Planning The Party

As long as Mummy P. is around, The Great Plotnik can still be a kid. She's astounding, really -- you just have to understand the one ground rule, and that is she gets tired easily. Let her take a nap and she's sharp as any of us. Plottie would like to be like his mom when he grows up.

Schmeckl and TheGreat are planning her 95th Birthday Party, which will be at her house in a few weeks. They're attempting to walk the high wire with Mummy P., who cannot handle crowds very well anymore, but who also wants to invite the entire world. One minute she begs Plotnik: "please, Honey, don't invite too many people..." and the next minute she says "Why didn't you invite all the kids, and their kids, and that nice neighbor whose name I don't know but who waved to me once on the street?"

The saddest part is that her generation is just about gone. All her good friends have died, and the next tier too. Beanie, her one good neighborhood friend, died last year. Aunt Marge, who is the younger sister of Plotnik's father, now has lung cancer and can't leave her house. The other sister lives in Washington and has been about to die for at least thirty years. She can't travel.

On Mummy P's side, one brother is gone and the other is in his nineties and must stay in Michigan to take care of his wife. There are a few cousins, but it's not easy for anyone to make the trip west for the few hours that the party will entail.

Plotnik hates not being able to invite the local cousins' children -- but the numbers get too large, and they're all grown-ups, they understand.

And then there are the feuds, the idiotic and senseless feuds. What a colossal waste of time. Look at your watch, people. What is that minute hand doing?