The Bridge of Friendship

It was somebody's idea that we "play bridge together like a bunch of old ladies." Except none of us knew how to play. But I had been dying to host a tea party since my MIL gave me a teapot and four (mismatched) china cups and saucers. So we got together at my house, where I'd even retrieved from the basement several of the hand-tatted doilies from Dear Husband's Oma, to drink lots of tea, eat baked goods and bridge mix (chocolate-covered nuts and raisins), and ask the internet to teach us the card-game version of tennis. While the scoring is complicated, we all agreed on "4 no trump." Dear Husband had gone to church to practice some Beethoven in advance of his OLLI class this spring, so in his honor I put on a succession of Beethoven CDs that eventually gave way to the jamming tunes of Stefan Obermeier's Beethoven Re-Mixed album of electronica-infused classical music. That was about the time the knitted finger puppets made their appearance. I will say that even though we barely scratched the surface of strategy and scoring, there was trash talking, and puns, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Same time next week?

 

J.P.: "This tea made me a little hoarse."