of friends enjoying the warmth of the fire and one another’s company.  I am even more pleased to know that I don’t have to wait until Christmas next year to have it that warmth again.