Friday Night Gathering

     Ten or eleven years ago Nyel and I moved into the family house in Oysterville and invented ‘Friday Nights at Home.’  It concerned me that there would only be two of us in this old ten-room house – a house that cried out for people.  After all, my grandparents had raised seven children here, and when my parents had retired here in the 1970s the house became Entertainment Central of the peninsula’s north end.  This is a house that needs people.  So we began our ‘at homes.’
     The way it works is this:  our neighbors and friends have a standing invitation to stop by on Friday evenings for a few hours.  They bring appetizers; we supply the beverages.  We seldom know exactly who, if anyone, will show up, although during the past decade we’ve only spent a half dozen Friday nights alone.  By the same token, we try to work around Fridays so that we’ll be here and, 49 or 50 Fridays out of the year, we are.
     It’s always fun.  We’ve had as many as twenty folks come or as few as one – six or seven is about average.  The mix of people is sometimes very interesting, indeed!  At first, some of our friends referred to the gatherings as ‘salons.’  Wikipedia defines a salon as a gathering of intellectual, social, political, and cultural elites under the roof of an inspiring hostess or host, partly to amuse one another and partly to refine their taste and increase their knowledge through conversation.  Our Friday Nights are definitely not salons. 
     Our Friday Nights are more a time to catch up with one another after a busy week – exchange the ‘guzz ‘n gossip’ as one of my friends calls useless chit-chat – and to reinforce the connectedness of our lives.  I think of them as the modern-day equivalent of talking over the back fence or gathering around the pot-belly stove at the general store.  I look forward to them each week.  And, oh boy!  Today is Friday!