Party Culture

I hope this is the only time, and the longest time, I will have to think about birthday parties. It’s probably not.

So this year has been sudden immersion into birthday party culture. Seems like everyone has a birthday in the fall; we’ve been to party after party in the past few weeks. They all involve themes, decorations, elaborate cakes, stuffed favor bags, games, entertainment, and a horrific amount of junk food. Staples being juice, soda, pizza, all manner of candy. Given we have a no-juice rule and consider fruit snacks a major treat, I hardly know what to tell her when an adult offers her non-diet Coke.

At first we wanted to keep her birthday simple and quiet, mostly in reaction to this oddly comparative party culture, where kids start to feel like they have to have a party like this or that other person, or even worse, when parents feel the need to impress each other. I just asked her what she wanted, and for a while, it was just chocolate ice cream. She just wanted to invite her brother. Great!

Then she started going to all these parties, and said she wanted one too. She wanted to invite friends. I thought about how we tend to under-celebrate in our family, probably as a result of how we were raised, and how it can be a good and healthy thing to celebrate milestones in life—an opportunity to be grateful, to reflect, to affirm. I figure I’ll try to do this without copping into the whole party culture, so we decide to do a small party. I take her to get the things she likes (blue plates, chocolate cake), prepare some healthier food options (with still some cookies and candy), let her pick balloons and simple favors. Two kids and two adults come in addition to my parents, and it’s at our house.

Turns out she had a blast—and she probably would have been just as happy if there was a smaller cake, a hand-written banner, and fewer treats—she mostly wanted to play with the other kids. She took about two bites of her cake and ice cream total. Most of the details of décor, favors, food went over her head. She was just as happy with one good present as with twenty—in fact, too many presents and it becomes an overload, so I ended up stashing the few extra she got for later.

In the end, I guess it was about understanding her—that as an increasingly obvious extrovert, she just wanted to play with some other kids, to feel special with a few things. I figure I’ll enjoy the age when things are this simple as long as I can. I’m continually surprised at her capacity for self-denial—for putting things back on the shelf when I tell her we don’t need it, or for sticking to one juice box when everyone else is having two. The degree of joy and delight she takes in experiences doesn’t necessarily correlate with materialism, which is pretty amazing and something I could learn more about.

Birthday Letter

Dear E,

You turn four years old in a few hours. It is the night before your birthday, and I am sitting at the desk in the piano room typing. I just finished hanging blue crepe paper up around the house and cutting shapes out of blue jello. This is the first time you told me what you wanted for your birthday: at first you said you just wanted chocolate ice cream, with chocolate cake. Then you said you wanted a party with a few friends. We went to Party City together on our last date, and you picked out Cinderella napkins, plates and cups, because they were blue. When they said the Cinderella balloon was sold out you suggested we buy blue star balloons instead. We have blue drinks, blue straws, and we will dust the cake with blue sprinkles. While we were at the store, you asked me a million times, “what is this?” “can we buy this?” I almost always said at the end, “no, we don’t need that” and you would quietly put it back on the shelf.

You know how to count to one hundred now, so you’ve been counting down to your birthday for a while. But tonight you said to me, “mommy, I feel sad. I won’t be three anymore. I want to be three again some day.” Dee-dee was lying next to you; you were both getting your night diapers after our routine of a bunny story (you laughed at all the right parts), singing (you know the words to all the verses of the songs), and brushing our teeth. I told you, don’t worry, you’ll always be three to me, no matter how big you get.

You are still yourself the way you were a year ago—sensitive, articulate, imaginative, tidy—but you sense, say, imagine, and do even more. You translate what dee-dee is saying and give me advice on how to take care of him. You can talk to yourself for an entire car ride without stopping. You want to be read to all the time, nonstop. You can draw a person with eyeballs, eyelashes, and eyebrows. You can write your name. You know the sounds of all the letters. You want me to tell you everything I’m saying when I talk to other adults. You ask “why?” all the time, about everything. You still take care of all your animals and have started naming them. You can dress yourself, clip your own hair, put on your own shoes.

Here is a list of things you like: riding your bike. Finding friends to follow. Ballet. Your green stripey blanket. Fruit shakes. Books and the library. Going to the playground or splash park. Creeping out of bed at night to tell me you've tidied your whole room. Skipping and running. Collecting roly-poly bugs. The idea of school. Wearing dresses. Your pink shoes. The color blue and anything chocolate. Watching Planet Earth. Any kind of craft. The small white goat at the petting farm.

One time I will remember from the past year is when you were sitting in my lap, on my left thigh next to Eric on my right as usual, gliding before bedtime. You suddenly told me, “I want to ask God to be in my heart.” You didn’t have much more to say than that, but it was a special moment.

One thing I love about you is how easy it is to make you happy. You take so much joy in so many small things. You love being with Mommy and Daddy and you tell us all the time how much you love us. You tell us how dee-dee is your best friend. You want to go on dates with me, you kiss the baby in my belly, you make my bed for me in the mornings. We are so thankful you were born four years ago. I think we will be a little sad when you get older.

Love,

Ma-ma

Journal Excerpt

I'm at this awkward stage of pregnancy where it's no longer fun being pregnant, but I'm not feeling so bad I want to face the prospect of labor, the memory of which seems to become sharper the closer the date approaches. Soon enough, the baby will descend, the pressure will move from my lower abdomen to my pelvic floor, I will stop being able to sleep through the night, and moving at all will become so uncomfortable that my desperation to get the baby out will blot out those memories.

