The Kids Who Came to My Potluck

What number, I said. She said the yes-I-am-coming number was over a hundred and climbing.

I sat down on the kitchen stool. Over a hundred.

I called the church and asked Pastor Dale if the hall could hold that many. He laughed.

The hall can hold the whole town, he said, if the town would only show up. He said he would send the trustees to set up the extra tables from the shed.

I called the ladies. I told them scalloped potatoes for twenty was not going to do it.

We started cooking Thursday night. My kitchen counters disappeared under sheet pans.

I made the scalloped potatoes four times over, and a double batch of the cinnamon rolls, because the thread had decided it wanted those. Lon peeled potatoes until midnight and never once complained.

Lon drove me to the restaurant supply in Salina on Friday. We bought three roasters and a case of foil pans and five pounds of coffee.

I spent my own money without a flinch. The whole of it ran a little over two hundred dollars, which is more than a retired lunch lady ought to spend on a party, and I did not care.

Here is a thing I learned at that window. Feeding people is never the waste.

It is the one spend that always comes back. I did not know yet how literally that was about to be true.

I did not tell Brian. I want to be honest about that too.

I did not call my son and invite him. Part of me said he would not care to come to a lunch-lady party.

Part of me, the smaller meaner part, did not want him there. I am not proud of the small mean part.

But I did not call him. That matters for what happened.