Candid Motherhood

Over the spring and summer months in the Murray household, we have many visitors. Relatives from the frozen tundra come in droves for Scottsdale’s famously beautiful spring weather. While others are still chipping ice off their windshields, we are getting our tans started. Of course when the weather is nice, it means entertaining and hosting relatives and friends in our home.

Hospitality is a dying art. Its not enough to want to have people over, to want to be a beacon of hospitality. You have to do it. I have friends who I have known for many years who’s homes I have never seen. Maybe that’s more a commentary on me than on them, but I can’t help but think that’s becoming the trend. Meeting up for coffee, or at a restaurant to catch up rather than sitting on the couch with a cup of coffee and talking for hours.

I blame HGTV. Everyone thinks their home has to be perfectly clean or lavishly appointed so that their friends don’t think they are total schmucks. That’s a fallacy. We are all schmucks who make messes in our houses. None of our homes look like the ones on CSI Miami. Seriously, who believes that every time they find a dead person on that show that they are going to be laying in a posh lawn chair in a perfectly manicured backyard?!? Come on. Okay, so I guess I blame HGTV and CSI Miami. And backyard fences. And attached garages. There’s a lot of blame to go around. And a lot of benign, inanimate objects to accept that blame. I blame, blame.

The last 2 homes we have lived in have not been what I would consider ideal spaces for entertaining guests…especially my kitchens. Cooking in the kitchen in my first home was a whole lot more like camping than anything else. Only one of my 4 burners on my 60 year old stove (that’s no exaggeration) worked consistently and the inside of the oven was not big enough to fit a turkey and only worked when set to 500 degrees. My next kitchen was better functioning, but the size of a postage stamp. Still, we made delicious things and had wonderful parties out of those kitchens. And somehow everyone stood around in my ridiculously small kitchens! No matter how little money we had and how shabby my drapes were, we have always loved having people in our home.

We recently moved in to a new home. It is (in my mind) the perfect home for entertaining. (Thank you Lord Jesus for this wonderful blessing!!!) We have been here 2 weeks and are having a housewarming open house tomorrow. We’ve already had guests for dinner 3 times. All three times we were only partially unpacked. This is not to say that we are these great hosts, we are not. It’s just to say that if you open your home to others, regardless of its size, appointments and cleanliness, people respond. People, I have found, are hungry for real hospitality.

All the credit for my any sense of hospitality I have goes to my mother. She has always been the ultimate hostess! Not because she is “Martha Stewart” but because when a neighbor down the street would call with a trouble, my mom would tell her to come right over, and she would have a pot of coffee on and a pan of brownies in the oven before the neighbor could walk down the street. And she would do that before she would wash the dishes that were in the sink. She cared more about making her guest feel welcome (coffee and brownies) then making herself look good (clean dishes.)

Once all us kids started in school, you could almost always count on extra dinner guests. Our house was the “hang-out” house. It was where all of our friends wanted to come. Not because it was the biggest, nicest or had the best toys, (in Scottsdale there are many wealthy people who had homes MUCH swankier than ours) but because they felt loved and accepted. And also because my mom always fed them. Teenagers of both genders can be won over easily with food.

So I encourage you, dear readers (all three of you) to be hospitable. Especially to your neighbors! You should know all the people that live in close proximity to you! Have a block party, or a holiday brunch, or iced tea on the porch…whatever it takes. Be the weirdo that comes over (even after years of living next door) with a plate of cookies and breaks the ice. Let them see the pile of unfolded laundry on your couch. It will make them feel better about theirs. Let them see the crumbs under your kitchen table. They will know you actually eat there. Let them see the little finger smudges on your doors. They will know that kids are allowed to be kids in your home. I’ve done the math…a pot of coffee and scratch snickerdoodles cost exactly $.14. And take it from me, you’ll want to sweep the floor after the party, not before it.