Amid the Feaste!

On Friday night, Adam, Anna, and I drove to Greenville, SC, and participated in a grand event. We were a footman (Adam) and two wenches at a Madrigal Feaste. Huzzah!!

We were volunteers, but this evening is so flamboyant, so grand, so glitzy and glorious, that you don't really need to be paid to work. As a matter of fact, Adam said he had much more fun waiting tables this time, than a few years back when we sat as guests at table.
Here's my old college friend, Bill Higgins, and his lovely wife. They are the Lord and Lady of the feast each year. Bill has his character nailed. All the rich banners in the hall are made by the wife of the art professor at my old college.

Adam placed a lemon in each glass before we started. He did not want his picture taken, in tights :)

Anna, in her wench's costume:

I snapped a shot of the singers' table, before all the chaos, uh, um, er, dinner, began. Actually, it was very well ordered. I was just a beginner, so it was rather a blur. Adam can run a dining room with one small corner of his brain, so it was no challenge to him.

The hall. 45 tables. This event was begun as a pattern of the Madrigal Feast given at Covenant College for many years, but I must say in all honesty that this feast has far outstripped what Covenant does. My old college buddy, Steve, is the music director at this church, and he and his precious wife Cathy have gone far, far beyond what any of us at Covenant could have ever imagined. Steve always had a bigger imagination than most!

There were singers, and a young girls' choir, and a children's choir, a brass choir, a handbell choir that processed through the tables, ringing, in monks' cloaks. I mean, really!! There was a magician, a beggar, this excellent recorder choir. And that doesn't even include the food.

This group of girls, led by Cathy, was amazing. What beautiful tone!

Alright. Now I must confess to one aspect of the evening that I expected to be disappointing. Steve had mentioned that they would have bag suppers for us. Bag suppers, at a feast. Sniff. I envisioned a brown bag with a cold ham sandwich, a bag of Cheetos, and a cookie. And a bottle of water. And guess what? That's exactly what they gave me. It was a bummer.

And then ....

Part way through the dinner, after the first main course of pork, potatoes and green beans, some stray wench mentioned that there was food out in the foyer. I had been too busy to get out to the foyer. So I went to investigate. Oh my!! (DON'T TELL STEVE. AND REALLY DON'T TELL CATHY.) But there was a round table out there, with lots of greedy footmen and wenches standing around it, eating "shark food," as Adam says they refer to it in the industry. It's the leftovers. Platters from the tables. Perfectly good food. I took a few nibbles, but not being a fan of pork, I was soon back to my wenching.

The next course was roasted chicken, rice with cranberries, and sweet carrots. I went back out to the foyer. Now, each table had two (yes, two) whole roasted chickens. That's 90 chickens. And that's after all the diners had had soup and the pork course. So there was quite a bit of moist, delectable chicken leftover. Picture if you will a round banquet table mounded with about 20 oval platters of chicken carnage. I hunted for all the skin pieces I could find, and I'm not ashamed of it. I needed a way to eat the rice, and even I couldn't just scoop it up in the palm of my hand. The chicken, bowls of rice and carrots were just piled, hither and yon, on the table -- no cutlery, no plates. It was "get as get can," as we say in our house. So I put some rice inside a piece of chicken skin, and rolled it up. It was divine. And the carrots -- Ahhh!!! They had cooked them in pure maple syrup and butter. So good! I haven't had so much fun eating, in a very long time. It was fairly embarrassing, but I was so very hungry, and they had dressed me as a wench after all! I told myself I was just in character, and munched away! I think I had rice and maple syrup up to my elbows. Oh well!

So, I came back a couple of minutes later to get a photo of this place of delicious carnage, but they had already begun clearing it away. Here are a few pitiful remains:

By 10:00 the guests were leaving, my feet and legs were screaming at me for relief, and we had a 90 minute drive to get home. But what an evening! Adam said he had so much fun he'd eagerly do it again. I'll have to ask permission from my feet, but my mouth is saying, "More chicken!"

Wherein Ladies Drink Tea

Welcome, ladies! The candles are lit, the kettles are steaming, the scones are warm, and your place is waiting.

Many dear friends smiled and hugged.

The plates of delicacies were already on the tables. You see here a pumpkin muffin with insert of cream cheese, chocolate peppermint pot-du-creme, fruit skewer, chicken salad on roll, maple scone, spinach sandwich in the center, and chocolate-dipped shortbread on the edge.

The brilliant Christmas table, what a welcome sight!

Miss J.'s table, with her blue cloth and her Christmas egg tree:

I love the candlelight of Christmas.

