Now that the Bistas are pretty much settled in their home and we’ve checked off the high-priority appointments (warm clothes, doctors, ESL, Indian grocery store, employment seminar), I have a confession.

My track record as an event planner is not stellar. In fact, based on what I knew about myself as a planner, those chaotic days before the Bistas arrived triggered awful images of what could go wrong. What if they refused to live in the house we picked for them? What if we couldn’t find a second bed and all five of them ended up like sardines in one bed, after traveling for days and days? What if they called me at all hours of the night and day with emergencies, yelling frantically over the phone in a language I didn’t understand? What if we didn’t get the phone set up for them, and they had a fire and couldn’t call 911 and the house burned down and they lost the only possessions they owned and it was all over the news? “Local landlord loses house to fire; Refugee Coordinator resigns as SLWC faces litigation.”

I didn’t start planning events until I was 11, but I got off on the wrong foot with my very first attempt. Mom was expecting a baby and everyone was so excited! We had waited a long time for this, and in my eleven-year-old mind, a surprise baby shower would be the best way to celebrate. I knew who my mom’s closest friends were, and since it’d been seven years since our last baby and we didn’t have any baby things, it seemed like a logical plan. Invitations got mailed secretly and I enlisted Mom’s best friend to pick up a cake and help me get Mom out of the house while the guests arrived. The hour arrived, the house was clean, and I think there were decorations. This was going to be great! I felt all grown up and proud of myself for pulling it off without Mom’s help!

But the minutes ticked by and no one showed up except Mom’s best friend and another friend from church. The invitations hadn’t included an RSVP because I couldn’t risk having all of Mom’s friends call and ask for me, but I had assumed that most of them would come. I began to think that an RSVP would have been a good idea.

Mom came home, but instead of a roomful of people to greet her like I had imagined, it was just me and her two friends. It was pitiful. She was sufficiently surprised, but the cake on the dining room table and the one baby gift took some explaining. It wouldn’t have been necessary to explain if there was a roomful of women and a pile of baby gifts, so I got a little teary and embarrassed. The rest of the day has been erased from memory, but I know that all three women tried valiantly to rescue the situation and make me feel better.

The story of Mom’s surprise baby shower has become a classic in our family - Mom sees it as a sweet expression of love, and I see it as childhood naivete. Whatever it was, it was my first failed event. The idea was good. But it takes more than good ideas to pull off successful events.

The second occasion that comes to mind is the after-camp party in Split during my first summer on the field. I’d spent two months making new friends, getting acclimated to the city, and trying to figure out where I fit on the team. My reputation as a competent person was on the line. At a team meeting after camp, I volunteered to help plan the reunion cookout that always followed; it was a chance to be useful, and since I do generally like planning, it seemed like a good fit.

It was not a good fit. I can’t remember who else was helping me plan, but for now that doesn’t matter. What’s relevant is that I was a planner and I failed.

The date for the event was all wrong. Previous reunions had been scheduled for at least a month and a half after camp. I scheduled this one for two weeks after, thinking that it would give us more time during the rest of the summer to connect with the kids. But the camp director’s family was going to be on vacation the week that I planned it, and they were (understandably) not happy about missing the reunion. They ended up changing their vacation.

Also, I didn’t know how much meat to order, and we ended up with waaaaay too much. We spent too much money and had leftover cevapi in the freezer for months! And I think there was some problem with the actual grilling at the cookout - I miscommunicated about who was responsible for the charcoal or something like that. No, I think the pavilion manager hadn’t planned on us using the grills, and there wasn’t much I could do about that because I didn’t speak Croatian. The bread was about the only thing that turned out okay, and I don’t think I had anything to do with that.

There was no structure to the event, and I’m not sure if that was normally how it went, or if that was another failure on my part. I just remember a few parents sitting at picnic tables looking bored while their kids played volleyball and soccer.

Then, at the end of the party, we realized that I hadn’t brought any trash bags. I guess I assumed that Croatian picnic areas would have garbage cans like American picnic areas. That was a wrong assumption, and somebody had to go buy some trash bags while we packed up the kilos and kilos of leftover cevapi. It was definitely not my shining moment, especially since I had accidentally fallen into the water earlier with all my clothes on, and I was sloshing around in very wet, heavy, hot, sticky clothing.

So, a couple months ago, two weeks into my new job, I found myself as the coordinator for the safe and successful arrival and integration of a refugee family. With four weeks to pull it off, I was in way over my head. Flashbacks to the Awkward and Pitiful Baby Shower didn’t help, and the Cross-Cultural Beach Party Fiasco hit much too close to home. I was sunk!

Or so I would have been, if it weren’t for all sorts of lovely people who came to bail me out. In big ways and small ways, friends and strangers picked away at the mountain of chaos, and guess what? It worked out! The Bistas are here, they’re as warm as we can get them, they have access to a phone at all times (although the home phone installation hasn’t been successful yet), they’ve never run out of rice, and they still smile when I walk in the door. There are many things I’d like to do differently next time, and we’re certainly not out of the woods yet, but it’s been good. I’m never going to be a calm, poised, nothing-ruffles-my-feathers event planner, but it’s nice to know that I’m learning how to use my strengths and prop up my weaknesses. It’s all about getting help when you need it.

Still, if you need help planning a baby shower or a cookout, do yourself a favor and ask someone else. I’m not taking any chances.

Until next time,
Jen