Celebration

Last night was a great night. Not only was Barack Obama elected the next president of the US, but it was also Lenna's birthday. To celebrate, she invited me and other friends to her house for food and drinks.

Her house was warm and cozy. Lenna and her mom placed flowers and lit candles around the house. The dining table was covered with food: bowls of chips (Kettle Chip's Spicy Thai, one of my favorites), platters of strawberries and grapes, plates of cheese, salami, and crackers, a giant dish of white rice, and plates with raw fish, chopped veggies, and other sushi fillings. It looked like Lenna and her mom were in the middle of making rolls and didn't quite finish. I wasn't sure what was going on.

Lenna moved us to the living room, where I ate too many chips and crackers, and where we opened the first of many bottles of sparkling wine. When more friends arrived and we filled everyone's glasses with my more champagne, we took our seats at the dining room table. Trying to figure out how to arrange ourselves in the dining room, I realized how rarely I'm in a nice, homey house in San Francisco. Usually, my friends live in houses with mix-matched hand-me-down furniture. Lenna's house had a cupboard full of champagne flutes, family photos on the wall, and a piano. It was a nice change.

Lenna took the seat at the head of the table and told us what we were in store for. We were going to make our own sushi rolls. She even demonstrated, providing us with useful information, such as using the small ends of the chopsticks and spreading the rice onto the nori like cheese on a burrito. She was also encouraging, telling us that there was no wrong way to make a roll. Then, we went about making our own rolls.

I filled my first roll with a little bit of rice, unagi, cucumber, and avocado. To me, nothing could go wrong with unagi and avocado. The next one was a little trickier. I filled it with some rice, tuna, daikon sprouts, some chopped up other fish (I forgot what Lenna's mom called it), and fish roe. That one was good too. For my third roll, I used eggplant, egg, asparagus, and carrot. I followed that with a simple roll of umeboshi (pickled plum that Lenna's mom was trying to sell to us as healthy and low in sodium) and rice. It was so much fun figuring out what combination of fillings I wanted, what would taste good together, and then putting it all together in a neat, little package that I could eat with my hand. After four rolls and too many chips from earlier, I was full.

Throughout the meal, Lenna's mom kept poring us nigori sake that was delicious and sweet. Lessa also kept our champagne flutes full. I needed to make sure I would be okay to drive Lessa, Aaron, and myself home.

That's when we got the call. Barack would be our next president. We all looked at each other with disbelief and excitement. We quickly moved from the dining room to the living room, where we switched on the TV. People were crying. People were hugging. People were waving American flags. We watched. Lenna's mom filled our glasses with more champagne and we toasted.

We moved all the food into the living room with us and watched the number of electoral votes for Obama reach grow to 330. Transfixed by McCain's concession speech and Obama's victory speech, I kept putting food into my mouth: grapes, strawberries, unagi, cucumbers, avocado, tuna, chocolate covered pretzels. It was a huge night and I was so glad to be with Lenna, her mom (who is my new favorite person), her mom's friends, my friends, and Lenna's friends.

We ended the night with a beautiful and delicious Princess cake from Ambrosia, a shot of some blueberry acacia that Lessa and Aaron brought (it was horrible and we all made faces trying to get it down), and glasses of sparkling rose. I left Lenna's house happy. Not only was it a fun night spent laughing and drinking and eating, but it was the first night when I sat in front of a television on election night and the candidate I voted for won.