The Greyhaven New Year’s Eve Ball

A friend on an e-list I’m on wanted to know about the Greyhaven New Year’s Eve Ball, and I thought you all might appreciate it too. Other members of my family who are also on LJ are welcome to add their perspectives….

The Annual New Year’s Eve Ball at Greyhaven is partly the fault of the house itself. How we got it is kind of a story, which you are all now going to hear because it’s an excuse to delay bringing up the file for SWORD OF AVALON and actually work.

Way back in the late sixties, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was young, I fell in love with a guy (he writes as Jon DeCles) who had read too much Heinlein and was in a blood-brotherhood relationship with several others. We all ended up starting the SCA together, and when we got married, one of the others, Paul Edwin Zimmer, also got married and we all set up house together with Paul’s (and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s) mother.

When the landlady wanted the house we were renting back, we started looking for a new place that would be big enough for us, our children, and the other people who always seemed to end up living with us. My sister-in-law found this big house that was something of a fixer-upper, going in an estate sale– for $48,000. This was in 1971, before real estate prices started soaring, but even then, for a 15 room house, a bargain.

“But Tracy,” I said, “to buy a house you have to have money…” At that time she and I were both working at low income jobs while Jon and Paul tried to sell their writing. However as soon as the word got out, people started volunteering to loan us money for the down payment, and a couple who were charter members of the Berkeley Coop recommended us to them for a mortgage. When someone tried to outbid us by by-passing the real estate agent, he mortgaged his own house to give us a second mortgage to up the bid.

So we really got it through a series of miracles, and it has since become clear that the gods wanted us to have a place where we could hold large rituals for them (the living room is about 30′ by 15’and easily holds a circle of 40). The next year, we found ourselves without an invitation to a New Year’s Eve party, and decided to give one ourselves.

Since then, many things have changed. Mom and Paul have died and Tracy moved out. My husband lives in Clear Lake, though we are still lovingly married, and the third generation at Greyhaven is now represented by my grandchildren, who live here with my son and his wife. But we always seem to have 8-10 people living here, connected in various ways.

And we still hold the New Year’s Eve ball. It’s a great opportunity to muck out the entire downstairs. Fortunately we usually get some house guests and other volunteers to help. We move all the furniture out of the living room, wax the floor, wash the crystal drops on the chandeliers and invite everybody we know. We have tape recordings for six hours of waltzes, and a surprising number of people do dance, especially in years when Jon is working Dickens Faire and can recruit from Fezziwig’s. Over a hundred people come and go during the evening, dressed in everything from full Victorian drag to jeans. My husband wears a tuxedo. This year I wore a boned bodice and full skirt in black and silver with a cobwebby shawl knitted by my friend Lorrie. People dance, munch, and talk; children of various ages run past.

Just before midnight, we put on the Cinderella waltz (Prokofiev) which includes the bell chiming midnight, and count down the seconds. At this point, everyone is on the dance floor, holding onto their beloved, in couples or trios or more, sometimes with children or dogs in arms. When the moment has come, the music changes to the Carousel waltz and the champagne and Martinelli’s come out and are passed from hand to hand. At this point we also put out a big ham.

It is a very liminal moment, an affirmation that our community has made it through another year and we will survive the next one. And though we send out invitations, so many people know about it, we’d probably have to take out an ad in the Oakland Tribune to stop the party.

BTW–any of my LJ friends who don’t already join us are hereby invited for next year…