"But I'm so happy I could come," I answer, but she doesn't hear or understand and walks back to the liver and the olives.

Almost eight-thirty. The strolling accordion player breaks away from "The Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head," plays a fanfare, and the march into the next room for dinner has begun. The family staggers towards the long head table. The accordion player plays "Here Comes the Bride"; my grandparents enter. A boozy standing ovation. As Lil and Nat take their seats the music switches to "The Old Grey Mare." Some of the assembled join in.

Dinner is anything but "sit-down." I don't think either of the guests of honor stayed in their seats for as long as five minutes at a time. Table-hopping like you've never seen. A woman walks over to my mother. "Lil tells me you are going to India tomorrow," she says.

"Yes," my mother says, "I am meeting my husband there."

The woman goes on: "Talking about India is like talking about Israel. You have to see it to believe it. It's an experience you yourself must have. . . . When you step over bodies in the street-that's poverty . . . terrible, terrible . . ."

Reb, who is married to Sam, one of the bounciest men alive, is one of my grandmother's closest friends. When Lil was paralyzed by arthritis one day this year, Reb sat up all night talking with her, keeping her company. She and Sam are younger than my grandparents; their love for my grandparents (and vice versa) is overwhelmingly apparent-and real. Reb came over to our table and reminisced a bit.

"I taught in Harlem during the depression," she said. "Then in a middle-class school, in Jackson Heights. Some of my black students were brilliant, some not. They kissed me goodbye-each of them-every single day. And now-something has happened. I get letters from friends who still teach-little six-year-old attack them in class. . . ."

Dessert has come and gone. The final rites-toasts and speeches-are about to begin. Sid Lotenberg, at the end of the table, is the emcee. He stands up, attempts as best he can to get a semblance of quiet, and asks the crowd, "Does anybody know what was happening in 1920?"

A woman yells out, "I was born" Laughter and cheers.

My uncle Sid gives a run-down of the history of the twenties, concluding with; "and then there was the so-called Stock Market Crash."

Near silence. "So-called?" someone shrieks.

"I want to read a few telegrams . . ." Sid went on.

"Eisenhower's dead!" yells out an other uncle.

There are a bunch of "joke" gifts, those somewhat obscene things one finds at novelty shops. Sid has to present them, for the friends of my grandparents who put them together wished to remain anonymous. It is difficult to hold the crowd. One of the gifts involves, a prophylactic. Lil points to her husband, who has not been following the presentation, and yells, "He doesn't even know what one of those looks like!"

The poem printed inside one of the anniversary cards is read. My grandmother leans over, grabs my arm and says, "Listen to that. You could make a lot of money writing those." A long telegram is read next and when the name of the correspondent is revealed, Lil booms out, "Who's he? "