hospitality

I want to be hospitable. I want to have people over and feed people (I thoroughly empathize with Sunshine and her need to make sure people are fed; I am the one who always brings something to RPG night or whatever, generally baked but sometimes store bought because part of hanging out is food). This is complicated, though, because of our apartment.

We have a tiny apartment. It has a full kitchen, but no counter space, a small dining room that can only reasonably fit our small borrowed table and two folding chairs (I really want a new table, but don't know the first thing about how to find furniture that I like), a front room that can seat five at a pinch (using our small couch, our office chair, and the previously mentioned two folding chairs). We just don't have space to have people over. We can't host RPG night because everyone wouldn't fit, and because we're not really close to everyone else. It makes more sense for us to drive forty-five minutes and most of our friends to drive ten or fifteen then for all of them to drive forty-five minutes. So, logistically it's hard, and we've tried to be hospitable at other people's houses. It's a weird idea.

For example, we "hosted" a LOTR marathon just before the Hobbit came out, at my sister-in-law's house. That is, we thought up the idea and then she agreed to have it at her house, and we invited lot's of people and brought a giant pot of soup one day and ordered pizza the other day (there was also popcorn, because every movie marathon needs popcorn, and hummus and vegetables which quickly disappeared). It's a weird compromise, because it isn't what I expect hospitality to look like, but it feels like hospitality, sort of (and there's no way we could have crammed more than five people in our front room, and that not comfortably to watch anything on our computer).

But I have to confess, too, that one of the reasons I'm reluctant to be hospitable is the state of our apartment. It is messy. There are piles of boxes that we have to place to store, so they end up against the wall. I have a half finished sewing project taking up space. I have months of paperwork that needs to be filed. There is the aforementioned tiny, beat up, not very nice dining room table and lack of space. Worse, I feel that if I invite people over, they will judge me because our apartment is a mess and there are piles of dishes in the sink. After all, I'm unemployed, shouldn't the apartment be neater? Don't I have time to take care of it? I also know that if people judge us for the state of the apartment, I'll be more likely to have a larger share of it, because I am a woman and unemployed.

I am trying to ignore these fears. I am trying to welcome opportunities to have our friends over, and focus on what I can do. That, with two days notice, I can pick up my brother from the apartment and give him a sleeping bag to sleep on the floor and watch Red instead of having a date night. That, when Maggie and Liz come to visit for the day, I can have plans for lunch and dinner and make them and not worry about the extra dishes. This, I think, is more important than the fact that I haven't hung any pictures and the dusting hasn't happened and the floor desperately needs to be mopped. But it's still hard to invite people over into the messiness of my life.