I think I’ve done it again. My sixtieth birthday arrived and, like every sensible man approaching retirement age, I responded with complete financial recklessness.
There was a marquee in the back garden. Not a gazebo. Not a tent. A marquee. The sort of structure that announces to the neighbourhood that either a wedding, a funeral, or a poor financial decision is about to take place.
Inside it sat enough food to cater a minor uprising. Southern barbecue. Proper barbecue. Brisket that had spent longer in the smoker than some marriages last. Ribs lacquered with sticky glaze. Chicken. Slaws. Salads. Sausages. Salami. Trays and platters and boards groaning under the weight of things that had occupied my thoughts for weeks.
Then there were the bands. Plural. Because apparently one band wasn’t sufficient.
There was a free bar too. Of course there was. Not content with merely supplying alcohol, I had decided that for my sixtieth birthday I should make much of it myself.
For weeks beforehand the kitchen looked like an illegal distillery. Rum. Gin. Orange curacao. Bottles lined every available surface. At one point Jan walked into the utility room, looked around and asked whether I was opening a Caribbean-themed pharmacy.
I wasn’t. I was perfecting Mai Tais. They are my favourite cocktail. The problem with having a favourite cocktail is that eventually you convince yourself nobody else can make it properly. So I made my own rum. Then I made my own curacao. Then I spent entirely too much time balancing ingredients nobody would ever notice individually. The end result was a drink that tasted exactly like a Mai Tai should. Whether that justified three weeks of effort remains a matter of debate.
Jan had her Jasper Martinis. I had my Mai Tais. Everybody else had whatever they wanted. That was the point.
Because if I’m honest, birthdays have never really been about me. Not the way they are for normal people. Normal people receive gifts. Normal people sit down and allow themselves to be celebrated. Normal people don’t spend three weeks curing, smoking, marinating, bottling, planning, shopping, cooking, organising entertainment, arranging seating plans and calculating how many kilograms of brisket are required to prevent relatives from rioting.
I do. Because somewhere along the line, birthdays became another excuse to feed people. And feeding people has always been my weakness. Or my addiction. Depending on how charitable you want to be.
The guests started arriving in the afternoon. Family first. Then friends. Then neighbours. Then old work colleagues. Then people who fit into that strange category of human beings who drift through your life, leave a mark, and somehow become part of your story.
Every few minutes somebody appeared at the gate. Every few minutes another handshake. Another hug. Another “Happy Birthday, Rod.”
The smell of barbecue smoke drifted through the garden. Music rolled out from the stage. Children ran about under tables. The ice buckets emptied and were filled again. The sort of gathering where nobody wants to be the first person to leave.
I love those moments. Not because people are enjoying themselves. Although that matters. It’s because for a few hours all the different parts of your life exist in the same room. Your brother is talking to somebody from work. Your neighbour is drinking with a cousin. People who would never otherwise meet are sharing stories and laughing together. It’s like standing in the middle of a living map of your own life.
And I stood there looking around thinking: this is it. This might be my masterpiece. Not the food. Not the cocktails. Not the marquee. The gathering itself. The collection of people. The proof that sixty years had amounted to something.
I watched people eat. I always watch people eat. Cooks pretend they don’t. They lie. Every cook watches. We watch for the first bite. The raised eyebrow. The second helping. The empty plate. The silence.
Silence is always the best compliment. People talk when food is average. People become quiet when food is exceptional. And there were moments that night when conversations simply stopped. A mouthful of brisket. A slice of salami. A rib that surrendered cleanly from the bone.
Those moments still give me the same satisfaction they gave me when I was seven years old feeding my father burnt bacon and raw potatoes. Nothing has changed. The scale is different. The need is exactly the same.
Hours later the bands had packed up. The last guests had drifted home. The garden looked like the aftermath of a particularly cheerful invasion. Half-empty glasses. Discarded napkins. Chairs standing at odd angles. The smell of extinguished charcoal hanging in the cool night air.
Jan had gone to bed. The house had fallen quiet. And that was when I made the mistake. I sat down.
You should never sit down after a party. That’s when the accounting starts. Not the emotional accounting. The actual accounting.
I found the receipts. Then the invoices. Then the credit card statements. There are moments in life when numbers cease being abstract concepts and become physical objects. These numbers had weight. They sat there on the page like concrete blocks.
I looked at the first bill. Then the second. Then back at the first in case I had somehow misunderstood it. I hadn’t. Between them they could have choked a horse. Perhaps a medium-sized cow.
I sat staring at them while the distant smell of barbecue still lingered in the garden. And I found myself asking a question. Why do I keep doing this? Not the party. The feeding. The overreaching. The inability to leave well enough alone.
Nobody would have complained if there had been one band. Nobody would have cared if the bar wasn’t free. Nobody would have noticed if I’d bought the rum instead of making it. Nobody would have left hungry. Nobody would have left unhappy.
And yet every time I reach the same conclusion. A little more. One more thing. One more dish. One more detail. One more flourish. As though somewhere beyond the next improvement lies a finish line that doesn’t actually exist.
I like being useful. I like making people happy. Food just happens to be the language I’ve always spoken most fluently. The trouble is that languages can become compulsions.
So there I sat. Sixty years old. Surrounded by the evidence of a wonderful evening. Staring at bills that would take months to forget. Wondering whether this was finally the time to say enough.
The meal ends. The guests leave. The plates get washed. But the hunger never really goes away. And for people like me, it was never hunger for food in the first place. It was hunger for the table. It always was.