photo: courtesy PDPhoto.org
By Tiber
As I said earlier, Dad decided that to save money, we would all stay home, get dressed up and have our New Year’s Eve party right here. No one else was happy about this but we all did dress formally and meet up in the big living room.
And then we all proceeded to just sit there, like a 4th grade dance, where nobody wants to touch anyone.
Someone finally suggested we play “Charades” but it became obvious that nobody was into it. When my brother, Kru, got his clue and held up four fingers, Duncan just yelled out, “Four words? How about “You…are…an …idiot.”
When the next person did the symbol for “sounds like-,” Dad groused, “It sounds like you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!” The game collapsed completely when the other team wouldn’t even try to name what clearly was “The Sound of Music,” and instead insisted they had solved it with “The Hound of Cusack,” claiming it was a documentary the actor had made about his dog.
The evening went downhill from there and eventually, Kru, Duncan, my sister Vanessa, and I ended up playing poker up with the security guards on the third floor of the staff wing. We’re hardly ever invited over there but maybe they felt sorry for us.
My sister–in-law, Honor, put the triplets to bed, though in their case, it’s much more like day’s end at a zoo, where the animals are conned into being relocked into their sleep enclosures by the lobbing of extra food.
Mom and my sister, Iris Nell, ended up knitting with the housekeeper, Mrs. Brunty, in the staff parlor and even Cook, after putting up orange traffic cones to block people from the kitchen, came out, plopped down, ignored the others and stared straight ahead. Mom was thrilled that she was being so sociable.
The three maids were overheard happily discussing how they can get a reality show to shoot here without Dad knowing. And Brunty the butler‘s head kept looming out of the darkness, like the Wizard of Oz, as he kept roaming from group to group, evidently not finding any of them worth joining.
Mom even took a tin of holiday cookies up to the attic rooms, just in case that unknown old woman she found up there one day is still in residence. Dad even contributed one of his special beers.
Dad himself settled into his study with the same beer, pie, a book on military history, his dogs and his youngest daughter, my teenaged sister, Erin, for company, so he was happy indeed. Erin sat by the big fire and drew pictures of skulls, so I guess she was happy too.
A very cold wind kicked up outside as the new year came roaring in but even with our differences, a good time was finally had by all, here at Villa de Loon.
