My parents were in town so I threw a small brunch for them and and my brother and his wife and my niece and some of my friends.
In the morning I bought bagels and lox and cream cheese, and tomatoes and red onions and a cucumber, and strawberries and kiwi and blueberries, and I also made an extremely inspired batch of cookies. I was out of vanilla, though, and I didn’t know it, but I texted my neighbor Erica and she stumbled over at 9 AM, handed me the vanilla, and then went back to bed.
When the first few people arrived, I had them pull the long, heavy, beautiful table out from against the wall, and then move one of the long, low bookshelves alongside it to act as a bench. Also I moved the settee back away from the television set, and the kidney-shaped end table to face it. Then I put a few of the shorter chairs on the other side of the table. The kids sat there with their parents. They gravitated toward it, I think, because it was lower to the ground. My parents sat with some of my friends at the bigger table. I ate while standing and talking to some friends near my work table, which is where the glasses and the prosecco and orange juice sat. My brother brought apple bread from the Union Square greenmarket, and it was delicious. I made my father tell the story about being stuck in snow drifts during the blizzard in Chicago, and my mother charmed all my friends because she is a nice lady, and so did my sister-in-law, who has worked in publishing a very long time and is probably one of the best writer charmers in the business. My niece and I snuck up to the loft near the end and we looked down at everyone’s heads and waved hello. The room was sunny and beautiful. When my family left, Kate and Brendan and Stefan and Molly and Emily and I all sat down at the long, heavy, beautiful table, and polished off the rest of the prosecco.
It meant a lot to me, everyone coming together like that. I’ve had two friends lose their mothers recently and it has made me very sad for them, for their families, for everyone touched by it. This is probably it on the family front for me. Friends and my immediate relatives, that’s what I’ll have in this lifetime. I was glad everyone got to meet each other.
I think I’ll leave the long, heavy, beautiful table pulled out from the wall. It feels more communal and useful like that, instead of something I’m shoving to get out of the way. I’m getting edits on The Middlesteins soon, this week or next, and I would like to sit at the table and spread out the book on it, look at the way the fictional family I’ve created fits together on the page.
