We got the Lambs In A Sweater (and Pigs In Blankets) and the shrimp on the dining room table just before 2 p.m., when the first guests arrived. Several people brought cookies to add to our party, the first gather like that that we had ever launched.

Maria and I were both freaking out before the party. Would anyone come? Would the food be any good? Would people talk to each other? We stopped worrying pretty soon, everyone we invited arrived (one couple was out of town, another couple we invited was working, another had other plans.)

We just didn’t have much experience with this kind of socializing.

It was different from the intimate little dinner party we hosted the other night to welcome our friend Susan Popper, who is thinking of moving up here from Long Island, or what we call downstate. This was hard work, lots of preparation and thought, lots of moving around, monitoring things, bringing out food, cleaning up plates and glasses.

Maria’s long dormant and brutally suppressed domestic skills came roaring to the surface, there is really nothing much that she can’t do, once she chooses to do it. It was a great spread and a really lovely afternoon for us.

I wasn’t too shabby either, we made the shrimp perfectly, and the pigs and lamb in blankets came out beautifully, they were the food hit of the day, they  vanished almost instantly. I liked rolling and cutting the tough and watching it rise in the oven.

Half the Egg Nog went, as did a lot of cheese, wine, crackers and cookies.

Everybody settled in and just about everyone stayed to the end, three hours late. I wasn’t a guest, so I can’t say, but the gathering had a lovely, soft and warm feeling to it. People talked to each other, introduced one another, traded stories and ideas and the feeling was comfortable and open, the essence of a community.

We figured out that it is good to have people sitting in one room, with the food in another. People can then have reasons for moving around, mingling, talking to new faces. It wasn’t Buckhingham Palace, but it was pretty neat.

Maria and I are somewhat about bringing people together,and we are also about being as positive an encouraging as we can be. We also wanted to celebrate our (relatively) new community in our small town. We feel we have come home here, even in the winter, which is already upon us.

We were pleased with it, our instinct is to do more small dinners throughout the year, but over the holidays, have some bigger drop-ins. Communities, like people, need nurturing.

At the party we saw good friends meeting one another, finding common interest, talking to each other. How simple, how nice.

At 5 p.m., most people left. Maria and I were exhausted, but also happy. It was a very good day for friendship and community, and for the life we have been working hard to put together.

By evening, Maria had reverted to her art-centered self, and her brief but spectacular domesticity.  I think she just reverted to her work-obsessed self her head full of quilt designs.