Company’s Coming!

Sometimes company showed up in a new car!

2020 and 2021 were years many of us would just as soon forget. One of the worse things about the supposed pandemic has been the restrictions placed on socialization, personal gatherings, and even just smiling at people.

In years to come, I wonder if we’ll look back on 2020 as the time we learned—or re-learned, if you’re my age—to appreciate personal companionship, when it was taken away from us. 

My calendar had no commitments for several weeks, only cross-throughs of concerts, garden workshops, and travel canceled due to COVID-19. My husband, a schoolteacher, was supposed to help sponsor the prom, but seniors finished the year online and not only prom but also graduation ceremonies were postponed. For over two months, we couldn’t attend church. Backyard get-togethers in our quiet lakeside neighborhood were discouraged; grandparents couldn’t visit out-of-state grandchildren; funerals were limited to immediate family; and weddings were postponed or held with only a few guests. As I write this, some restrictions have been lifted, but many precautions are still in place. Most of us are eagerly awaiting “normal,” although with a new President and shift of majority in the Senate, God only knows what that will look like.  

Even without COVID-19, though, I think the years have taken a toll on gathering. Of course, we celebrate major life events and family holidays or throw an occasional party. But simply taking time to visit one another, just for the sake of visiting, is a memory from a day gone by. Families rush through fast-food or take-out dinners to sports practices and meetings, or withdraw to different rooms to be entertained by Netflix or finish a work project, rather than getting to know neighbors. Church potlucks have become less common. When we do meet in person, many of us are hunched over a phone, checking social media or email.  Few people would dare think of dropping by someone’s home without calling. 

Thinking wistfully about personal gatherings, my mind goes back to a simpler time, in my childhood, when evenings and Sunday afternoons were pretty much available for “visiting.” I loved spending summers with my aunt. Her days were packed with gardening, canning, and farm chores. But after supper, she found a few minutes to sit in the front porch swing, looking toward the country dirt road. Sometimes I’d hear her say, “Looks like we’ve got company coming!” A car would be slowing down, turning into the driveway. “Oh, that’s so and so,” my aunt would say. Tired as she must have been, she was ready for a visit, offering the visitor a plate of whatever we had for dessert. If a married couple dropped by, the women talked about how many quarts of what they had put up that day, or how the hens were laying, while the men headed off to look at crops or cows or tractor repairs. If there were kids along, a game of hide-and-seek or Red Rover ensued. As it got dark, the visitors piled into their car and headed home for the evening news—everyone in the living room watching the same TV—and bed. 

Sometimes, visits occurred mid-day, maybe a neighboring farmer dropping by on his way home from the sale barn or feed store. And sometimes, it was my family doing the visiting. Occasionally on fall evenings, my dad told me to get in the car and we’d head for the home of old friends, where we sat around and caught up on family news, followed by big bowls of ice cream or popcorn. We frequently visited an elderly couple from our church, taking along a jar of homemade soup or a dessert my mom had made. Sometimes we visited my mom’s much-older cousin. At that house, children were to be seen and not heard, but a coffee table full of beautiful picture books and a slightly grumpy old cat to be teased with a string made boring political conversation pass more quickly. 

Nobody considered these impromptu visits an imposition. The hostess was usually glad to change to a clean apron and sit down to rest; the men took a break and headed to the house for some iced tea. But if they were urgently busy, the visitor just pitched in to help. Neighborhood news was exchanged. As mealtime approached, a visitor might be invited to stay for supper and a few potatoes added to the pot or another jar of home-canned vegetables opened. It was such a welcome break in the routine that Porter Wagoner even sang a country song about it: “We’ve got company comin’, company comin’, we’ve got company comin’ up the road.” 

Back then, these visits, along with church gatherings, were a main source of community connection. I don’t think we’ve realized how busy we’ve become, until lately when we have been told to stay home. Back then, a party-line phone was a lifeline for folks confined by illness or disability. Now, technology is at our fingertips, but we’re so distracted by it that we don’t always appreciate its usefulness for staying connected. Thanks to a pandemic, we’ve found creative ways to build community with our tech tools—Bible studies via Zoom, music celebrities doing impromptu concerts from their homes. But the honest among us will admit those got pretty old pretty fast.

I hope that somehow, the time spent under stay-home orders gives us a new appreciation for stopping by for a personal visit. I think I’d love to glance up from my gardening or vacuuming and say, “Looks like we’ve got company coming!”