Today we had a house full to near capacity with laughing kids and parents. Well, really a backyard full. A community in our space. I love connecting to a community – at church, at work, in the neighborhood, through the kids friends.
It was my favorite kind of day.
But even better.
For years, I loved hosting parties. I’ve hosted dinner parties since I got my own place my senior year in college and me and my roommate threw a Christmas open house. They grew more elaborate as I cooked more and had a little more money. I would prepare for days. I stopped hostessing, as I’ve written about before, when the triplets came. Life flipped upside down and the house was a maze of gates and foam floor tiles.
When I started entertaining again a couple of years ago, it started outdoors with my front yard table. But as I brought the parties indoors, I returned to my old elaborate ways. Days of planning and cooking and decorating. Themed birthday parties and elaborate Easter menus. As a result, my husband doesn’t love it when I throw parties. Yes, I clean up my piles around the house to his delight, but I can get pretty worked up.
That is not community.
That is just an outlet for my planner-Type A-prove your worth self.
Today was community. Our end of season baseball party hosted in (or by) the pool on a hot Houston May day.
I am not kidding when I say I did nothing. We tidied the house, made easier by a Friday housekeeper. I blew up some emoji beach balls. My hubby bought all the fixins for the burgers and hot dogs which HE grilled out. Everyone else brought everything else.
Not kidding. I was utterly relaxed. No frantic last minute running. No rushing back and forth around the kitchen for the timed appetizers to appear at the right interludes. I had a bag of back up tortilla chips and a jar of salsa in case of emergency. It wasn’t needed. Folks brought fruit and drinks and chips and dips and desserts. We used paper plates and paper towels. We had a big bin for trash so it took all of 10 minutes to clean up after nearly 40 people ate. The coaches handed out baseball trophies to wet kids sitting poolside noshing on cookies.
Deep sigh of contentment.
The reason this is community, over the other hurried nonsense, is conversation. You can’t make a place for community without space for conversation. That requires you to be present. I’m all too often not present with triplet needs and other demands.
We aren’t making space for community. But our kids need to see how important it is to welcome people in. Our kids need to see us laughing and trading stories with other adults. We need to model healthy community for them and with them.
It’s not about the stains on your walls or the broken concrete on your patio. It’s about finding space, intentionally carving out space, to grow a community around you. People who show up when you need help. Friends who offer to dance to your rockin’ playlist (that was the only thing I did this morning, spending $$ on iTunes making this summer’s best pool playlist). People who walk in, laden down with their contributions, and say, “what can I do to help?”
Ah community. What better time to grow our community than this summer?
{The fourth in a series of essays On Living.}
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