Housekeeping Seal of Approval

Sept. 26, 2002

Dear Leslie,

DC is a member of that newly popular American phenomenon, the book club. Every month, the women in the club come to a member's house to discuss a novel over dinner. It's very civilized. About as civilized as a train wreck.

From DC's point of view, her turn to host the dinner party was a test of her housekeeping and decoration skills and of her entertainment acumen.

Most of these women live in fine homes that seem to exist in a state of immaculate grace. Primarily due to three dogs who will be dogs and one slovenly husband and a house always needing repair, the state of our house is perpetual dishevelment. It's a way of life that finally caught up to us.

DC's brilliant plan to have a picnic in a park fell victim to West Nile disease. My plan to hire a caterer got sniffed at. It appears to be a matter of honor among women that you don't import dinner. Guys would order pizza.

There was no avoiding the dinner party. Signs began to appear that DC was determined to prove she could run with these women. She started painting the wall and the ceiling in the dining room and the ceiling in the den.

And she began trying out menu ideas on me. None seemed to please her.

The day before the dinner party, the house was still in disarray. It was unimaginable to me that at 6:30 the next night, 10 people were going to be sitting around discussing "The Rainbow Singer" and having a meal still to be determined.

When the women who clean our house arrived, I told them not to worry about the upstairs. Clean, straighten, rearrange, I said. They smiled.

Lisa and Karma clean houses for a living, but what they really love to do is to put everything in its place.

When I arrived home from work that night, DC was beaming. Lisa and Karma had made sense of our house.

It was a miracle.

One down, one to go.

DC still hadn't decided on the menu when I left for work at noon on D-Day.

At 3:30 she phoned to ask if the blender was in my car. Curiously, it was.

At 5 I phoned to ask if she needed any last-minute help. Come home and taste the food, she said.

There was Java chicken simmered in coconut milk, yellow rice, fresh asparagus and a salad with Mandarin orange wedges and walnuts and raspberry vinaigrette. Her mother had pitched in with an ice cream roll that DC had added strawberries and whipped cream to.

I thought of Bullwinkle. "Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat."

The guests were gone when I got home at 10. They had arrived in pairs, DC said, because they were scared of the neighborhood. The party went well and the guests were kind, she said. Some said they wished they'd brought cameras.

She had followed a strategy of giving everyone a glass of wine when they hit the door and kept 'em coming. The dogs stayed upstairs in our bedroom watching the home gardening channel.

One of DC's minor worries had been that she hadn't had time to read the book. Halfway through the party she discovered that she also hadn't had time to open the e-mail informing everyone that the book had been changed to "The Lovely Bones."

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is a staff writer with the Southeast Missourian.