Dinner Party.7

Brother O.P.: "I'm confused about your blog."
Emily: "Why are you confused about my blog?!"
Brother O.P. "What I'm confused about is why I don't appear on it more often."

This is a post about a dinner party only by analogy: we weren't sitting at a dinner table, and so it wasn't exactly a dinner party. But it was lovely. And, it was (embarrassingly enough) the first time that Brother O.P. visited Little Gidding.

The gathering was in honor of the temporary return of Sister Margarita Aloysius, alternatively known as Sister Cordelia. When my professor arrived, he said, "I had forgotten what number you lived at, and so I figured I'd have to call, but then I saw a door that said 'Little Gidding,' and I knew it was your place." This reminds me, a recent visitor to Little Gidding (a friend of Robinson's with whom I spent the day last week), upon seeing the name of our apartment, proclaimed it fitting, and then proceeded to tease me about it (gently, as he described his teasing). He later described me to Robinson as "quite easy to tease."

Myrrh made barbecued pork; an old roommate of Sister Margarita's made a Derby pie; Fr. Schall ate two pieces of my grandmother's chocolate cake (Fr. Schall: "Could you get me another piece of that chocolate cake?"; Emily, beaming: "I made it!"; Fr. Schall: "Then I'll have two more pieces."); so, as you can see, everything was perfect.

And Sister Margarita had a vaguely surreal expression on her face as she repeatedly surveyed the room, mumbling under her breath, "I really can't believe this."