semperfiona | The Last Homely House (Reply)

bbwoof asked Tammie and me a question Sunday night, "How do you guys get so many of these wonderful impromptu gatherings to happen?"

We said something about three people who have cellphones and aren't afraid to use them, but I think there's more to it. I'm not sure we ever sat down and determined to do so, but from the very beginning we made hospitality one of our family's primary values. There were the weekend-long poly parties at the Washington House and monthly game nights at the Lake House. Even so, Rivendell House has been even more of a center for gatherings.

I think it's because of the name of the house. Years ago, when Ray and I were living in England, I was taken with the (disappearing) English habit of naming houses in lieu of numbering them. We had no house of our own, but we planned that on our return we would soon buy one. I ordered a house-name plaque on spec, and chose the name Rivendell in honor of my beloved Tolkien books.

Frodo was now safe in the Last Homely House east of the Sea. That house was, as Bilbo had long ago reported, "a perfect house, whether you like food or sleep, or story-telling or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all." Merely to be there was a cure for weariness, fear and sadness.
--The Fellowship of the Ring, Book II, Chapter I "Many Meetings"

Before we bought the house, Ray and I used to talk about the "South City Palace" (SCP) we would someday own. And we did, and the nameplaque was duly installed. But he and I never called the house by name; we always called it the SCP: an exclusionary monicker, I think now.

For years, both while we lived there together and, after the divorce, when Rosa and I lived there alone, delivery people would knock on the door and ask quizzically, "Is this the $NAME residence?" When I answered in the affirmative, they always asked me why I left the previous owners' name on the wall. "It's the house's name," I'd say, and they'd look at me even funnier. Until the movies came out, and suddenly I no longer get questions.

In the two years since Chris, Tammie and I moved (back) to the city we have started calling the house by name, our friends call us and the house Rivendell more or less interchangeably, and spontaneous gatherings have been more and more commonplace.