Notes from a garden party

SAN FRANCISCO, SATURDAY, MAY 23, 2010 - Roman P came to the party, old Seattle friend, like a spring-loaded cafeteria plate, first one in, last of the stack to go. 

Jesse wore Prada sunglasses. Made margaritas in a jug. He remembered how the old stair obscured the kitchen window, was the first to tell Adrienne and I how good the new stair is. He knew the old way. So he saw more than a deck in the new way.


Sean and Jen Grasso came with tequila, with children hanging from their arms. Sean was comfortable, well-lived, standing there, smiling at things elsewhere, in the way his hair flowed back from his brow. Jen was stately. The garden became an advertisement around her, with Calder trying to pull her down, her long thin arms to the ground.

Others came too, gathered in the back garden. Eating and drinking, talking in twos, in threes and fours. The children ran past, squealing, wanting to be caught, picked up upside-down and shook. 

Others stayed home, or were absent without explanation. Daniel Kotzin, for example, stayed in the sunny East Bay, babysitting his two nieces and nephew while his sister chaperoned a prom. Probably the kids and Daniel were dancing ring-around-the-rosie as I stuffed hardwood into the chiminera, getting the ashes stirred up, the fire going, cutting mangos, flipping fresh corn tortillas on the grill.

Roman and I were gabbin. The thing I fear most, I said, is a fire I started going out. It was a confession. Because I was only half-listening, this was early on, watching the fire past him, had just got it going, it still wasn't for sure, the wood was heavy and dense, smoking, the flames just licking. He was laughing. The fear of a fire going out. He remembered a house in the Central District, Seattle, he'd lived there, cut up a Christmas tree with roommates, burned it in the fireplace. They went outside, it was so raging, to see. And the embers were floating from the chimney into the night. So, right, the other fear, that the fire will spread. 

It was a long good party. Adrienne and Sistah Margaret and I shopped a fair part of the day for it, assembling it, getting the taco ingredients, the crack meat from La Gallinita, the fresh crumbled cheese from Don Francisco's Quesos Frescos, hydrangeas from the market, peonies at Trader Joe's, other stops, other markets. 

Two grills going. Jugs of margaritas. Sistah Margaret in new Boden jacket, feting Josh for his birthday, and Adrienne and I for the partially-completed stair. Bryce, old dear friend of Margaret, Bryce, unreeling hilarity by the minute, tricking things up, with Suzanne, Suzanne with ipad, with black scarf, black coat, narrating extemporaneously. Going until late, but not even that late, maybe 11 o'clock. But late enough, beginning from early evening, that in the end there was just six of us, sitting inside, in the living room, it'd gotten cold again, listening to Bert and I, on the laptop, repeating the funny sounds and odd words of a master bumpkin storyteller, holding up to the light that old phrase, of being in a place so local, so remote, so self-contained, that a stranger come through asking directions, well, now he's stuck, you know, come to think of it, You can't get they'ah from here.