The Party

My childhood memories are full of sunny days idealised by a replay process that prefers to edit out the rainy days, leaving only images of baked moments, preserved for immortality. It’s funny but I can only remember sunny parties even though all our birthdays fell in winter. Time has hazed those images like a photographer smearing Vaseline around the lens to soften the edges of his photographs. 

We anticipated parties with delicious excitement.

The lamingtons were made by the assembly line of aunts laughing in the kitchen during the week.  A blend of chocolatey fingers, coconut, sponge squares and gossip. The chocolate crackles crunchy and inviting in colourful paper patty cases. Fairy bread came with thick white slices and a liberal sprinkling of colourful spots. Butterfly cakes with cream and jam, and there in the middle, among a collection of cream filled sponges, would be the cake announcing the birthday or the Christmas or the ceremony involved.  As well as these culinary delights there would be a big metal trough filled with ice, which kept the drinks cool, beer for the adults, lemonade and ginger beer for the children.  Mum had the kettle going non-stop to provide a steady stream of cups of tea for those adults not inclined towards alcohol.

All week Mum had slaved behind the scenes setting the standards for over-catering that were a feature of family gatherings. Her favourite china cups with the matching saucers and plates and the little silver spoons were cleaned and polished and ready.  The floors were cleaned and the toilet was spotless. 

Mum went to the hairdresser the day before the party.  The hairdresser clipped her hair with little metal butterfly clips that made the dried hair looked like the waves on Port Phillip Bay. We loved to feel the stiff ridges with our fingers. Mum thought it was very fashionable. She had dark hair and wistful eyes. She loved music and often played the piano at family parties.

Dad blew up the balloons. Between every couple of balloons he leaned against the wall to regain his breath and control dizziness. My sister and I were delegated to drape crepe paper streamers about the house and backyard. Our chubby fingers arranged balloons into bunches to dangle down in the way of balloons before helium was a required commodity at children’s parties.

Small paper hats were at the ready.  No colour coordinated parties here. An uninhibited chorus of colours greeted our party guests.  

My sister and I wore pleated skirts and white cotton blouses with bunny rabbit embroidery. Our hair was neatly tied with ribbons.  I was eight and my sister was about six.

Guests arrived in their party best. Mothers walked in still removing the last bit of soap from a child’s face with the spit on their hanky or licking their fingers and trying to train a cowlick. Their children tried to break away from their mother’s grip and seek the freedom of the pack. Fathers strode in behind their broods and complimented our mum on her hairdo. Mum blushed and told them to go and have a beer.

Aunts and uncles mingled in comfortable familiarity. Included in this group were a couple of maiden aunts, prim and protected and well into middle age. Our cousins came in sizes from six up. The older cousins had subdued their natural instincts for rowdy behaviour and lounged around talking about Bill Haley and Chuck Berry. The younger ones moved about like a large flying carpet, undulating and swirling around and over all obstacles. Every cousin had the family traits of loud voices and wide-open faces, freckled noses and stocky bodies. My childhood memories are full of large family gatherings with herds of cousins stampeding through the house and garden. My sister and I adored all thirty-two of them.

Add to this gathering a smattering of neighbourhood children and their parents. The children’s hair was slicked back; their faces clean; their shoes uncommonly shiny; all as different as my cousins were similar.

The neighbourhood children were a mixture of individuals. There was Alan from a couple of houses away. He was shy with mousy brown hair and glasses with thin metal rims. I remember he liked to take the buds off the poppies in another neighbour’s garden, and she would come out of her house yelling and waving her duster and chase him down the street. There was Janet’n’Susan. Rarely seen apart, these two sisters lived a little further up the street and were our friends from school. They were normally quite outgoing but the sudden sight of multiple cousins seemed to daunt them and they stood holding hands and needed to be enticed into the games by Dad or one of the uncles.

Hovering near Janet’n’Susan was Jill.  My ‘bestest’ best friend from the house on the corner, a block away. She had straight blonde hair that her mother cut using a pudding basin as a guide and she was small and a little on the skinny side. Finally there was Murray, who spent his weekends with a lady down the road and weekdays at an orphanage a few miles away.

When the party list was being compiled Mum would say, “Now don’t forget Murray. He’d like to come.” We’d nod our agreement. Mum always felt sorry for Murray.

Dad organised the games and entertainment. He was often away on business but he never missed a family celebration. He was tall with thinning dark hair and large bushy eyebrows. He loved a joke and he loved kids. Sometimes Dad showed ‘Laurel and Hardy’ movies in the double garage and encouraged all the kids to ‘boo’ the villains. On one memorable occasion Dad drank a little too much beer and re-emerged from the house with his coat on backwards pretending to be a priest. He blessed the assembled gathering to the great amusement of his surprised congregation. His daughters thought he was handsome, so he probably was.

Now remember, it was sunny. It’s important to the story because it was hot too. As the party progressed, the day reached its projected high temperature and many drinks were consumed. A maiden aunt, Aunt Myrtle, as I recall, was serving the thirsty hoards from a trestle table positioned in front of a trough of liquid refreshments. Aunt Myrtle was dad’s sister.  She was tall and spindly with bumpy hair. (She was the type of aunt who gave you a tin of talc for your birthday when you really wanted a colouring book.) Aunt Myrtle was not wise in the ways of the drinking public, having never let liquor pass her lips. She did her job efficiently and carefully asking each child their desired beverage and serving each request to the best of her ability. Beer was available for the adults and lemonade and ginger ale were for the children. Some of the thirstier children were seen gulping several glasses.

Bottles bobbed in the melting ice and the constant immersion meant a number of labels soon lost grip of their bottles and floated about on the surface of the mini Antarctic Ocean.

Dad had been yarning with the men in the tool shed when he went to the trough to retrieve another beer and met the unexpected sight of a child staggering towards him with a sack from the races on his head. 

Suddenly children began to behave in the most unexpected ways. Pre-pubescents lurched around the garden giggling. Others settled under bushes snoozing. Children staggered towards laden tables or unsuccessfully tried to negotiate obstacle courses with eggs and spoons. Fearlessly they discovered the effect of putting ice down the backs of unsuspecting adults. 

The party threatened to deteriorate into chaos.

The reason for this strange commotion became apparent when excess empty beer bottles were found in the crates of empties. 

It became apparent that Aunt Myrtle was unaware that ginger beer came in similar brown bottles to the beer that was destined for adult palates. Oblivious to the difference between beer and ginger ale, she had calmly, innocently and helpfully served children with the next brown bottle of amber fluid. 

Urgent action was required. Aunt Myrtle stopped serving. She was mortified to think a lifetime of abstinence had led to her mistake. 

Children were hurriedly seated and encouraged to eat as much as possible and have another drink of ‘real’ lemonade. For some, the whole procedure was so overwhelming they closed their eyes and laid their heads on the table.

Mum later explained that the food and lemonade gradually diluted the effect of the beer for most of the children. When parents bundled their offspring home to sleep away their inebriation, small flushed faces departed on unsteady legs, guided by adults amused but anxious that their small charges avoid gaining a taste for the delights of alcohol at such a tender age.    

                   

It is not surprising that many of the children could not remember how they got home from the party, when they woke in their beds the next morning.

By Lisbeth Wilks (Many years after the event)

Two sisters, ready for the party.