Dear friends in the kitchen were servants to the rest and prepared the plates and the Assam and raspberry teas.

Young ladies came to refresh their spirits after a long semester of academics.

Young girls, adorable and sweet, came to learn the art of tea-drinking from their olders and betters :)

And some girls got to sit by a grandmother.

The new tea cozy made her first appearance, and she performed well.

See the glow of the tea light, in the teapot warmer?

An army of these little fellows appeared, and each took his place next to a plate. Aren't they a joy? Our pastor's wife made one for each lady.

Christmas Tea Tables

Today is the Christmas Tea at church! We ladies met yesterday to set the tables, so that no one would be frantically doing it at the last minute, today. I thought you'd like to see some of the nine tables that we assembled.
Here's some lovely china that Miss B. has had for about 40 years.

Here's my table. Mother did the gorgeous centerpiece. The napkins, glasses and silver are hers. All the china is mine. This is my fine wedding china, Rosemeade by Mikasa. The white teapot is my everyday pattern, Manior by Villeroy and Boch. The chintz teapot Adam bought for me in Galena, Illinois at a wonderfully aromatic tea shop in the old downtown.

The little rose dish (I have four of them) was given to me by my grandmother who used to work in the china department at the Diamond Department store in Charleston, WV, many years ago. The little bird creamer came from Womble Inn, in Brevard.

Miss S. set her table using her mother's old Christmas china. There are clear salad plates on top, with a clear beaded edge -- so nice!

A close up:

Miss N. set such a festive table! I love all this gold and color.

Here's her rich Christmas china. I love this!

Miss D. used some Italian china she's enjoyed. She has fun napkin rings and place name holders.

And she has this adorable cozy. I love tea cozies.

Miss J. had a clever Christmas idea for plain cream napkins -- a sprig of cedar. Isn't that beautiful?

Miss P. pulled out this fine teapot. I love the butter yellow and the full pattern.

Miss. C. brought her Spode Christmas china, always a favorite. I wanted Spode Christmas when I married, but there was china enough, and I just had to keep wishing.

I've always loved this Lenox pattern that Miss P. brought. I believe a dear friend of mine chose this for her wedding china, back twenty years ago (and more) when we were all marrying. Those were fun days, when we could drift through department stores and choose things for other people to buy us.

Here's the group of ladies that made all this loveliness possible. A couple are missing from this photo. Many thanks to all of you for your hard work, creativity, and love of beauty. I'll post pictures of the event itself soon!

A Mountain Christmas

Tonight our family went to Ridgehaven for their first Mountain Christmas Evening. It was such a great event! I must say, this was the start of a very beautiful thing. I hope they do this each year. What an evening!
There was music by many talented folks, mostly young:

There was delectable food -- a seven course meal. Adam (who set all the tables himself) said there were nine pieces of silverware per place setting.

There were festive displays of holiday fun. There's Adam, instructing his wait staff at the far end. He was in charge of the dining room.

The menu for the evening. It was truly a full, relaxing, satisfying evening. I particularly like the "Intermezzo," during which a touch of lime sherbet was served to cleanse the palate.  Hmm. I think they misspelled that word, and put "pallet" on the menu. Must fix that for next year.

Some of my favorite people came, like my precious parents:

We sat with some dear neighbors for the evening.

One neighbor lent his antique oil lamps, one for each table.

I caught Julia in a pensive moment.

And Anna caught me too, sitting near the piano.

The children sat still to listen to Miss Barbara read "The Three Trees."

She did a beautiful job.

To end the evening with a chuckle, we got to hear a silly song from two elves. Oh my! The green tights!

And Santa made an appearance too, of course! Nice suit!

Many thanks to Ridgehaven for such a great time. These were neighbors and church family, enjoying a celebration of Jesus's birth, and "kicking off the season," as it were.

Wind in the Willows heads to California!

That's right, friends! The traveling trio left North Carolina yesterday and are headed for the balmy shores of California. They'll be arriving at Kim's place, over at "Oh, For Heaven's Sake," any day now!  Bon voyage, my little buddies! I loved having you visit. May the wind be always at your back, and my Toad avoid all car crashes.

A Childlike Christmas

Again, we're writing at Pom's request about a Childlike Christmas. This week, I say that a Childlike Christmas is family.

My childhood Christmases were often spent in Charleston, West Virginia, after a very long drive from Virginia or Mississippi in a crowded car. It was the 1970s. All seven of us squeezed into a station wagon and headed for the mountains.

