Some Enchanted Evening

During a spring bridal season when I was a young wife, I was captivated by a jewelry store display of dining tables which dotted their showroom floor for a few weeks. I was able to study a different tableaux each day as I passed the storefront on my way to work. Every decorated table was labeled with a potential dinner party for the bride’s first year of marriage: “The Boss Comes to Dinner”, “Weeknight Romantic Dinner”, “Sunday Brunch for Friends”, and my favorite, “First Dinner for the In-Laws”. Each arrangement was dazzlingly laid with the shop’s boundless collection of pretty china, shimmering crystal and sterling cutlery, not to mention charming linens, flowers and pastel candles, all coordinating with each table’s noted theme.

I had become close to my new husband’s grandparents who lived nearby. As a compliment to the homekeeping teachings of my own grandmother, I was also learning domestic things from this new-to-me grandmother who was more “country” than my “city” grandmother. But knowing all four of our grandparents were the same age and wanting to do a variation of the “First Dinner for the In-Laws”, I thought it would be nice to invite them all to come for dinner that spring, which had become an early-blooming and exceptionally lush season.

What was a simple hope turned out to be an enchanting evening. I happily fretted over my table and pulled out many of my just-opened wedding presents including a cut-glass crystal bowl which caught rays of light from the dropping sun through the dual dining room windows. I filled it with white marbles and floated flower blooms for my centerpiece as I had seen on top of “Weeknight Romantic Dinner”. I put the white and blue embroidered placemats which my grandparents gave us, over the glass-top table which also supplemented the night’s bewitching glints and gleams. Long tapers rounded out the setting.

I can’t remember what we ate that night but I do remember that my grandmother whispered to me that dinner was “scrumptious” and I considered that a prime compliment. I also recall that she looked lovely in a simple silk sheath of apple green. This was memorialized in a snapshot – the only one of the night. I was so touched that my grandparents had driven out from Boston for this dinner because at the time, they were quite elderly.

What was truly magical about my dinner party was that all four grandparents got along like a house on fire. The conversation centered around city life versus country life and the old-world pastimes of their childhoods. Together, they reminisced about growing up at the turn of the century, the lamplighters who came to light up the streets every night and the rag men who called out in the alleys every morning. My husband and I could not get a word in edgewise and so we sat there smiling and nodding at the joy of it. That night remains in my keeping and is still wrapped in a golden spring glow.

These beloved people did not have an occasion to meet again and are all long-gone now. But for one enchanted evening, I was able to bring them together as their blissful common denominator, helped along by a wistful window display that captured this young wife’s imagination.