And the party favors that the guests walked out with were made and designed by Patchi, and there were tens of different options: chocolate, confection, caramelized fruit, green, blue, red, sweet, bitter, stuffed with hazelnut and almond, plain, big, small—all in the shape of a teddy bear, a teddy bear so nauseatingly sweet and innocent that it would make you dizzy.
Each guest had to leave the shower with every kind of sweet.
Georgina said she’d gotten flustered with all the stuff she had to carry. She kept emptying her purse so she could fill it up again.
Half an hour into the baby shower, she felt the torture coming to an end and that’s when she walked head first into the camera—yes, a picture of every guest, in detailed planning and military-like commitment to avoid the spontaneity that can result in a bad photograph.
She was more nervous in front of the camera. What’s the appropriate pose for such an occasion?
A teddy bear pose?
Georgina quickly carried away her many souvenirs and hopped into her car, a showboat of a car, and drove to Zeezee’s place, picked her up and headed to a bar in Gemmayzeh Street.
Georgina threw her candy into the air at the bar, cheering and laughing, and they both drank till morning. Cheers to the newborn!
Huge congrats!
We laugh.
But it seems that Georgina’s piece of news has yet to be revealed.
It turns out that this story was only a warm up.
She continues . . .
At another friend’s house, and on a visit to congratulate her for her innocent child’s birth, Georgina saw hundreds of orchids. These flowers are expensive, and the price of an orchid last year was one hundred dollars. The price can get a lot higher and multiply depending on the kind of orchid, but they are rarely sold for less than a hundred dollars if they are original, as in imported from Japan.
At her friend’s house, the size of a soccer field and two stories high (then the size of two soccer fields, really), Georgina saw dozens of wide pools, each filled with tens of big orchids. She asked her friend, “Wow that’s so pretty! How did you do that?” And with joy, of course, her friend answered her:
There’s a florist in Rabieh (where rich people live), and les voisins (her neighbors with similar financial capabilities) decided to do this for her. Orthansia, Georgina’s friend, had mentioned to the florist that she wanted to get some orchids, and when her son Gabriel (named after his paternal grandfather and nicknamed Jimmy) was born, all the neighbors called the florist to have flowers sent to the hospital. The florist then mentioned to them that Orthansia wanted orchids, so they sent her what she wanted, comme d’habitude (as usual).
And after Orthansia left the hospital, the florist had the orchids moved to her house. And so, Orthansia’s pools grew a garden of orchids overnight.
It’s La Liste de Fleur (the list of flowers).
Ta-dah!
Awesome.
We sit quietly around the table while Georgina smirks at us because she knows she just scored a major goal. She continues in a deliberately provocative tone with a heartfelt grin plastered on her face, “Yeaaah! Have you guys been living under a rock or something?”
And so, a wedding no longer begins at the hairdresser nor has an end in sight.
Maybe one of us should reconsider this marriage thing?
Zeezee thinks the question is directed at her because she’s having to hear this story for the second time, so she answers, “Even if I do get married one of these days, I’m sure as hell not having a wedding.”
Shwikar teases her, “And no Liste de Fleur?”
Zumurrud jumps out of her seat and says in a condescending whine, “I want orchids too!”
We shoot a dirty look in her direction and unanimously tell her, “Then go buy some!”
And for a moment there, we all feel free. If one of my friends happened to get married, I wouldn’t set aside a wedding or baby budget for her. Forget it. Instead, I will need an enormous budget of patience, tolerance, and wand waving while preparing for her wedding.
I will be her slave instead of her underwriter or family investor.
Zeezee thinks out loud, “Are we being cheap? And isn’t it bad manners to have this conversation to begin with?”
Zumurrud jumps out of her chair and with a professional, academic, and experienced air, says, “Excuse me? Is having this conversation itself bad manners or is the behavior under discussion the real bad manners here? You need to understand the difference between the two. What’s bad manners is opening a fund because you got knocked up and invite people to invest in your baby while disregarding whether they can afford it.”
Zeezee smiles with satisfaction and says, “May God protect that big brain of yours, Zumurrud.”
Zumurrud returns to her intellectual throne, “Oh that was nothing.”
We all laugh, except for Zumurrud whose intention wasn’t to be funny. She was simply indicating that her contribution was but a small sample of what her intellect was capable of.
Her contribution, in her view, needed no applause.
On the other hand, we keep laughing because laughter is the
