The morning sun shone through the big windows in the kitchen as Gloucester’s bright reds, oranges, and yellows of October reflected off of Stillington pond like a famous Monet. Four siblings gathered in the kitchen. My uncle Buff, the eldest, wore dark wash jeans and a fleece quarter zip paired with his deep chestnut brown slippers. Aunt Suzanne, just two years younger, had her graying hair pulled into her classic tightly wound thick braid that fell at the collar of her gray flannel shirt. My father Chris, only two years younger than Suzanne, had on the same style of worn-in Levi’s as his older brother, only in a lighter wash. The only blonde of the four, the sun reflected off his hair and illuminated his bright green eyes. My aunt Sarah, the baby of the family and the host for the weekend, had chosen to tie her hair into two loose braids that she had undoubtedly, just like her older sister, learned from Mame.
85-year-old Mame and her husband Daddybur, who has passed away, are my grandparents. The pair was famous amongst their friends in Princeton, New Jersey for holding extravagant themed parties for anything and everything they could think of. Traditional holidays such as Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day and the Fourth of July were all celebrated in their barn and pastures, as well as more arbitrary ones, including National Beer Day, Cinco de Mayo (no, neither of them are of Mexican heritage) and Pretzel Day (yes, Mame is of German heritage).
Many of my favorite stories are centered around these wild parties and on this morning, as the entire family gathered to celebrate Mame turning 85, her four children were looking back on some of the Burchfield family’s greatest parties.
“What about their Halloween party in the barn,” Sarah said. “Where everybody came as a ghost and had to figure out who everybody else was, but you weren’t allowed to talk?”
“You had to have a sheet over your head,” Buff interrupted his little sister. “But with eye slots. Guests milled around the barn, drinks in hand, trying to recognize their friends only by the small eye holes they cut in the sheets.”
“What they didn’t realize was that if you weren’t allowed to talk, all you could do was drink…” Sarah continued.
“…and touch everybody,” said my dad, also interrupting her, though it was clear she was used to it, being the youngest for nearly sixty years.
“By the time midnight came and they disrobed, half of the guests had to spend the night in their cars in the pasture because they just had been drinking for hours and hours,” she finished.
“Oh Gosh,” said Suzanne fondly. “That is the theme between Mame and Daddybur…if they didn’t have more fun than anybody that I have ever known! I mean truly, they created themes so they could get everybody together and eat and drink. It didn’t matter…they would make up a holiday just to have a good time.”
Buff leaned back against the kitchen island. “I remember when Mame and her best friend Martha introduced their two new pigs to the community. They made up these gorgeous invitations that they had two new friends coming into town…”
“Nobody had any idea who they were,” my dad added. “Oh, no, no,” Buff continued. “No idea. Mame and Daddybur, with the help of Martha, held a cocktail party and it wasn’t until everybody got there that they realized those friends were two potbelly pigs. One had a tie on, you know a little black tie, and Martha’s pig, which was the female, uh, I can’t remember what she had on,” his voice faded off as he tried to recall.
“Pearl necklace,” my dad said confidently. “Pearl necklace! And they kept the pigs in the house until they got too big and when the furniture started to move, they went out to the barn,” Buff finished.
“Mame and Daddybur,” Suzanne mused. “I’ll tell you, ah, I don’t know…” Silence hung in the air as the four siblings smiled at each other, my uncle still leaning against the center island, Sarah perched on top of the countertop with a hot coffee in her hand, Suzanne standing next to her, and my dad to the left of Suzanne, sitting at the kitchen table with his New York Times and reading glasses.
“I remember skiing up at Sugarbush,” aunt Sarah said, launching into another tale. Once there, she recounted, the families met up with the Woods, the McDougalds, and the Karans. Mame has always loved horses, so Daddybur always brought the horses from their farm and rented out a room at a stable while they were in Vermont. On one occasion, they brought the horses out to a mountain and rigged them each up to a sleigh carriage. They created two teams, which were placed at different points on the mountain, and a race was held to see which group reached the bottom first.
The pair didn’t even need a real reason to host a party. One spring day, Mame and Daddybur decided they were naturalists. They had mowed out a path through the meadow and took their visitors on a walk. Every few minutes, they would stop, as they had staged a miniature presentation. Prior to their venture, Daddybur had crafted up a concoction in the kitchen that was meant to look like bird poop and had sprinkled it around the path. He stopped the group and delivered an absurd speech, knelt down and took a taste of the “bird feces”, and shared the name of the (entirely made up) bird that had left it behind.
“The Bicentennial,” my dad said. “That Fourth of July party was probably one of the best.” “Oh, the one out at the farm?” Suzanne asked.
“We had probably, uh, 300 people there and everyone came dressed as either a redcoat or a colonial and we had games all afternoon between the British and the Americans,” he laughed. “We had a dog, Caesar, who spent the whole summer bring home box turtles and we kept them all. Mom and Dad painted American flags and Union Jacks on their shells, and then we put them in this big pen, and we bet on them and whichever turtle got to the corner or the edge of the circle first was the winner and everybody would throw up their hands. And then we’d do it again – the stupidest stuff.
“I know!” Suzanne smiled.
“But, but we had guys coming dressed like wounded soldiers and they’d be dragging their leg” my dad continued, acting out the friends in his memories and dragging his own leg as he walked around the kitchen. “And they had fake injuries, and everybody dressed in crazy clothing.”
“And that Fife and Drum Corps that marched up the lane, oh my God!” said Suzanne. My dad folded his paper, getting more into the story. “We had fireworks and silly games.” “Didn’t we have the frying pan throw?” Suzanne leaned against the countertop.
“Yeah, and the rolling pin throw.” My dad mimed hurling a rowing pin as far as he could.
While Chris and Suzanne were spearheading this story, Sarah and Buff were erupting into laughter as though they had been transported back to their childhood selves.
“There was always a theme to their parties. Always,” Buff finally added. “Which really made for a party, you know? And isn’t it funny that all our best memories are about partying? And nothing has changed.” “That party gene has just been passed through the generations,” Suzanne said with a smile.
“Yeah, but we haven’t done it as well as they have,” my dad said, which was met with resounding agreement from his siblings.
“And we never will. I don’t think it will ever happen again,” Sarah said.
“We wouldn’t have had it any other way – I can tell you that,” my uncle Buff said, as the conversation wound down and Sarah began to cook breakfast; the smell of bacon filled the room. “We wouldn’t do a do-over. I couldn’t ask for it any better way.”