A sad, but social, goodbye

You know how there are certain moments when you know you’re a grown up? Jonathan just had one, coming into the house lugging grocery bags for the goodbye party. We hosted it ourselves, not parents, not friends, but us… and it was good, but a little sad, with a tinge of surreal.

- It was meant to be an open house, but only 4 adult couples stayed for a bit then rotated. The rest of our guests were families with small children, who came early and stayed the whole time.

- This meant that we had 7 visiting families with kids, and including our own, that equaled 18 children under the age of 7 at our house for three hours. I actually loved it. Even the kids who hadn’t known each other beforehand played fabulously, and everyone was running, screaming, and jumping outside and inside, like old friends.

- At one point Connor and Lucy, the only other toddler, sat at the kid table together with their legs dangling off the chairs and calmly ate their snack, kind of looking at each other like, “Can you believe these big kids? They’re so loud.”

- I was mightily amused that one of the girls dumped all the Matchbox cars out on the carpet, but instead of racing them and going “vroom vroom,” as my children are wont to do, spent a good 20 minutes playing with them by organizing them in neat lines by color.

- The backyard became an epic battleground for armies, battles, and bad guy fights. Every toy sword, lightsaber, Nerf gun, and magic wand in our house was sorely tested.

- One adult guest, Melo, the camp director and Ari’s K’tonton teacher, wanted to take out Blackie the snake, so she and Jonathan had an entire gaggle of literally 12 children around them at one point. Xander confided to me later that Melo was one of his very few “grown-up friends,” who’s friends with him as well as with us. (That comment made me feel like such an adult, because I vividly remember characterizing my parents’ friends in the same manner.)

- Thank goodness Jonathan bought a nice large ice chest over my objections long ago – that thing was worth its weight in gold. We stocked it with water, soda cans, Capri Sun, hard cider, and then our friends know we don’t drink beer so brought their own. The Capri Sun ran out early on, so we then switched to white grape juice in cups… kids are very thirsty creatures!

- As we held it on Shavuot, a harvest festival celebrating the giving of the 10 Commandments, when you traditionally eat dairy, we served ice cream sandwiches and sorbet. It was a major hit with both kids and adults.

- I refused to say “goodbye” to anybody as they left, but merely l’hit’ra’ot, see you later. Otherwise I’d cry.

By the end, our living room looked like a toy hurricane went through it. It still looked like one for a few days, actually; I left to go to the Confirmation service right after the party ended (or before it ended; one family stayed for dinner and more playing). When I got home I packed for my trip to Atlanta the next morning, where I spent three days at a conference.  Jonathan dealt with the kids on his own, and had to do a whole lot of clean-up!