When we moved to Altadena, we were able to buy a house just at the end of the time when houses were still affordable. Two years later, we wouldn’t have been able to live there.

We found a realtor, a friendly woman who had seen middle age pass by and was still working. We showed her the money, $6,000 my Father had left as my share. We talked about the things we wanted in a house, big enough for children. We brought one child with us, a starter to a dynasty we never developed because career dance postponed. We thought maybe a house with two stories, bedrooms upstairs. We thought maybe craftsman style, because they were all over town, we had loved them in Riverside, even lived in one we rented, but were afraid we could never afford. The realtor, a blessed woman, took us to Highland Avenue in Altadena. The house on the right looked wonderful. The house just across the street, also for sale, looked maybe even more wonderful, but the realtor said, “You don’t want that one,” and took us inside the house on the east side of the street with even numbers, and, like innocent babies, we entered and looked around and up and said a silent, “Wow!”

And another woman, the outgoing owner, was sitting reading a book in a chair by the fireplace under an open window to show how comfortable it could be in the hottest summer, ready to answer any question we might have, to promote the sale, and said, “It’s great for parties.”

She was right.

It was the only house we looked at. We got it right the first time, like marriage.

We raised our little one-child family, Shirley taught ballet, I taught school, went to graduate school for a Master’s Degree in English, and held the graduation party at our house. We planned again, having done it enough to know how best.

I made maps with travel instructions for all the English Major Graduates at Cal State, for all our professors, for as many friends and relatives as we could reach and accommodate, including neighbors and some of my students and their parents, so quite a crowd, parking up and down the street and along our driveway, two spaces side by side in front of the garage.

We had lots of everything. Greek food, even Greek potato salad I invented, with feta cheese and eggs and Kalamata olives, a real hit, enough for seconds.

We had cleared the dining room table, put in the extra leaves to stretch the extension for maybe 14 chairs at a squeeze. The sideboard above the drawers and in front of the shelves and plate racks was groaning with the offerings, seasonal fruit and tossed salad, bowls of nuts and snacks. The kitchen counter, tiled all around, separating the breakfast room with its own expanded table, chairs, and its own chandelier, held the hot foods on trivets – meats and potatoes and sliced ham and collard greens Southern style, and yams and green beans with bacon, and pasta choices and braised carrots and and and – like Christmas and Thanksgiving and New Year’s and Easter all rolled into one.

The kitchen door led to the laundry room led to the back door led to the back porch, steps going down both ways, and the concrete sunken patio with a picnic table and chairs for the overflow which there certainly was.

And speakers hanging from the eaves and trees to bring the music outside, and hanging lights for later on into the evening.

And the side porch like a carriage entry, tables and chairs and ledges from the pillars to the house where guests could place a plate or rest a glass. And the front porch which extended the entire length of the house on both sides of the entryway, more seating and tables.

And inside every room cleared and set to allow crowds to drift or linger – my study with my Father’s desk, shelves above that he had built, my typewriter sitting still smoking from the afternoon rush of overuse, notices typed in haste right up to the last minute.

Bathroom down the hall, and the stairs leading to the second floor, a landing, three bedrooms leading off, an upstairs bathroom by a bookshelf, the master bedroom leading through the boudoir to the master bathroom, and the other way through the blue room bedroom, to the airplane room at the prow of the house that we called the sewing room, because that’s what they did in those days, entered on two sides from the adjacent bedrooms, windows on three sides looking out at the street, the gardens, and the mountains.

Places everywhere to set a plate or pause a glass, and bookshelves filled in every room, the ballet library overflowing the sewing room. And people came and came, and spread throughout, and stayed and talked and laughed and ate and drank. Some in the entryway clustered around the piano and sang the songs laid out in multiple choices.

A student of mine, because the family had been friends for years, dragged his father into the study and pointed to one of the oversize books on the shelf above the desk, the date embossed in gold numerals at the bottom of the leather spine: “Look, Dad, 1723!” and his father said in my overhearing, “Yes, son, your teacher’s the real thing.”

And the father of another student, all family friends, wanted to establish himself among the august crowd of newly anointed Masters of English, climbed partway up the staircase and loudly read to the assemblage the poem he’d written for the occasion, which began: “Of what are we the masters of…?” and his wife and son cringed because they knew he was no master of the language, but he didn’t know or care and offered copies.

I had planned a game for everyone to play. I had put effort and some thought into it, and was typing furiously up to the moment of arrival. When each person entered, they were given a card with numbers, and a pencil. Scattered throughout the house were numbered quotations, unidentified, posted prominently. The objective was to track them down in a limited time, write down the source – who wrote it or said it, where, when – then sign and turn in your card for final judging, tally, and prizes for the winners. I thought it was a good game, especially for English Majors and their professors, would be fun. I imagined everyone scurrying from posting to posting, scribbling their answers, then eagerly rushing to judgment and a prize. The quotations were carefully chosen from things we’d all read in our graduate classes.

I immediately saw my mistake. My fellow students said, “Huh?” or “Whaaa?” Apparently they hadn’t quite read what I had read, or didn’t remember, or hadn’t quite understood, or were maybe from another planet. I had thrown in a couple of easy ones, like, “To be, or not…” but the game was too hard for them, they tired of it, and I had to award the prizes to the holders of partially filled mostly blank entries. The professors played, reluctantly, feeling put on the spot, and one questioned the source of a particularly fatuous quotation. “Who the hell said that?” he asked. I answered, “Why, you did, in class, yesterday.” The professors had all come to know me as a friend, and I gave that one a consolation prize.

The party continued on for hours. There was the one downstairs bathroom, and the two bathrooms upstairs, to handle the overflow, so no one had to leave to go anywhere else.

Toward late at night, the assemblage thinned, but many stayed on, and then on some more. We had a few extra beds, space on the living room couch for an extra large person, and pillows on the floor with blankets, because people just wouldn’t leave. Some had come up from San Diego, some were down from the Bay Area, and they stayed overnight into the morning. We were all awakened by the smell of fresh-made donuts. Someone knew how, and they were making batches which we all devoured with gratitude.

Things slowed down into the afternoon as the last to leave said in parting, “You sure know how to throw a party!”

Apparently so.