Hospitality Without Grudging
We recently had friends over for dinner. I’d been dreading their appearance for as long as we’d settled on the date. They’d had us over for dinner before, and we wanted to return the favor, but in a “Can we not and pretend we did?” sort of way.
I’m usually happy to host. But not when in comparison to my guests my home is decrepit, my cooking okay, and my gardening a joke. It’s hard to issue invitations then. Doing so feels like handing them a “reject me” note on a silver platter.
The family we’d invited over were just a notch above. The wife was a joyful, no-nonsense executive assistant for an international nonprofit. She was also a cook of excellent taste and broad proficiency, regularly baking, cooking, and hosting gatherings at their home. Her husband was a University of Idaho defensive tackle turned real-estate agent who mentored young men in his free time. Not to mention, he could barbecue to beat the band. Their family lived in a newer house with a beautifully manicured backyard, with prim plants perking from the organic soil they were nestled in. A playset fort (put together by the husband) added to the home aesthetic.
I wondered what I had gotten myself into. What could I offer to people who had it all together? I knew I needed an attitude adjustment before my guests arrived, so I tossed up a prayer that went something like this: “Lord, let me be what they need and not what I want to give.”
In prayer, I realized that I couldn’t be what I wanted to give—a master chef, gardener, and owner of a model home—because I was not and had not those things. I was a middling cook and a novice gardener living in a “We’re gonna get to that soon” sort of house. You know the kind.
Novice is a generous term for my gardening style. It’s more like “Worst Cooks in America” meets gardening. I have grand plans of revolutionizing gardening using only my homegrown compost and the clay soil I’ve been given. This is while every “actual” gardener looks on in horror. My rag-tag garden mostly consists of plants with an extraordinary will to survive and young starts given to me by “actual” gardeners. Ironically, this includes a pumpkin plant gifted by my soon-arriving dinner guest.
Nonetheless, I offered the day, the house, and myself to the Lord and got to work.
There I was—hustling around, making bread and preparing chicken, when I noticed that, after its second proof, my bread dough pooled out of the bowl like a middle-aged belly out of skinny jeans. It was not holding its shape. I scored it and popped it in the piping hot oven, even as its edges continued to expand. When I pulled it out forty minutes later the bread was half the height and twice the width of a standard loaf. I couldn’t do a thing about it. There was no time to run to the store. All I could do was whip up some honey butter and hope for the best.
When our guests arrived, the husband praised my scoring and asked about the funny shape of the bread. I told him that it hadn’t really set up. He asked if it was over-proofed. “Yes!” I answered in surprise. “How did you know?” He answered that his wife had encountered the same problem the day before. We all laughed, slathered honey butter on the bread, and dug into dinner.
After clearing the dishes and promising the kids they would soon be able to play outside, we moved our gathering outdoors. Past the deck with peeling paint and bouncy boards we went, over the carpet of pine needles, leaf mold, and scattered Nerf darts, landing us at the rickety playset planted on patchy grass and packed-down dirt. We pushed our toddlers back and forth, and we talked in time with the creak of the swings. My friend told me how her best hours as a child were spent roaming the forests and preserves behind her city home. She and her sister would meet the neighborhood kids outdoors, where they spent hours playing and pretending amongst the trees, until their parents called them home. The more we spoke the more we became similar.
Our older kids raced along the path above us, exploring the overgrown plum-patch and chicken-wire fenced “garden”. There, her pumpkin plant was putting out heart-shaped leaves and bright yellow blossoms. She told me then how she appreciated our uncultivated, expansive backyard. She wished her own kids could have what we had, and what she once had; time and space to explore without worry or distraction.
As the sun sank behind the horizon, the pinks and golds of the skyscape deepened. The kids began to yawn, and our conversation slowed. After saying goodbyes I moved inside to clean the kitchen, contemplating how honey butter and a helping of humble hospitality covered a multitude of mistakes. Since then, the pumpkin plant my friend gifted me has produced three of the cutest mini pumpkins I’ve ever seen. I told her yesterday how delighted I was by them. She stepped back in delighted shock. “They produced? Mine all died before they even flowered.”
There may be something to compost and clay soil after all…
Sarah J. Silflow is a writer, small-town girl, and lover of languages and cultures, especially the language and culture of her home.