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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday October 7, 2002 Volume IV Number 40 |
FOCUS - Parquet Hardwood Floor
I’m still recovering from the party.
The last person left our driveway at just after one o’clock Saturday morning. At this stage in my life, recovery time has been extended. It doesn’t seem that long ago that bouncing back came a little quicker.
The “Party Rents” truck arrived at about 8:30 Friday morning. They unloaded tables and chairs and china and crystal and linens, placing them all around our back lawn in the bright sunshine and under a clear blue sky. “A perfect day,” we said.
But the best part of the delivery was a eighteen by twenty oak parquet hardwood floor, pieced together on the grass for dancing. Then the crew raised a steel frame, four standards at each corner about ten feet tall, with supports looking like a pyramid to a peak at the top, support for a single globe light at the center which would hang from a wire and illumine the scene, gently under the night sky.
We spent the morning and early afternoon trimming and sweeping and dusting and vacuuming getting the home-place ready for the arrival of about sixty quests.
Terri turns fifty this weekend.
The decoration crew arrived before noon; flowers and candles and centerpieces and serving dishes all in place. Lights and the ivy went up on the frame over the dance floor, while I cut down the weeds down the hill behind the house… our back yard will become, for the first time, a parking lot for some thirty cars. The food arrived about four, along with the DJ. We had extension cords running every which way, illegal, I’m sure. Chevy Chase became my inspiration (from the old movie Christmas Vacation) and I worked up more than a little anxiety worrying about a blown circuit. After cutting the lawn and the weeds, I decided I really ought to warn the neighbors – so I went house to house, cheerily inviting everyone to the party, and expressing the hope that we would not be a disturbance. Surprisingly, most everyone with a smile said Party On! like maybe they thought a real party would do the neighborhood some good. I even ran into a County Sheriff, a young buffed out neighbor and friend and family man dressed in uniform who attends our church, and told him about our plans for the evening. John radioed in the news from his high-tech law enforcement equipped black and white Ford Excursion just in case a caller might report us that night. They made a note and put my phone number someplace handy over at the Station.
The sun dropped low on the horizon, and cast a pink glow on the scene. The kitchen (the panic room) filled with the aroma of Gourmet cooking, and all the lights around the house and the dance floor and the gardens came up in the sunset.
Terri knew nothing of the plans, and weeks ago gave Scott clear instructions – “Don’t make a big deal over my fiftieth birthday,” she said.
But he did anyway.
Cars began piling in as the sun disappeared. Terri’s best friends lined up in the driveway and down the back and then up to the house. A few stragglers, unaccustomed to poorly lit country roads and impossible signage, had trouble with a couple turns, but finally arrived, well before a tardy Scott and Terri pulled up for what Terri thought was dinner for four.
I feared she might see the out-door fireplace blazing out back (designed to knock the chill off the night air), or maybe she’d notice the twinkle lights on the arbor in the garden. The cars were well hidden down the hill, and the dance floor, starlit, was blocked from view behind the house. The living-room packed with people went unseen behind closed blinds. If Terri knew, to this day, she’s not saying.
I opened the door to nearly sixty guests hiding inside (kept informed with the help of a walkie-talkie). In unison they shouted, “SURPRISE!”
And then collective, boisterous laughter. Terri appeared to be in shock. (Terri’s not an actress. What you see is what you get. If she had a clue, it was only that. The scale of this Herculean effort could not have been anticipated.)
Next, a rousing chorus, in harmony (Scott is the Contemporary Worship Pastor of a large church nearby), “Happy Birthday to you….”
Then hugs all around.
And through it all one of those looks at her husband that required no words, “I thought I told you…”
“I know… I know,” he repeated. Nodding.
Smiling from ear to ear.
* * * * * * *
After a European feast, an Italian banquet, Scott took the microphone from the DJ, and under a black velvet sky and a gentle evening breeze, candles flickering on each table, the dance floor behind him glowing under a thousand tiny glimmering bulbs, held a crystal goblet of chilled Martinelli’s high, looked at Terri sitting at the table beside him and said (for all of us, including the neighbors, to hear),
“Terri, I can still
remember the day my heart raced at the sight of you… and today, I not only
remember like it was yesterday… I can still feel it…”
A collective sigh swept over the crowd.
“We’ve spent half a lifetime together, a lifetime filled with wonderful friends too many trips and dinners and conversations and holidays and get-aways to count. You and I are somewhat seasoned now, I guess. You are the mother of our two terrific children…” The two of them, one married, the other just finishing up his college career, both sitting on either side of their Mom, beaming, nodded approvingly at their father’s blessing, as though they understood the gift they’d been given, and even the son-in-law, well, he nodded, too, knowing that his young pretty wife bears the unmistakable imprint of this remarkable woman, the subject of the toast in progress.
“You are the love of my life,” he said, choking back the emotion that comes when the truth of a spoken word coincides with a moment in time that will not be forgotten.
He raised the glass one more notch, “here’s to Terri! My wife, my lover, my best friend.” He moved his glass toward her, and she had hers ready. Their goblets clinked, and they sipped without looking away.
“To Terri!” everyone said, and you could hear the crystal ringing across the garden and down the valley and the echo, “Hear, hear!” “Hear, hear!”
(NOTE: Not “Here here.” “Hear, hear!” is the abbreviated version of an old saying - “Hear, all ye good people, hear what this brilliant and eloquent speaker has to say!”)
Hear, hear!
* * * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader.
Scott and Terri have something special together. So do you. There’s a place for extravagant love... a time for pushing the boundaries out a little.
There’s a time to dance.
And we did. ‘Til late on Friday night.
The Sheriff never showed up. Neither did the neighbors.
But I think they were listening.
And maybe by ten or ten thirty, in their own living rooms over there across the holler, windows open, to the melodies of our DJ’s romantic tunes, they were dancing, too.
Right along with us.
Posted in Valley Center, California
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2002
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
LeaderFOCUS is a service of Good Stewardship Associates
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