The night before the big event

There's a celebration scene near the end of "Roxanne," Steve Martin's funny modern day Cyrano de Bergerac, where the mayor of the town, played by Fred Willard, calls out to the assembled crowd, "I'd rather be with the people in this town, than with the finest people on earth!" And after a moment to digest that mangled thought, everybody cheers.

 

There were moments this past weekend when I felt that way. I had flown out to California for my uncle Mike's 100th birthday party, and was immersed in my extended family. It was a whirlwind kind of visit, showing up late Thursday, spending most of the day on Saturday hanging out at the house in suburban Sacramento that Mike and his wife, my dear departed Aunt Lucille, had built in 1952 and raised my three cousins. These cousins, ranging from 6 months to 4 years younger than me, are the closest extended family I have. My mom and aunt made sure we spent as much time as possible together, even with her in California and us in New York.

 

I was actually a little nervous about going, because I have not been good about keeping in touch the last couple of years. It's been reciprocal, but I blame myself because I know I dislike making phone calls and I don't know what they think. So I made sure to try to call before we came. I did get to speak with one of them for a while, enough to make me feel less nervous.

 

My two "older" cousins are women, hence the quotation marks, and if I have to be completely honest I've been kind of madly in love with both of them since I was 12. And they had taken on the task of creating this event, along with my one guy cousin, who has some interesting connections that enlivened the proceedings.

 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Friday was family-only day, a nice way to warm up for the 150+ expected for the party itself. We really did next to nothing but hang out. It was me and Ronnie, my sister and her kids, my dad, and my cousins and their kids. And it was as warm and joyful as you can imagine a get-together the night before a huge event could be. In spite of one cousin checking every weather report available to make sure that Saturday would be nice (accuweather said 'delightful,' while the Weather channel said only 'pleasant.'), the other making sure the house was in order and the third working on the next day's program, everybody was able to relax a bit, watch baseball, drink beer and eat pizza. And laugh. A lot.

 

And speaking of relax, I know it only comes up as a typo, but I think 'relaz' is a far better word for it. That final x is too percussive don't you think?

 

Since one of my themes for my second adulthood, as Ronnie calls our empty-nestishness, is to be closer with the people I really care about, this seemed as perfect an evening as I could have hoped for when we planned the trip. And yeah, I'll take these people anytime, wherever they rank on the fineness scale.