(Host) Commentator Willem Lange recently asked his wife to help him with a simple little supper. He should have known better.
(Lange) A friend of mine took a trek recently, and I thought it’d be nice to get the Geriatric Society together to watch his slides and have some pizza and beer. Trouble was, Mother would have to be involved.
Asking her to have a casual gathering is like asking Beethoven to write a commercial for potato chips. It’s going to be a lot more work than you’ve planned on; it’ll be wildly original; and it’ll end up being much better. She can do medieval or Neapolitan, Times Square or Tahiti. None of her events cost much, but they’re all labor intensive. Ask me how I know.
“Where did Leo go on his trek?” she asked. It was Nepal and Tibet. How complicated could that be? Nothing but chapattis, yak dung fires, temples, stone walls, and mountains? But she’d seen the movie Himalaya, and had a feel for the ambiance. She’d been struck by the prayer flags everywhere, each flap of each flag another prayer winging skyward. So she’d have a string of them above the living room. She handed me some silk scarves and plastic clothes pins and bade me get to it. I used an old climbing rope to string the flags from the loft down across the living room and to the china cabinet. A few minutes later, I was startled to see them fluttering. She’d planted a fan on top of the cabinet.
“Leo’s bringing CDs of Tibetan chants, so we’ll have that in the background,” she said. “But we need yak bells, too. How about you rig up some upstairs? Use the wind chimes from the front porch.” So I hung the climes in my office and powered them with a fan from the shop. So we had yaks grazing in the loft all evening. Sounded a lot like the Boothbay Harbor bell buoy.
We agree that most slide shows ought to be classified as felonies. So we broke the slides into groups separated by dinner courses. After hors-d’oeuvres, the first group; break for egg drop soup and fried pita, more slides; break for rice and curry; and so on. All the time, prayer flags fluttering overhead, monks chanting in the kitchen, and yaks grazing in my office. We sat on the floor, with the less flexible at the dining room table. Each of us got a bowl, a spoon, and a cup. The dinner was Himalayan potluck. No yak dung fire, though, so we heated stuff on the Jenn-Air.
The slides were fascinating. Nepal has the greatest relief of any country in the world, from below sea level to over 29,000 feet. Rhododendrons, no central heating, temples and monks…all flowed past by the light of aromatic candles. The living room glowed like a monastery.
I don’t know how she does it; but except on the day before she does it, I’m awfully glad she does.
This is Willem Lange up in Etna, New Hampshire, keeping my mouth shut for a while.
Willem Lange is a contractor, writer and storyteller who lives in Etna, New Hampshire.