B.'s Party

Yesterday afternoon and evening K. and L., our closest neighbors, held another great party, and my wife and I attended. It was great partly because there was no need to get into a car and drive anywhere. We had only to walk up our driveway and across the road. That is the best way for things to be.

The occasion was the graduation of K.'s and L'.s younger son, B. from college at Guilford, in N.C., and the guests included, as K. had advertised, nearly everybody in the county -- that is, all the "alternative lifestylers" that they and we knew, plus a great many young people that Esther and I didn't know, because they were frends of B. or of his brother K., or because they were former toddlers of the lifestylers who had now all grown up and were now largely unrecognizable, although only one actually told me who he was, so that the identities of the rest could be only conjectured.

I had a great time. I talked to a large variety of people, some of whom I had never seen before, and I am still mystified as to how and why that happened.

One of the less pleasant aspects of getting to be so old is that you run into that ancient bugaboo of people, some of them even just a few years younger, who don't have much time to spend on the aged. Even close friends are so busy and so bound up in their own continuing sagas that it's hard and often impossible to get their attention and to hold it. That can't be helped, and it's natural. Maybe I was the same way when I was on the other side of that equation, decades ago.

But at these parties held by my close neighbors and friends, I have noticed that nearly everyone I talk to has much more time to talk to me and to actually let me finish everything I want to say, while taking what is obviously genuine interest in my ravings, that I try to keep brief, for fear of being cut off.

Captive audience? Maybe.

But I noticed that last night especially, no one could say anything to me that I couldn't relate to in some way, though I was most interested in what seems to be consuming me these days, and that is the horrible lack of simple courtesy of the teabaggers. And I was able to do this all evening while not even drinking anything, beyond a few draughts of root beer, though at the end some young guys from Louisiana insisted on drawing me a full cup of alcoholic beer from a keg, which, however, I didn't finish because by then I had been on my feet for a long time, and it was past my allotted time to walk back down the hill in the dark to my house sweet house and to sit down and trade with Esther our accounts of all the people we had seen and talked to and all the ramifications thereof.

We had even managed to pass a few words with the star of the party, B., though only for a few minutes, as he spent the beginning of the party pitching horseshoes up the road at G. and C'.'s place, and he spent all the latter hours of the party playing drums on the porch of his father's pottery studio, along with his father on guitar and his brother on bass, along with other musicians. But then we had already talked with B. many times over the years, and there should be many other occasions in the future.

And today, incredibly, the party time continues. An art acquaintance from times past, a lady, called me the other day to invite me to the opening of her new show at the county library this afternoon. I will be well prepared to talk on all the topics that are bound to be brought up there, too, though I won't be overjoyed if I am asked whether I am still painting, and to be asked why I am not.