Coming from Mississippi, we left in warmth and arrived in cold. And usually we arrived late at night. Please picture: a city of steep hillsides and winding rivers, a frigid night sky ribboned with steam and gray pollution from factory stacks. I pressed my nose to the cold car window, watching the hills. People had lit their houses and yards, and in the distant darkness, they rose into the air all around us, little old steep houses with steeper roofs, dotted in the evergreen mountains as we drove.

An early photo of the house on Garrison Avenue

I eagerly awaited Charleston. Soon we'd leave the interstate and wind our way past Westmoreland Road. We'd pass Mary Street, and Mother would tell us again that it was the steepest street in the city. Turning down Garrison Avenue, I'd see all the familiar homes. We'd pass Inez's boxy two-story, its windows twinkling. The street winds along, curving in and out with the creek that always runs in the hollow between two West Virginia mountains. As Garrison Avenue snakes deeper into the darkness, it narrows and climbs a little. Soon I see the fence, and then a small garage at street level, built of pale yellow and orange bricks. Most of the houses on this street are stick homes, or cinder block. But my grandparents built their home well and finely, when their only child was four years old. We'd finally crunch to a stop along the road. The house, a beautiful two-story with a steep roof, cute gable windows and a pillared side porch, perched solidly away up the hillside:  Fifty-six steps up the hillside, to be precise. Fifty-six concrete steps ascending the hill like a great zipper, welcoming and unwelcoming. Steeples of orange lights glowed in each window for Christmas, and a tree proclaimed itself from the living room.

It was the nicest home on the street, I believe. They blew dynamite to get the foundation set in the mountain's rocky face. My grandmother, proud of her home, lined the steps with azaleas. There were two apple trees, golden transparents, in the backyard hillside that cut sharply up behind the house. The shed along the back fence held my granddaddy's hunting beagles and it smelled strongly of them. My brothers played poker in the shed on warm summer nights.

I'm sure hauling all our suitcases, pillows, and presents up those steps took a long time in the cold, but it was no concern of mine. As the baby girl, I dashed up to the house, burst into the glowing living room and hollered my hellos. In spite of its grandeur (to me), it was not a large house. Only two bedrooms and a bath upstairs, but we five grandchildren piled on pallets and cots downstairs. Back then houses had large dining rooms because families still ate together and spent a bit of time doing it. And we had large living rooms for gathering together to watch TV. The bedrooms were just for sleeping, and the bathroom for a quick dash during the middle of the movie. Living space was what mattered.

My grandparents, Ernest and Dama

My grandfather was a silent, hard-working man. My grandmother was a fussy, insecure woman who played favorites with her grandchildren, and that's just honest. But she loved to make our childhoods glow with happiness and she adored giving gifts. Actually, she enjoyed shopping. But one year she made me, by hand, a magical doll's house, of sturdy cardboard box, glued and painted, two-storied with a front porch and tall pillars made of paper towel tubes. It was furnished beautifully and had two lamps that really lit up. Somewhere, I have a photo of myself and my friend Judy, seated in front of it seriously. Doll's house play was serious stuff. I treasured that house until it fell apart.

One Christmas we invented a novel scheme while we drove along the snowy highway to Charleston. We decided to surprise our grandparents.  They knew we were coming, but they didn't know when, so we decided to pull up in a side street, sneak along behind the house to the back door, creep in through the kitchen, and scare them to death with loud grandchildren greetings. I don't remember their reactions, or even if we succeeded. So much of the joy, the pleasure, of childhood is in the thinking of a thing, the idea. It is my idea of Charleston in its Christmas dress, that I love. Very few specifics remain in my mind. But the image of the city, the frozen houses bundled up together in tidy rows, hunkered down along their steep mountain streets, that's what I remember. Visiting the Sears Department Store and standing before the massive square counter with sweets, chocolates and warm nuts. The aroma that filled the store as it did at no other time of year! The glow of street lamps that showed the way up the twisting roads as they disappeared into the deep mountains. Miss Inez's Christmas cookies, saved in stacks of tins in her closets, which tasted faintly of moth balls. I ate them anyway, they were so festive, so friendly.

I have searched for photographs of this Charleston in my mother's old photo albums that lie dusty around me here in her upstairs. The albums have been pilfered over the years by us children, always looking for those pictures that bring back the past. The best picture of all is in my mind's eye. We're grown now, and past grown, and our children's Christmases are formed in new mountains and newer homes. I still love my Charleston in its snowy mantle, its icy rivers, its houses that were small in size but large in heart.

Merry Christmas.