The Kids are Al-ways-Right

Two nights ago, I found myself sitting deep in one of my striped living room chairs, drinking leftover MaiTai out of a Bart Simpson mug and wondering how it's possible that our house was going to smell like reheated kalua pig for the next week .

On Sunday, we had our 2nd annual luau, and while the weather was more early-March than late-May, it seemed a little irrelevant to the overall dual purpose of: 1) eating and 2) drinking. We spent approximate 2,532 hours shopping, cleaning and cooking. I even missed by usual 8 p.m. bedtime to prepare for the party.

Experience from last year told me that people on the mainland are PUNCTUAL. In Hawaii, we'd set a luau start time for noon hoping that people would show up by 4 p.m. (except the Koreans, they're always early). Not here in Hanover. People were pulling up the driveway at 12:00 p.m. on the dot, as I was half-dressed and trying to finish feeding the baby. This was all fine, we just had to still be cooking and enlisting people's help with the grilling while more and more people arrived, (about 60 in total). Around 3:00 p.m. I felt like I was finally ready to sit down and start talking to people. The huli-huli chicken was off the grill, the eggplant was mushed and marinated, the maitai pitcher was remaining at the half-way mark for the moment, the baby was fed and finally getting used to all the people (and the big baby was asleep in the car since he'd missed his nap).

Except everyone started to leave. One family by one family I saw them out the front door. "Thanks for having us. It was great!" Ummm...what was great? I had barely started to make a plate of food, and suddenly there were only stragglers left.
In Hawaii, you have to beg people to leave, they hang out so long. But not here, they were gone before I could even muster up some photo evidence of our luau in New England. So much food left, still so many rum-soaked pineapples.

Here's why: damn kids. Seems that parents here in the Upper Valley are exceedingly more likely to acquiesce to the demands of their children than are parents in Hawaii. At the moment kids here look bored, tired, or otherwise not perfectly content, parents are picking them up and, well, coddling them. This is not to say that Hawaii parents are negligent, but seems like there's a big cultural difference in that parents are allowed to have lives just as much as their kids, and they're not gonna leave a party early (especially with TONS of food and drink) just cause their kid is being mopey.

The big caveat here is that luaus in Hawaii are almost never 50 degrees and raining, so the kids can run around outside. BUT STILL... does life as an Upper Valley parent mean that I will never again just sit around having pau hana drinks and talking story? Yes, I may be totally dysfunctional after 8 p.m., but there's nothing better than drink in hand, setting sun, waxing philosophic about all things American Idol to string theory.

So after all the hard work of putting this thing together, I'm sad to say that I didn't get to enjoy it as much as everyone appeared to be...at least for the short time they were here.