The hour before a party

I love the hour before a party even with its inherent flutter and pathos. I tiptoe around my unrecognizable house, which is now in a state of awkward polish like some wild teenager who's been stuffed into an ill-fitting suit and slathered in hair gel for his first court date. Where are my sticky floors? Where is my chaos? Where is my comfortable clutter?

I've finished what is likely to have been a four or five hour scrubbing binge and am now saying silent and not so silent prayers that I didn’t invite any timely people. Most of my friends tend to show up an hour or two late, and this is one of my favorite things about them.

The cooking music is on and a glass of wine poured. I want to relax, to sink into the scent of roasting vegetables that is now mingling with the last whiff of Tilex. I’m a little worried about the fact that I can’t remember how many people I’ve invited or if any of them responded to my invitations. But there is nothing to be done about that now.

Perhaps, no one will show up. This is whispered in a voice I remember from high school. The one that told me that no guy would ever kiss me, that I’d never get to dance a slow dance, that I’d be pimpled and chubby and a geek until I was wrinkled and chubby and geek.

Of course, the voice was mistaken. I’ve learned that you can have pimples and wrinkles at the same time, and that’s just wrong in a deep cosmic sense -- like pairing broccoli and tomato sauce -- it shouldn't even be possible. But it is. And these are the things I worry about an hour before a party.

Well, not broccoli and tomato sauce, because I have not completely lost my mind, but whether I have any friends willing to drive through a snowstorm to hang out with me, pimples and wrinkles and all. Because it is an hour before the party, and now it is snowing, big blustery flakes that are blowing in horizontal sheets across my windows. Well, there is I can do about that either.

I swing around the kitchen to the deep beat coming from the speakers. I’m alone for an hour, and then people will come and look and see. I wish for a lot of things in moments like these. Wish and promise. Someday I will decorate my house and decide what color to paint my walls. Someday, I will figure how to dress in something more than a black T-shirt and jeans. Someday I will do a lot of things, but right now, I turn to the one thing I know. The thing that brings me back to all that is good and rids my head of the dredges of my teenage years and whatever other gunk has collected there and now been stirred up with all my efforts at spiff and bustle. I reach for all the food that I have bought and prepared, and I start to plate.

We all have our areas where we geek out and this is mine. I love to plate food.

In general, aesthetics baffle me. But arranging food on a dish brings out my underused fussy gene. I love the shapes and the colors and the big and little designs. I want everything to be accessible, to make you want to reach for it, not stand and gaze in intimidated awe. But I also want there to be a moment before you reach in when there is beauty, either profound or frivolous, that gives a bit of nourishment all its own.

I ponder bowls of roasted beets, logs of goat cheese, jars of jam and grapefruit marmalade. The crackers, and the dips, the fish, the roasted fennel, and the olives. I clean the party platters and line the counter with them. I don’t have a plan exactly. I’m looking mostly for color at this point. The huge, whole smoked whitefish is shiny, long, golden and brown. It needs lemon, but that’s not enough contrast. Ahhh, the purple of Spanish onion, thin delicate ribbons against the long, solid body of the fish. Yes.

I don’t think about these things so much as follow my hands around the kitchen. And somehow, while dipping and spreading and lining and circling, inside I rest, swing to the music, and remember that I am many years removed from high school. That I am lucky to have deep and ridiculous friends. And that this is the northeast, what are a few inches of snow anyway.

I finish the plates. I wash my hands, and, because I have used every dish towel in my house, I dry them on my jeans. The door bell rings. People have come. They will look. They will see. They will probably laugh. I wish I had remembered to shower. But there is nothing I can do about that now.