Relatives , that is. Relatives and friends and neighbors and classmates and teachers and stray passers-by…we’re talkin’ OPEN here. Bud.
It is officially Open House Season. Graduation is coming right up over the horizon, invitations are going out–informal/verbal or online or accompanying graduation announcements or in full-page ads in the public prints, for all I know. Catering establishments are being booked; delis and grocery stores are seeing an uptick in sales of indispensable party standards–chips & dips, sodas & “adult beverages”, the occasional run on potato salad, mustard & ketchup (spelled any way you like). Who knows how many of our “nearest & dearest” will show up?
This was all a revelation to me when I moved into the neighborhood (and reduced property values, no doubt) up here in Withering Heights. I, being the first of the “next generation” in the family to graduate from high school ( Grandma graduated in 1915, Mom graduated in 1938, miscellaneous aunts and uncles fit in line, attending one-room school houses out in Pittsfield township, then going for the big-time in Wellington HighSchool; all of us went to the same building, which had been added on to, most recently in 1953. Now it’s just gone and there’s a new facility across town. Startles me every time I go home there and see the big empty lot. Time marches on, I guess. I discovered at an alumni tour before that happened that my grandma played basketball! Who knew?!) So, anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, graduation. It was a pretty subdued affair compared to ceremonies nowadays and the graduation open houses were nowhere in the current league. A month or so before the big event, there was a “council of war”, so to speak, when my mom, my aunts, and my grandmothers–I think it was both of them, got together and made assignments as to who was making sandwiches, who was making banana/nut bread, who was doing cookies, who was to make the graduation cake (our school colors were–and still are–maroon and white, our class colors were turquoise and black–not great colors for icing back in the day), who was making the lemonade. And that was pretty much it. No taco bar, no buckets of pulled pork, no vats of chicken, no lawn games or coolers full of ice or music rocking out on the lawn…and it was all to take place–mine and everybody else’s, immediately after graduation. Full stop. I now get invitations across the summer–June, July, August; sure takes the pressure off, but it does tax my memory to manage to write these all down so I can show up on the right day at the right time, and remember to not eat anything substantial before I go off to these edible extravaganzas.
I am enjoying the photo/memorabilia displays too; everybody’s got pix of everything, every event/occasion/contest/recognition. Have at it, I say. Some of these folks have hardly had time to go home at night, looks like. There are just so many things to do–and they do them all. Onward and upward. I say.
