Hope and Hospitality

I keep thinking about a party.

I'm a bit peculiar, I guess. I have this strong urge towards hospitality - some latent Irish genetic code making itself known - and I crave the sweetness of using the beautiful dishes and silver passed down through my family, from my Grandmere to me. I like doing things well; I love hostessing, my outfit just as ridiculously over the top as the mounds of food I want to serve my guests. My cheese boards alone could make a grown woman weep. Anyway, maybe I'm some housewife stereotype, but without a doubt, I'm an odd duck.

Five weeks - that's the number I've got stuck in my head for how long I'm supposed to be sequestered in my house. Maryland is shut down through the end of April, and while I'd like to believe the world will have righted itself by then, I know I have to mentally prepare myself for the possibility - probability - that there are more weeks of isolation to follow. The virus won't magically go away, and as long as there are foolish, selfish people determined to flout safety measures, all of us are at risk. But I'm clinging to those five weeks. For now, five weeks are the difference between me feeling trapped and me delighting in anticipation.

Because I do anticipate - I keep making plans, places to go and people to see. I think that's the only reasonable course of action, the only thing that'll keep us sane. We should look towards the future. We should hold onto the things we love. I miss my family so badly, even though they're a five minute drive away; I need a big hug from my closest friends. But I'll see them, I will, in the future which simply has to come.

So I'm thinking about a party. I'm thinking about grilling steaks and broiling mini crab cakes, and making my killer ghost pepper dip, and serving brightly colored mocktails, and playing my favorite albums. Doors and windows open, the whole house flowing with fresh air. I'm thinking about a mismatched conglomeration of friends and family and the hunger that we'll have, maybe, to socialize when we haven't for so long. My husband's board game group, my college companions, old friends and new friends and my nineteen year old sister and my extremely introverted parents. People I fall in love with more and more as they seem, now, so much further away.

And right now - now I feel grief, though I'm adjusting. I already had plans, you know? Just a few weeks ago I was meeting new people and doing new things, and I had enough focus to dig into my fiction. I'm not trying to shove myself into the very real grief of those who have lost loved ones to this vicious virus. I just... I think there is mourning for all of us. For the future we thought we'd have. The months spent caged by circumstance and anxiety. Powerlessness.

And idleness. There's a sort of consensus among the people I've talked to that we are experiencing a constant state of arousal cocooned in an unrelenting nothingness. The world is scary, and we are on alert - at the same time we are locked in our homes with not a whole hell of a lot to do. It's strange. We're not meant to be like this, as if we drank far too much coffee and then downed a couple Valiums, experiencing both to their full extents. And there's so much love, so much passion, so much desperate care, and we remain divided. Separate. All the feelings and none.

A very real threat of illness and death. Netflix, junk food, time spent on the couch.

Life continues. We pray that it does.

So in four weeks I'm going to polish all the silver. As soon as the weather turns, the screens are going in the windows, and I'll keep the house open as long as I like. I'll clean off the decks and wipe down the outdoor furniture. I'll plan some menus. Hell, maybe I'll iron the napkins (okay, Alice, let's not go too crazy). I need these things. Beautiful things, living things, nonsense that is a part of me.

Because I want to have a party - a big, no-holds-barred, high heels until they hurt, so much food I could burst, John Coltrane and David Bowie mess of a party. Laughing and maybe crying and choosing not to hide in the kitchen, for once. And it may seem shallow, but these things, this mad planning, this simple and sweet hope - that's what's going to get us through.

I hope you'll make plans, too. And pencil me in, whether it's in five weeks or a few months -

Because you'd better believe you're invited.