Illustration by Michael Dwayne
Back in the booming ’90s, my family moved into a house with a backyard pool. We envisioned parties large and small.
Early on, my husband came up with an idea. Instead of spending our summer comparing availability schedules with all our friends, we should issue a standing invitation. Every Friday night would be open pool at the Yocom place. We’d adjourn to the back yard at 6. At 7 we’d take a head count and order pizza, on us.
It took awhile for me to see the beauty of this idea. Our traditional approach to having company over involved either having a couple of friends over for dinner or else throwing a big, exhausting party. But both of those approaches have significant drawbacks. The big-party route involves a whole lot of housework, an expensive trip to the grocery, and a full afternoon in the kitchen. We’ve worn ourselves out so badly with parties that we’ve spent the entire next day recovering from our efforts. And that’s the sore-feet-and-back kind of recovery, not the I-drank-too-much variety.
On the other hand, hosting one or two friends at a time comes with its own set of miseries. People are busy and their schedules are impossibly complicated these days, especially if those people have kids. The typical way of arranging a get-together involves a tedious flurry of phone calls or emails. "How’s next week/files/storyimages/for you? No? The week/files/storyimages/after? No? Well, the week/files/storyimages/after that is out for us. How about a weeknight?" Ad nauseam. If you’re lucky, after all of your efforts, you /files/storyimages/up pinning out a date six weeks away. And then you do the same for the next couple you want to see . . . and the next . . . and the next . . .
Still, the idea of just throwing our back yard open to whoever wanted to show up seemed foreign and even risky. What if nobody showed? What if just one person showed? "It doesn’t matter," my husband explained. "If it’s just one guest, we have a quiet conversation and a dip in the pool. If a bunch of people show up, we’ve got ourselves a party."
Suddenly my mind flashed to Pride and Prejudice. My husband was proposing that we receive callers! In more civilized days, when people wanted to socialize, they didn’t pull out their PDAs. They sent out an announcement: Mrs. Violet Fopsworth is receiving callers Tuesday at teatime. Be there or be square.
These days, receiving callers seems an antiquated idea except under certain, very limited circumstances. For example, if you’d like to bring company to your door without having to make a lot of arrangements, it might take a hospital stay. Funerals work too, though at that point you’re unlikely to enjoy the camaraderie of all those who’ve dropped by for a visit.
So the concept of receiving visitors while we were both alive and unhospitalized seemed, well, pretty bold. Was it presumptuous? Did it make us seem a bit full of ourselves, with the implication that we thought we were such a great attraction that people would just naturally head to our house for a good time?
Not really. After all, we figured, everybody knew that the pool was the real draw. We were just the folks sitting next to it.
So we issued the invitation. And for two summers, while we lived in that house, we had the best Friday evenings I can remember. Sometimes just a fri/files/storyimages/or two dropped by, but quite a few nights blossomed into rowdy pool-volleyball games that went on till well after dark. The Tony Boombozz guy learned to deliver to the back gate. And even on rainy nights when it was just the two of us, there was a special, laid-back feel. We had nothing on the agenda but hanging out.
The boom days are gone, and the house with the pool has moved into other hands. I miss those Fridays when we received callers. They were fun. They put a punctuation mark on the /files/storyimages/of the week. We could try it again at our new house, I suppose. Of course, without a pool, there’s not such a draw. But the ’90s are over. The world has changed, and these are leaner times all around. Maybe this summer we’ll set up the sprinkler and call it a party.
