Last February, I turned 60. As I contemplated the approach of this milestone birthday I wondered how to celebrate. I knew no one was going to throw me a surprise party, and I couldn’t fathom hosting one myself. I had held a big party for my 50th birthday and, while it was fun, I didn’t want to do it again. I’m an introvert and the thought of a crowded room full of people did not appeal.
The Rev. Canon Maylanne Maybee (second from left) celebrated her 60th birthday by hosting a total of 60 friends for dinner throughout the year.
I was talking about my impending birthday with a friend who had spent time in China, and he told me that a 60th birthday is considered very special in Chinese culture. In fact, the Chinese traditionally do not pay much attention to birthdays until the 60th, which they usually mark with a big celebration. Sixty years is regarded as the completion of one life cycle, and 61 the beginning of a new life cycle. Not only was this heartening, but it had special meaning for me. I like to tell people I was “made in China” (though born in Toronto) and I’m as old as the People’s Republic of China. As a reminder of my origins, my parents gave me a Chinese name with an Anglicized spelling, “Maylanne,” meaning “beautiful orchid."
In taking inventory of my life at this stage, I was aware of how precious my family was becoming to me: my parents, siblings, their offspring and mine, even my “exes”—my former husband, my brother’s former wife. I was aware too of the many friendships that had blossomed over the years through my justice work at Church House—in Toronto, across Canada, and overseas.
On the other hand, as workload increased and resources decreased, I was also aware of the absence of Sabbath time in my life—time for rest, for re-creation, for being creative, for nurturing these friendships, and showing friends and family the gratitude I felt for their support and hospitality. I started thinking of how to involve them in celebrating my jubilee year.
I played with the idea of a kind of cross-Canada progressive dinner—borrowing kitchens and dining rooms and hosting friends and family for meals on my travels from Victoria to Halifax. Then I thought of having 60 friends for dinner over “a month of Sundays”—four or five weekends in February and March. But both plans seemed too ambitious.
Eventually, the idea dawned on me to celebrate a diamond jubilee year, and invite 60 people for dinner in various sittings over a 12-month period. I considered who should be invited with whom, and worked out a nice chart of 10 dinner parties with six friends per meal, evenly spaced from February to February, with time off in the summer.
I decided to start my dinner project with people I had known the longest—people such as Michael and Dorothy Peers, whose wedding I had attended when I was 15 years old; Alyson Barnett-Cowan, who entered Trinity College as an undergraduate the same year I did; Kate and Helena, who were divinity classmates; and so on.
What I soon learned, however, was that even with four weeks’ notice, or more, it’s impossible to coordinate everyone’s commitments. So I just assembled a company of friends as best I could. I had determined that with limited space and cutlery, eight people, including me, would be the maximum I could handle. But, surprise! At that first dinner in February, 10 people sat at table: a couple who had been out of town phoned the morning of the party and said they’d love to come. I used every leaf in my dining room table and sat two at each end. It worked fine. (This was good practice for another dinner at which two people showed up when we were about to sit down—I’d forgotten they were coming!)
What did I serve? I’m no great cook, but I can follow recipes and do fine with step-by-step menus that are timed by the day and hour. I decided to start with oxtail soup, in keeping with the Chinese year of the Ox when I was born. I researched cook-ahead menus on the Internet and served pork, vegetables, salad, and a lovely peach desert. My Sinophile friend had told me it was a Chinese tradition to serve foods with auspicious connotations on a special birthday: “long-life noodles,” eggs, and “peaches”—a dessert of steamed wheat in the shape of a peach with a sweet filling.
Later in February, I hosted a dinner for 12 family members in Picton, about midway between Ottawa and Toronto, two cities where most of them live. It was a lovely postmodern occasion that included ex-spouses and new partners. For the meal, I hired Deb—a friend who boarded with me while studying theology and had been a chef in her former life. At the end, I made a little speech about my love and appreciation for every family member, new and old. This had a healing effect and became a feature of my monthly meals.
As the weeks went by, I soon learned that, as someone once pointed out, when we make plans, God laughs! Certainly planning to have six people a month for 10 months was a laugh! In April, Holy Week and Easter came, and in a clergy household, a birthday dinner was out of the question. In May, my father died, aged 90—a sorrowful, intense, yet exhilarating event that took every ounce of my energy.
No dinner for two months, then three, then four, then five. June was conference month, and I didn’t have one weekend at home. In July, I left for four weeks of vacation, and in August my son got married. I hosted a wedding rehearsal party—cooked and served by the intrepid Deb—but didn’t count it as a jubilee dinner. As the year progressed, my motivation was waning, and I wondered whether I should quietly drop the whole idea.
I was saved when I found an unexpected companion for the journey in Julia Child, who arrived in my life late August when I went to see the movie Julie and Julia. Until then, Julia Child’s name was only faintly familiar to me, but her ebullient personality, portrayed by Meryl Streep, leapt out from the screen and filled me with delight. All that feasting and drinking with friends looked wonderful!
Along with the rest of the world, I bought a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. In September I organized two birthday dinners in quick succession. I ventured to make the boeuf bourguignon for one, coq au vin for the other. It was a thrill to replicate these recipes, even in the most modest way, and serve them in my own little house.
I began to realize that there is a certain economy of hospitality that goes beyond mere reciprocity. Friendship begets friendship. One dinner companion invited me to her graduation—42 years after she had begun her degree. Another was inspired to organize a neighbourhood reunion of friends I hadn’t seen in 30 years (see picture). Yet another gave me a copy of My Life in France, Julia Child’s story of becoming a chef, cooking teacher, and hostess extraordinaire. Reading about her life breathed joy and spirit into my own modest little jubilee project. It was these moments, rather than the stress of the workplace, that began to form the reality of my life.
At the time of writing, I am almost at the end of my jubilee year. I have had eight dinner parties and served 55 friends. I’m thinking of a prize for the sixtieth person who comes through the door! My only regret is that I didn’t have people sign a guest book, and I didn’t take pictures. I’m now looking forward to gathering friends just for the joy of it. And I’ve signed up for cooking classes in this year’s “Winterlicious” festival to build confidence and expand my culinary repertoire.
I’ve learned that it takes a lot of time and effort to find a date that works, invite friends, plan a menu, shop, prepare, and clean up. Sometimes the dinners have taken place right after a long trip or an intense conference when I’d rather wear my pyjamas, watch a movie, and eat popcorn.
In My Life in France, Julia described one occasion when she and her husband, Paul, were supposed to visit close friends in Provence, but it began to seem just too inconvenient and bothersome. She remembered a favourite saying, though, that had carried them through their diplomatic days: “No one’s more important than people!” “In other words,” writes Julia, “friendship is the most important thing—not career or housework, or one’s fatigue—and it needs to be tended and nurtured.”
This “sixty for supper” experience has given me new insight into the Jewish understanding of the Sabbath, closely associated with the notion of Jubilee. In his book The Sabbath, Rabbi Abraham Heschel writes, “Six days a week the spirit is alone, disregarded, forsaken, forgotten. Working under strain, beset with worries, enmeshed in anxieties, man [sic] has no mind for ethereal beauty…. Then comes the sixth day. Anxiety and tension give place to the excitement that precedes a great event.”
So it is with these birthday meals—the day before is spent in a fever of marinating and moving furniture. Then the guests arrive, the candles are lit, the wine is poured, and life stops for a minute. It’s a tiny glimpse into the seventh day when God rested from all that he had done in creation and said, “indeed, it was very good.”
