Benevolence/Birthdays
This is the most social day I’ve had in ages! I may wax poetic about the two wonderful groups of people we saw today… but I don’t think words really capture the feeling of comradrie and fulfillment I’m left with. In short, we got up early to go to Berkeley and have Thai brunch for our old co-worker’s birthday. The whole team was there, and it was so wonderful to be with the work group. That’s a truly special group of people, and I’m really hoping we can make good on the plan to do another Afghan food / Bollywood night with them while we’re on spring break. We definitely need to spend more time with them. Thai brunch was a little strange this morning, because it turns out it was the 100th day of mourning for the death of the founder of the temple, so they were having a big funeral next door to the brunch-having, and the place was crawling with monks (it’s a temple, so it should be, but these were out-of-town-type monks all congregating to show their regards) and the usual Berkeley crowd as well. They weren’t charging for brunch today since it was sort of a special day, they were just asking for donations instead in remembrance of their departed abbot. We paid what we would have normally, but it was still a nice gesture.
After a lovely brunch, we headed back up to Davis and squeezed in a little work (and made some chocolate chip cookies!) before going over to our friend Ben’s place for his birthday. This was another really great crowd – old school Davis folks of the Ben’s family and family friends varieties, as well as a few Ben-friends I’ve come to know and enjoy. It’s funny, I think of Ben as one of the most social, connected people in town, and yet I’m at his birthday party and I know almost everyone there through one event or another by now… from other parties, from the brunch club, from cribbage nights, people who were at my wedding I didn’t even realize I knew… The longer I’m in Davis, and the longer Lewis and I are together, the more old-worn-shoe all these parties get. It’s a really gratifying feeling. I’ve done so much moving around in my life, lived in so many houses and places and cities, and had so many different groups of friends… so on nights like tonight, it starts to feel like maybe I’m settled, and maybe there’s joy and comfort to be had in maintaining a loose network like this for decades. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been at a Davis house party, dreading that I don’t know anyone but Lewis well enough to feel like I could chat them up, feeling like the out-of-town novelty with no intrinsic value. This doesn’t happen so much any more. There are no new “scary” people left to meet! Just lots of nice people doing interesting things with their lives that I’m happy to talk with.
So we’ll call this a rousing success of a day, in a time when both Lewis and I should probably have been home working. But I think we’re both better off for having had a chance, even in the busiest of times, to connect with our roots and get our heads out of our books. Yay!