Friends who met as undergraduates and have been married forever gave a party for their joint 80^th birthdays last Saturday. We’ve known them for some time, but have become closer in recent years and we were delighted to be invited to celebrate with them.

There were a lot of things that made this event special. For one, the hotel got the date wrong. It had the party on its schedule for one week later. Imagine arriving at 5:30 p.m. to host a 6:00 p.m. event you have planned for months, friends and family having flown in from near and far, to find … nothing. (Actually, the photographer who wasn’t provided by the hotel got the date right and was there.)

But the hotel pulled it off. People came back from their nights off and by 6:30, it looked like a party. And it was perfect—cocktails and hors-d’oeuvres, dinner, flowers, and even a gorgeous cake, prepared from scratch, and ready in time for dessert.

We loved meeting our hosts’ charming children and grandchildren whom we had heard so much about. We discovered that their daughter-in-law had worked with our son Jeremy at a consulting firm twenty years ago and that her kids are now at the same summer camp that our kids attended as children.

Perhaps best of all, in this time when we tend to hear more bad news than good, it was an evening filled with love and joy.