In The Company Of Our Friends

Contributed by Nicolas Papaconstantinou on 29/03/08

The table is set, the guests all assembled in the sitting room, catching up with each other, making comment on the wonderful smells coming from the kitchen, generally making themselves comfortable. Some of them haven’t seen each other in nearly a year, so it’s a pleasant time for most, and maybe awkward for others.

I don’t think too much about their social situations, though… as far as I’m concerned, they are all here for my beautiful daughter Julia, as they are every year, and my thoughts are all of her.

Every year we throw a dinner party to celebrate our girl… although of course, this year, circumstances have necessitated bringing the date forward just over a month from her actual eighteenth birthday. Despite the disruption, though, every one of our usual twelve guests has managed to make it along. Julia means the world to them all, I suppose, although of course, not as much as she means to Martha and I.

I ensure that everyone is getting along okay, that they have refreshments, and a place to sit. Then I leave them for a few minutes to their chatter, to check on Martha in the kitchen and see how Julia is getting along.

Everyone’s mouths are watering and tummies are grumbling by the time I return to the sitting room. Patience, I tell them, reminding them that, even though the situation has changed somewhat, as always, dinner waits until Julia is ready.

I make a joke of it, to a smatter of laughter, and a singular groan, and I smile, although there is a sadness underlying, as I remember once again that things are changing - after eighteen years, they will never be the same.

And then Martha pokes her head in, taps me on the shoulder, and it is time to get our friends seated.

As I usher them into the generous dining room, the places at the table beautifully set by Martha a couple of hours earlier, one of the guests moves in to a discreet distance, and mumbles in my ear, apologetic and angry, about how against the order of things it is, for a parent to outlive their child. I wave her words away, doing my best to lighten her mood with a joke, and guide her to her allotted seat.

Then I stand behind my seat at the head of the long table, and take in the room, waiting for everyone to settle.

Next year, there will probably be no party, and that will be it - an almost two decades long tradition - begun on the night that I fried the shared placenta of my two girls with shallots and garlic, and presented it to this small grouping of our very best friends - snuffed out in the time it takes for one car to crash into another.

Soon, all eyes are upon me, and I give a small and modest speech, extolling the virtues of marrying the right girl, and the wonders of seeing even that right girl, surpassed in beauty and gentleness, by the child that we grew together. A couple more jokes, the odd “hear, hear” shouted out as I reminisce aloud about birthday parties past, and then it’s once again time to introduce Julia to the room.

My lovely girl is all prepared for a hearty dinner, brought in on a sequence of platters by Martha, as some of the other wives among the party help with bowls of vegetables and such. Martha has tears in her eyes, and I know that she will have insisted on bringing every one of the heavy meat plates in herself.

And then, after our good friend the Reverend says grace, it is time to say goodbye to our dear girl, the best way that we know how - with hearty appetites, and ready mouths, in the company of our friends.