Open House

dated 2010-04-20 | posted in columns | topic People | permanent link

My parents were educated, generous and inhospitable. They welcomed our nuclear family of four in our home, but no one else. As a young girl I played jacks at my neighbor’s house, spent the weekends at the country home of a friend and studied in the basement of my high school beau. It wasn’t that my parents disliked people: they just didn’t want them in our home. We had a large living room with a white, designer rug that spoke “Stay out.” Even my sister and I had to take off our shoes to enter, which we rarely did as the room seemed cold and foreboding.

Our dining room table was set for four. It had an extra leaf that could seat four more, but never did. I can’t remember anyone coming over to eat with us even though my mom made a great chocolate pie and grilled tasty lamb chops. But always enough for only four. Most poignantly, when I asked if a college friend come visit me from Chicago, I was told that she was welcome but had to stay in a hotel. ( I was too embarrassed to tell her this news, and instead I made up some farfetched reason why she couldn’t visit me after all.)

That’s when I made a silent vow to live my life differently once I was on my own. It’s strange how parental habits and attitudes become so deeply ingrained in our own. I thought the change would come easy, but it didn’t. The first year I lived in Portugal two friends from the States wrote that they would be traveling in Europe and asked if they could stay with me for four nights. I remember looking around my smallish apartment and thinking, “Not here.” I told them there was a cosy and inexpensive residencial down the street from where I lived, and that’s where they stayed for their visit. I felt ashamed of my unsociability, but the best I could do was to invite them in for lunches and dinners.

Once I moved to a larger apartment I had no excuses, and by that time I was rooted into the tradition of Portuguese hospitality. So last October at a family reunion, when I met a new cousin, I was ready for what followed:

“Hey Pat, I hear you live in Portugal,” Karen, 25, said.

I felt my body tighten knowing what would come next. But then I heard myself say,
“Yes, why don’t you come and visit?”

Last week Karen left after staying with us for nine days. Before she arrived I made a vow: no residencials, few restaurants, lots of conversations, and even a cookout in her honor. Don and I, the two dogs and Karen, a stunning young woman visiting Europe alone for the first time, shared meals, chores , and stayed up late laughing and talking in ways our family never did when I was young.

The day before she was to leave Karen said, “I’d like to cook dinner for you and Don.
“ Doing it different ( and right) this time, I cancelled our Tuesday bridge night game and said, “ Yes, we’d love that”

On Tuesday evening she set the table and served salmon steaks marinated and broiled, a spinach and avocado salad worthy of a 5-star chef and pasteis de nata she’d bought in Belem that day. The day after Karen left I got a email from her, “ Pat, thanks for your hospitality.” She signed it, “From your European daughter.”

patwestheimer@gmail.com