Asheville Al Fresco

Summer is on its way to Asheville.

It's taking its time, mind you. As soon as I get excited by a warm, sunny day a big, dark storm cloud dumps buckets of cold water on my happiness. Or an arctic wind blows a chilly blanket over a tauntingly sun-speckled afternoon. I've despaired of ever putting the space heater next to my desk into deep storage and truly believe the teacher at The Boy's school who sent his stand-by long-sleeved shirt home for the season is crazy.

But we have had the pleasure of more than one warmth-kissed evening. There is a certain besotted-ness never to be recaptured in sitting on your own front porch, waving at the neighbors and watching your child tumble through the fauna of the front yard. Or in eating dinner downtown in a restaurant open to the street, where we take turns walking down the sidewalk with The Boy as he gazes upon the lights in the trees and chases after dogs out with their owners. If ever he had a chance of adjusting his sleep schedule to daylight savings time, we have destroyed it with our own woozy happiness at spending evenings outdoors with our child.

Last Saturday, the start of summery evenings brought us an even greater opportunity than giving our child a lifetime of sleeping disorders (at least according to the articles I occasionally come across in the New York Times with the latest studies about how we're doing everything wrong when it comes to sleep training). Hubby was invited to a block party by someone at work. A real, live, outdoor social event.

We were excited but cautious. Would we fit in? Would be meet new friends? Or would we stand on (rather than in) a corner, awkwardly shifting from foot to foot like a thirteen-year-old at a dance when "Stairway to Heaven" is playing -- not entirely sure we want to be dancing but disappointed that no one has asked us to?

I was leaning toward the less hopeful side of things when Saturday came. Work took precedence over yoga practice since I had spent most of the week watching a too-sick-for-school boy. This meant that I was already five or ten pounds heavier than I wanted to be for meeting all those . . . who? Who was I meeting who really cared how I looked?

"Not the point," I muttered to myself as I struggled to find an outfit with just the right sense of carefree summer-ness but enough warmth to guarantee I wouldn't end up feeling cold and stupid and willing to wear just about anything with long sleeves someone offered me, no matter how bad it made me look. Crisis number two: the weather was not exactly summer-like, though it teased the edges of warm enough to hang out outdoors in something less than North Face fleece-lined windbreakers.

One thing we did have going for us. The Boy had taken an astounding three and a half hour nap. Which meant that we were going to be up entertaining him well past our bedtime anyhow. Might as well do it outside the boring confines of home.

We made our way to a little street no more than a mile from our home and parked the car. As we walked down the block toward the festivities a warm breath of sunbaked air wrapped around me. I don't know how it's possible, but I swear it was a good ten degrees warmer on that street than it was in our own shaded front yard.

Looking back, I believe I turned a corner when I removed my cardigan with only a moment's hesitation about the chocolate brown bra straps peeking out from under my spaghetti-strap top. An hour before, the very thought of looking so sloppy would have sent me diving back into my closet. But get me away from mirrors, show me how absolutely ordinary all the other folks at the party are, introduce me to the new phenomenon of going to social events with my child instead of my martini-swilling best girlfriend, and I melt into that realm where you look great precisely because you don't care how you look.

For a time, we meandered, taking stock, petting dogs to make it look like we weren't shyly standing around not knowing anyone, and spending more time than necessary rearranging the food table to accommodate the rice salad Hubby made. If we had been at an indoor party we would have been forced to make our way uncomfortably from room to room until we ran out of options for trying to appear as if we were actually going somewhere with a purpose. But the outdoors lessened the pressure. We were a mere step away from strolling amongst a bunch of strangers downtown, only here there was a tantalizing possibility of extended conversation.

Hubby took over the first follow-The-Boy shift, and I did what anyone who doesn't really know the other people at a party does. I ate.

We all three ended up by the bands -- a rotation of neighbors with surprising talent, none so much as the nine-year-old girl who belted out a tune sounding almost like Michelle Shocked, only too young to have ever engaged in a good protest march. I ended up talking to a really interesting woman, a college friend of the host. We chatted about motherhood and career and college days. Of course, she lives in Atlanta.

But at least I can rest assured I still know how to strike up a friendship and may even one day do it with someone who lives close enough to, say, go with to the Sex and the City movie premiere. (For the record, I am planning on going by myself while The Boy is at school. I am not the least bit shamed by the article I just read about how everyone is going to see it in groups. I did, after all, once sit through a midnight showing of Beaches all alone.)

After a while I found myself in charge of The Boy, and then the party really took off. We explored the hill behind where Daddy stood watching the bands and engaging in the we're-all-friends-here-even-though-I-
don't-know-you talk. We went racing down the hill after the sticky whiffle ball The Boy found half buried in the ivy behind the swing set. And, best of all, we danced.

There is no one, I feel certain, who can manage not to smile at a sixteen-month-old dancing to "Psycho Killer." At least not when you're at a block party in a neighborhood and a town where people have kids. After all, the band playing the song just as surely listened to it in college as I did. A long, long time ago.

So these parents could be in a band playing music that made them feel like you don't shed some of your hipness when you become a parent as surely as you shed beer-weight and bad haircuts when you leave college. And I could pretend that having a toddler makes me as young as a woman you would expect to have a toddler. I don't know how old that is, but I suspect it's a good deal younger than forty-one.

Thankfully, not many people think you're forty-one when you're crouching, in true yoga-lubricated-knees fashion, next to your toddler in a spaghetti-strapped Gap top and Keds that I once spotted on Rory in an episode of Gilmore Girls.

Even more thankfully, you don't much care if they do when you're busy grinning as your child claps his hands and gives out a "Yaaaaaay!" with the rest of the music-loving crowd.