Silver Surprise

The garbage cans were missing. That’s what almost ruined the surprise.

I was driving my family back from one of my sister’s friends’ high school graduation parties, and when we pulled into the garage and everyone got out, my dad paused by the basement door. “Where are the garbage cans?” My heart practically fell over itself. Go inside! my mind screamed. I just had to get him a few feet further into the house and up the steps, and everything would be okay. Instead, he had to go and notice the stupid garbage cans!

I glanced behind me, only to see my sister looking wide-eyed deer-panicky. Think fast. “Someone needed to borrow them,” my mouth said before the thought had even congealed in my mind. “Those two were empty, remember? So we gave them those. Don’t worry, we’ll get them back.” He looked a little puzzled but thankfully didn’t say anything else and went inside. My mom reached the top of our basement steps. She opened the door. “Surprise! Happy Anniversary!”

My parents’ anniversary was actually at the end of May. At that time, I was still in England, and so when my sister suggested that we throw them a party in honor of their 25th wedding anniversary, I was not initially in favor of the idea. “I won’t even be there for it!” I wrote to her. “We should definitely do something special, but it’ll have to be after I get home.” Hence, the idea of a surprise party was born.

We quickly set the date for the middle of July. After all, they couldn’t possibly expect anything two months after their official anniversary. The party couldn’t be the weekend of the 13th, because that was my sister’s birthday and we would be in New York City, and it couldn’t be the weekend of the 25th, because Amy would be leaving for the beach with her boyfriend that Saturday. Thus, we settled on the Saturday in between: July 21st. This ended up being a perfect date, because—much to our delight—our family was invited to attend Brad Glasser’s graduation party that day. Since both Amy and I were scheduled to work, our parents would have to attend the party alone. The Glassers even did us a favor by asking our parents to come early and help them set up for the party, so mom and dad were out of the house by 1:30pm. Unfortunately, my sister was scheduled to work until 1:45pm, and I was scheduled until 3pm, so our window of time was not nearly as large as it might have been.

Although we had them out of the house, Amy and I needed a way to get them back in. We had told everyone in the invitations that our parents would arrive at 6:30pm. Now, it was a matter of making that happen. Amy professed to have no ideas beyond calling our dad on his cell phone and claiming a “disaster” had happened at home. I vetoed that idea, however, because it didn’t guarantee that both parents would come home from the Glassers’ party.

My eleven hours of plane time home from England afforded me the ideal opportunity to brainstorm on this subject. By the time I landed in Pittsburgh, I had a full draft of the “scholarship letter” I intended to mail to my sister. The plan went like this: in the letter, Amy would be informed that she had won a scholarship and was invited to attend a dinner in order to receive it. Her family was invited, as well. The dinner was scheduled at 7:30 p.m. on July 21st. Therefore, our parents would need to come home by 6:30 p.m. in order to change and get ready. Everything worked even more perfectly when my mom suggested that she and dad walk to the Glassers’ party so that Amy and I could take our cars to work. “You can just pick us up at six-thirty,” she told us. Could we ever!

The day of the event did not pass without mishap, however. I arranged to pick up ice on the way home from work, since I would be coming home later than my sister. However, I had no idea how much ice would be needed to fill up a cooler full of beer. I bought two bags. When I arrived home, I discovered—much to my irritation—that it didn’t matter how much ice I had bought; our cooler was nowhere to be found! We called one couple who would be attending the party, and my sister drove over to their house to borrow a cooler. When she returned and we dumped the partially-melted ice in, it barely filled the cooler halfway. Thus, she had to go out and buy three more bags of ice: one for the cooler, one for people’s drinks, and one to refill the cooler later in the party.

The next dilemma was the fault of my mother. Amy and I had arranged things so that she would stay home and take care of the guests arriving, and I would go and pick up our parents. However, because they had chosen to walk, they could not take along Brad’s graduation gift—a big red dorm room chair. Therefore, they wanted me to come at 6 p.m. bearing the chair. This was not a problem. The problem arose ten minutes before I was scheduled to leave to pick them up.

“Ali, mom just called!” Amy burst into my room all in a panic. I turned off my hairdryer. “She’s insisting we both go!”

My mother, being her polite, upstanding, proper self was convinced that because our whole family had been invited to the Glassers’ party, we should all at least make an appearance. Apparently she had called and demanded that we both bring Brad’s gift so that we could socialize for a half hour before leaving. We knew she would be furious, now, if we both did not show up at the party.

Fortunately, our parents have very flexible, capable adults as friends. When we informed the guests milling about the kitchen of our plight, they told us to just go to the graduation party. “We’ll be fine here,” they told us. “Where do you want us to hide?” With much relief, we told them to make sure the unarrived guests parked in the designated “hidden” spots, instructed them to wait in the kitchen and dining room until our parents opened the basement door, asked that the food everyone had brought be laid out on the tables we had arranged on our back patio, and took off for the Glasser’s party.

And of course, then there was the garbage can fiasco. Of all times for my father to decide to be observant! Everything went smoothly once they finally got inside, and everyone declared the party a grand success. I am so pleased. After years of arranging birthdays and Christmases and Easters for me and my sister, my parents really deserved this. After all, they really do still love each other, and how many married couples can say that?