I consider myself a classic introvert. I'm socially adept with a few close friends at a time and have a gift for performance in front of a crowd, but either is exhausting enough that I need a long quiet time to absorb the experience and recover some bit of self I feel as though I've given away. My nightmare, however, is any party I'm not hosting. Hosting allows me busy-ness and away-ness but mingling, for me, is mangling.
Yesterday I stewed fruit and made an enormous, colorful salad and my dog, Daisy, and I walked a few block to an Easter brunch given by friends. I made food I could eat knowing my hostess is a wonderful baker and that there would be at least some novelty food that she or her husband had to try.
The smell of cooking, when we walked in, nearly floored me. They were smells my house has become alienated from and I wanted to crawl into them, pull them around me and live cocooned in them forever. Jean and David, my hosts, were busy putting food out on two tables. Not only would I have to mingle/mangle, but do so with a buffet. Amidst all that lovely, perfumed food, my lively salad was pathetic.
My hosts are very good friends and I knew several people at the party -- good news. Bad news -- the men segregated themselves in the kitchen while Dennis made crepes and the women remained in the living room. Of the three women I knew, one suffers from dementia and the other is equally elderly and quite deaf. Jean, my hostess, brought out the best in everyone while I eyed the Italian egg bread, the cupcakes, the crepes.
Thank God for Daisy. There's a reason Labradors are also called Lardadors: they will eat anything. Daisy also gloms onto me in other people's homes, wary and worried that I'll leave her behind. She was in my plate as I ate, leaving me only to beg from other eaters.
Daisy saved me from the egg dish I didn't realize had bread in it until I'd taken a bite. She huddled as close to me as she could get, making the trips to the buffet disruptions of love. As chocolates were passed around, she whined to pee and I escorted to the garden and had a cigarette. After a couple of hours, she turned into a frantic brat. No one was surprised that we were the first to leave.
I put the salad and fruit Jean sent me home with away, carefully hung up the dress and blazer that didn't fit me two months ago, and plopped into bed for the last ten teenies of America's Next Top Model. I left bed to feed and walk Daisy. My salad and chicken had lost all romance for dinner so I stuck safely to the cruelty of TV judges and the "legal" cocoon of my comforter.
I don't think I'm ready for buffets and I don't think I'm ready to force through to mingling. I think I'll decline the invitation I received this morning for a lunchtime musical event that is sure to involve cake. Until I'm storonger, if I can't take Daisy or order ala carte, I think I'm better off one-on-one.
For that matter, silence is good, too.
