Mary Ann Fitzmorris FAMILY TIES

Over the years my husband and I have presided as hosts over many large parties. We have always broken the first rule of hosting such festivities, which is to have a cohesive group of people who will have much to talk about.

Every one of our parties includes two distinctly different groups of people: big people, and little people. They eat different food and do different things. They mainly interact at the beginning and the end of each party, because families ride in the same car.

Other points of convergence occur when parents check on children to make sure something besides muffins has entered their bellies. They also occasionally check to make sure the children are still at the party, because the kids tend to disappear upon entering, and reappear only to leave.

We like this style of party because no babysitters are involved and still the children are rarely seen or heard.

These events started when the kids were little enough to need constant monitoring. Then they got old enough to remember to feed themselves and control themselves, and the parties really did seem separate.

But this holiday season, I realized that we are embarking on a new era where constant monitoring of the children will again be necessary, and it is not to make sure they have eaten.

For a recent holiday party at my home, my son had endless discussions with his friends about including girls, which in his world seem to come handily in a “pack.”

After extreme vexing over this, he concluded that the girls would be left off the guest list until all exposed sheet rock at this terminally renovated house is covered. I told him to be careful about giving me reasons to never finish the house.

I invited an old friend who brought her teenage daughter, making her the lone young lady of the right age here. The girl is lovely, but she will never be that popular again.

It was a hectic night for her mother, and for the mother of the guy she latched on to. My son later complained that his room never seemed to be without a mother in it.

I was still chuckling about that when things really got interesting the following week. One of my son’s friends hijacked his mother’s annual New Year’s Eve party. My son was invited, but I felt like we were going as chaperones. When no invitation arrived, I offered to drop him off. He panicked. “Please don’t do that,” he begged, explaining that his friend would be punished if all the kids he invited were left there without their parents.

We were not the only guests/chaperones. All the parents of my son’s friends attended, as instructed. The party turned out to be fun, and very enlightening.

Fireworks were plentiful, and I’m not talking about the kind you light. Those went mostly untouched, eclipsed by the other kind, which ignite from within. This was annoying to all the mothers of the boys who wasted double the usual amount on gunpowder.

Things didn’t really start popping until the “pack” of girls descended en masse upon the party. Without parents. A boy and girl that the kids had only seen at school also showed up alone. They heard about the party somehow and decided it was a good place to make out. They headed to a patch of grass and did just that. All evening.

The hostess polled the group of moms. “What do I do?” We all shrugged, happy that it wasn’t our problem.

We were busy watching our own kids, who disappeared under cover of darkness. The occasional huge blast of fireworks was very welcome, because it illuminated the teen activities just long enough for us to get a peek.

There wasn’t much to see, just a large group of kids talking to each other. As the new year approached, the whole pack of boys and girls counted it down together. At the stroke of midnight, the boys stood behind the girls with their hands in their pockets. Nothing was happening, but they were thinking about it.

As I watched them I thought that maybe, after all these years, we will need those babysitters. As reinforcements.