Consider Yourself At Home, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

May 20, 2016 Victor El-Khouri 2 Comments

No politics this week, at least not the usual kind.  I’m lucky enough to have houseguests, so I’m busy eating too much and walking too much and talking too much.  However, my guests, although two of the world’s most splendid people, have done something which has caused me to question my very existence.

They invited people to a party at my apartment.

Of course, they asked me first.  Of course, they have insisted that they would do all the work, both the preparation and the clean-up.  And of course I said yes because I’ve met many wonderful people through them, and this party offers me the opportunity to meet more.  I don’t even have to wear shoes.

Why should I let anything as silly as facts get in the way of some perfectly good anxiety?

I always considered my parents to be fabulous hosts.  They would have dinner parties with a cocktail hour, and then dinner at a table filled with raucous laughter.  Years later, reading the autobiography of one of their friends, I learned that it was a common opinion in their circle that my mother was a terrible cook.

How could that be?  She was my mom.  Her cooking tasted the way food always tasted, at least in my house.  Was food supposed to taste another way?

That same book insisted that the parties my parents threw were fabulous, with lots of great conversation.  He didn’t consider the parties to be failures, only the cooking parts.

I know that the mix of guests is more important than the quality or variety of the refreshments available.  I know that I’ve had great times at parties with little more than chips, beer and wine available.  I know that anyone who has ever had a rotten time at one of my parties at least had the good manners not to tell me.

But still I fret.

Some of the reason I fret is my own insecurity.  What if nobody comes?  What if I don’t have enough?  In this case, those worries should not apply, since it’s not my party.

Some of the reason is that fretting is what I’m used to doing.  If I didn’t fret, I might have to do something useful, like work on my book or give money to the poor.  Sitting around, making mental lists of what might go wrong, isn’t any fun, but it feels familiar.

In this case, today, I’d rather worry about having enough crackers on hand instead of thinking about Donald Trump being ahead in the polls.  Crackers I can get.  Sane voters I cannot.

Media Goddess Martha Thomases has been friends with her houseguests for nearly 40 years, because she is very very old.