Full House

by Patti


I live in a 2-bedroom, 2-bath, charming little house. To give you an idea of just how charming, when I was in real estate, those in the industry knew that the word "charming" in any description  meant that the house? Was Ti. Ny. So yes, our house ain't no mansion, but it suits our little family of three just fine.

Fortunately, we have a finished basement, and a family room in addition to a living room, so even though our house is small, the layout makes it seem deceptively big. Until you throw in three grandparents and 11 screaming 11-year olds. Then, suddenly, that charming yet deceptively large little house becomes a clown house, with people spilling out of every nook and cranny while wacky circus music bleats its beats right into your head.

This past weekend was S's birthday party. In true Aries style, it's not enough for her to have a little gathering around a small, candle-lit cake. No, the kid has to have every human she has ever known admire her as she blows out her candles, and if they can all spend the night afterwards to further extend the festivities, the better. I figured, eh, it's her 11th- the big "tween" birthday - so let's let her have her night of horrors fun! This party was planned weeks ago, long before I knew my in-laws would be popping in for a surprise visit from Argentina, so imagine my freak-outedness when they appeared and I had to figure out where the hell to put them. Normally, they sleep in the basement when they come, but this time around, the basement would be teeming with tweens. M suggested we give up our room to them, give the basement to the tweens, and we would sleep in Sofia's loft bed. Her bed is one of those Ikea numbers, where the bottom part is really a fort with a mattress on the ground, and the top part, while suitable for a 50-something pound 10-year old, is a rickety Fear Factor experiment for anybody over 95 lbs. But we knew it'd be for one night only, because as soon as those tweens were gone, S would be back to her bed, and we'd be in the basement for the duration of M's parents' visit.

SO. This was the plan.

The party commenced, and while I ran around like a freak on fire, and M slung pizzas into and out of the oven, and my mom snapped pics, and my in-laws stepped over and around various bodies that were sprawled out all over the place making scrapbooks, the girls had an absolute ball. As luck would have it, it turns out that half of the invited guests had to be somewhere early the next morning, so only five girls ended up spending the night. WHICH WAS JUST FINE BY ME. As soon as the scrapbooking part of the party was over, and the going-home girls went home, the rest of them were relegated to the basement, where they sang karaoke, played board games, danced, and drowned in prepubescent hormones.

The house groaned all night with the weight of people, but it also danced with the laughter of girls experiencing that first delicious taste of freedom -- the kind that makes you feel that the world is yours and everything in it holds possibility. As I wandered around upstairs in the wee hours from couch to bed to couch to bed to, at last and for good, couch, I smiled through my exhaustion. The laughter floated up from the basement through the floor, and I remembered that feeling so sharply - those nights of giggles and late-night games that consisted of sticking the hand of the first girl to fall asleep into a bowl of warm water to make her pee in her sleep, and ghost stories, and whispered gossip about the red-headed, freckled-faced Gary that suddenly got cute, and it was all completely worth it, the sacrificed space and sleep.

My house was full, oh, so full. My heart, more so.