Leqso's Supra

This was written the night of the Supra:

Leqso, my host brother's, birthday! His 17^th to be exact. That makes it his Golden Birthday, being born on the 17^th of March. Apparently in Georgia that means his parents need to get him a present of gold. After racking my brain about what to give him, I ended up with nothing original to me, but very unusual for Georgia. I decided to give him money, but in the Jewish tradition, in increments of 18, for life. Unfortunately, I don't think he saw anything past “hey she gave me money and wrote my name in Yiddish, English, and Georgian” (I thought about adding Russian, but decided to stick to the three scripts I have a chance with). So, for the last two days there have been ALL SORTS of preparation for this supra. He is the youngest grandchild for Soso and Margo and he is the only boy (sound familiar Bubbe?), so this was big. He had invited his whole class, which since he goes to a private school was only 10 kids, but on top of that he invited other friends from rugby, horseback riding, and from the neighborhood. This meant there was one room for the teenagers and another room for the adults. The adults included everyone I have mentioned before, Soso and Margo, the happy grandparents, Lela and Margo, the beaming parents, Maiko and Razo, aunt and uncle through Lela's family, and Qristina their daughter. Then there was Goneri's brother's wife and daughter, Leqso's God-father and his pregnant wife, his God-mother and her two kids, and good family friends consisting of a father, pregnant mother, and 5 year old son.

This was in the Teenager's Room

CRAZY PARTY! Crazy some because of the horrifying amounts of alcohol and food, but also because it is now almost 12:30 AM and the party started at 5 PM... And most of the players have been here the whole time. The girl Leqso has a crush on showed up 3 hours ago, and there has been a noticeable increase in his participation of the dancing. He made a play list in preparation of this dance party segment of the evening and I have to say, the first time I heard the Macarena, I thought “wow, been a long time since I heard this.” However, this late in the evening, I am close to taking the speakers and throwing them across the room. I need to find a way to explain that if you are planning on dancing all night, your playlist should be longer than 20 min or so. This is a broader Georgian problem though.

So I have been in and out typing this blog since midnight and it is now 1 AM and the family with the 5 year old just left. He has been asleep in a chair for the last hour or more and has been cute all evening, but I just witnessed the miracle of a sleeping child. That is I watched his mother put his sweatshirt, jacket, hat, scarf and gloved on him without waking him up. It is amazingly impressive, mostly because I was not aware that someone's arm could bend like that unless they were in the circus. And the kid never stirred.

cutest kid ever!

That was what I wrote the night of the Supra. It really was a great night for dancing and generally being merry in Leqso's honor. He had wanted the Supra to be at a restaurant that was set up for dancing and such, but honestly, this was the best possible place for the supra, his own home. There was a lot of cleaning to be done after, and the amount of food that needed to be eaten after was just terrifying, but it was good to be with family and friends with no curfew or worry about how we were getting home. The kids had that worry, but somehow, they all left. I am not quite sure how. I do know that the pregnant women were designated drivers that night because their husbands were beyond wasted. There is a tradition in Georgia that when you make a toast that you truly believe in or want to come true, you drain the glass. And that might be alright if it was a shot or a glass of wine. But when you are doing one of these very important toasts, you have a special mug or glass or horn, and trust me, whichever you are toasting from is going to be larger than expected. At Leqso's Supra, it was a one liter mug for the men and a special glass for the women. At some point in the night, I was asked to make a toast, and in Georgian no less. I toasted to Leqso with no problem, had some help toasting his parents (the word family is used, but then another word, that I still have no idea what it means, and I THINK it is to toast the parents, “ojakhi supleba”?... Maybe...) and then surprised everyone by including the grandparents. Which is a little silly I think because in the traditional way of raising a family, the grandparents are a second set of parents. For that matter, I should have included Maiko and Razo, since they were a third set of parents to him as he grew up. No matter, I said my toast and I drank the whole glass, finishing to applause from the whole adult room. I have video of it too.

Videoer and photographer was my unofficial job of the night. When the kids first came in and Leqso wanted to look cool with a couple of girls on his arm, I took that picture.

When the dancing began, I videoed it. When the major toasts began, I videoed it and gave a typical Pauline kind of commentary to it. And then when the Adult party crashed the dancing party and stayed there for the rest of the night, I videoed it. There is a lot of video of very happy and drunk men grabbing the nearest women around and bringing them over to dance. It happened to Lela, Margo, even me. There is a very funny 8 second clip of me filming the dancing, Goneri coming over, me saying “ara, video” and suddenly the camera is going wild. Needless to say, I danced that dance.