rainy birthday

For Eucefe’s birthday, we decided to throw him a surprise party. He’s made a lot of friends in the last year, and since he’ll soon be heading back to Mozambique, his birthday seemed the perfect opportunity to pull everyone together in one big rah-rah hoopla. 

The plan was to grill loads of hot dogs, have people bring sides, and then hang out on the patio while the sun set, the birds chirped, and fire crackled. But the weather threw a us a curveball — a whole string of rainy rainy days, yay. 

For a few days leading up to the event, I was in an emotional tailspin — where would we put everyone? what are we gonna doooo? — but then my husband suggested we gather in the upstairs of his barn. He’d clean it up, he promised. It’d be fine.

The day of, my husband and two of the kids worked all day cleaning and sorting and running extension cords.

I washed the mildew from the doors and the bird poop from the windows. We hauled up electric and real candles, twinkle lights, and leftover strand lights from the wedding. My son covered the table saw with an old door, and then I covered that with an old tablecloth. We wiped down rickety old chairs and clustered them around ratty rugs and tossed old blankets around the room in case people got cold.  

And then the people came!

While we waited for Eucefe to arrive, they milled about drinking cups of decaf coffee, visiting, and playing cards.

And then Eucefe arrived, and he was surprised! As I suspected, he hadn’t a clue. (The friend who brought him home from work that day just told Eucuefe that he needed help hauling some chairs down from the barn so their family could borrow them, haha.)

It’s always a little tricky hosting a group of people who don’t know each other, so I had everyone go around the room sharing their names and how they were connected to Eucefe. Along with our immediate family, there were coworkers from his work at Jubilee Farms and from his work at Gift and Thrift, his English tutor, the director of the men’s choir that he sang in, friends from church and our small group, and his host family from the Old Order Mennonite community.

After the supper and the birthday songs and cake, we gathered round a second time to share stories about Eucefe and the experiences we’ve had with him and things we’ve enjoyed about him. 

Among the things people mentioned were his:

• Ready smile
• Graciousness
• Meticulous work ethic
• Adventurous spirit
• Language aptitude
• Patient teaching skills
• Poise

And there was a shout-out to his cool mama who, according to him, tells her kids, “You can be crazy, just don’t be stupid.”

After everyone left, and we’d shooed Eucefe away when he tried to clean up (because birthday boys don’t do chores), my husband and I lingered, listening to the sound of the rain thrumming on the roof and basking in the glow of our makeshift event space, and the glory of a suddenly very clean barn.

This, I gushed to my husband, is the perfect space to host parties and meetings and classes.

But then he reminded me that it’s not insulated or heated, so really, there’s only a small window of time each year where the space is actually usable, and I was like, well, darn.  

And then we switched off the lights and went inside to wash the dishes, the end.

This same time, years previous: the Baer Family gathering of 2025, strawberry rhubarb pie, sugar-crusted popovers, snake charmer, butter chicken, the hard part, the quotidian (5.26.14), down to the river to play, questions and carrots.