Friends and Neighbors at
Genesee Gardens Co-Housing! After three announcements of ‘group through forty which dictated who was first to picture time!’ and two individual searches for people who had mysteriously disappeared, everyone managed to look completely ridiculous once the final photo was taken. It was perfect. Some people were still moving when the shutter clicked, their faces now permanently blurry and distorted. Others had their tongues sticking out or were singing into rainbow maracas while sporting santa hats. In the left corner, I could be found wearing my bright red Christmas sweater and drinking out of a glass bottle that looked suspiciously like it contained alcohol, but was really just filled with water. Before the picture had been taken, the members of our Genesee Gardens Cohousing community had squished onto couches, chairs, and even the floor of our common house after they placed a wrapped gift on the table. Our annual White Elephant Holiday party had begun. The Fun Committee then passed around a hat filled with scraps of paper labeled one
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unwrap a random present from the table. Three hours later and after all the gifts had been opened, ‘stolen’, traded, or coveted, the winner of the Ugly Sweater Contest was awarded. (This particular year, we also happened to have an unchallenged winner of the Victorian Era Outfit Contest. She looked absolutely stunning in her vintage tea time dress and hat.) This marked the end of our activities as a whole and the beginning of smaller groups that would branch out into songs around the piano or board games in the next room; but first we had to herd everyone into the frame for the group picture. Fitting forty people around a couch designed to fit four is a bit of a challenge but we manage just fine. Three rows in the back and two in the front, plus a few leaning over the sides and everyone in our community can be seen in both the ‘normal’ picture and our traditional ‘silly’ picture. The silly ones are always my favorite - they capture the energy of