But not yet. Right now it just feels like I'm living with a contortionist. There's a seismic inward shift that occurs every time I turn over in bed, or get elbowed by the kids, wherein my intestines, bladder, stomach, liver, and every other peritoneal organ twists and resettles. My skin contorts as his head rolls from one side to the other; it stretches as he kicks out on one side while pushing against the other. It's getting tight in there, and he and my body knows it. Sometimes the kicking becomes so severely rhythmic that I have to take my pulse to make sure it's not just my heartbeat.

I'm not sure what about this saps my energy, but it does. I think twice before getting up or bending over. Rising from bed in the mornings is the hardest. I feel like I've slept four hours even though I've slept eight-- I know, what could be worse? I get testy whenever anyone pushes against my belly as that induces the contortions, which is hard to explain to a twenty-two month-old who thinks everyone's belly has a baby in it, including his own. Our nearly-four year-old gets it (I think she got it when she was two years old too, not that we're comparing), but her response is typically mercurial. Sometimes she'll purposely lean her elbow into my belly in whiny fashion. Other times she'll follow me around with a hand on my belly as we walk, to help support the baby, she informs me. She's become quite handy with the stethoscope that I haven't touched since internship, and informs me every morning she can still hear the baby.

Maybe if I knew for sure this was the last time-- and it could be-- I would be filled with greater reverence for this increasingly independent life for which I have become an ambulatory incubator. There is something startling about it all, about the extremity of movement. It surprises me into remembering that change is coming. That life as we know it will end in two months. Sometimes, when I look at the camaraderie and obvious affection they have for each other, I feel sad that anything would spoil it. But then I think about how I can't imagine our lives now without him. She's told me she can't remember her life before him either. I suppose it will be the same when the third comes.

Life-Giving

“Then, without making a request for anyone’s attention, Tetsuya Kato began to play. He started with Chopin’s Nocturne opus 9 in E Flat major no 2. It was the piece he had most often heard in his head since coming to this country… The felt-covered hammers tapped the strings gently at first, and the music, even for those who had never heard the piece before, was like a memory. From all over the house, terrorist and hostage alike turned and listened and felt a great easing in their chests. There was a delicacy about Tetsuya Kato’s hands, as if they were simply resting in one place on the keyboard and then in another. Then suddenly his right hand spun out notes like water, a sound so light and high that there was a temptation to look beneath the lid for bells. Kato closed his eyes so he could imagine he was home, playing his own piano. His wife was asleep. His children, two unmarried sons still living with them, were asleep. For them the notes of Kato’s playing had become like air, what they depended on and had long since stopped noticing. Playing on this grand piano now Kato could imagine them sleeping and he put that into the nocturne, his sons’ steady breathing, his wife clutching her pillow with one hand. All of the tenderness he felt for them went into the keys. He touched them as if he meant not to wake them. It was the love and loneliness that each of them felt, that no one had brought himself to speak of.” – Ann Patchett, Bel Canto

I’ve stalked good pianos for most of my life, from churches to lobbies to auditoriums, so it was pretty exciting to finally get our own piano this year—mostly thanks to D, who took advantage of a used piano sale at a local music department because he knew how much I’ve always wanted one. It’s a baby grand, and the sound is incredible. The feel is incredible. I had pretty much forgotten over the past decade how much I love playing. It’s like saying hello again to a part of my being I had forgotten existed; part of me feels recreated.

Other things that make me feel like that—eating caprese salad from fresh tomatoes and basil from the garden, with fresh mozzarella and quality aged balsamic vinegar with oil. On the occasion that I have the excuse to, baking a really good cheesecake. Discovering a new kind of cheese or wine. Taking an art class, the last being a pottery class I took when Ellie was around one year old. Reading a good book, though unfortunately it has to be a really good one, which seems harder to find these days. A conversation that makes me laugh so hard I cry.

D’s sister likes to talk about doing things that are life-giving, and I think that’s a good way of thinking about things like this. Something life-giving leaves you feeling more energized. It helps you not lose the person you are, the person that isn’t related to what you have to do most of the day. It takes some reflection and planning to achieve, since by definition it’s usually something you don’t typically do, or you used to do but don’t anymore, and that takes a certain amount of space, time, materials.

It becomes harder but more important to do after becoming a parent. Tina Fey wrote in her biography about how people are always telling moms to take “me time,” and listed suggestions including grabbing a meal consisting of leftovers while standing over the sink with a kid tugging at your pants—and that’s sort of what it’s like. Or my “me time” is taking a shower. Getting to my email. Usually after a few weeks of this I start getting crabby and D starts ordering me to go do something for myself. And then I actually can’t think of anything to do, which is why it’s good to have thought about it some in advance. What is life-giving for you? How do you make room for it in your life?

Living in the Interruptions

I’m not the most type-A person that I know—in fact, I spent most of my life thinking I was a TJ on the Meyer-Briggs scale before realizing I am actually an FP who does a pretty good job of being a TJ when externally motivated—but as a parent, there is some degree of planning that has to happen for your life to remain sane. Packing wipes, activities, snacks in case the kids get messy, bored, hungry. Being scheduled about naps and bedtimes so I can have some alone time. Having a lesson, craft, or outing in mind for the morning.

There’s nothing more frustrating than an interruption in my plans. He throws three tantrums in a row and there go my hopes for a nice morning out. She becomes petrified by an ant on her foot and we have to head home from the playground. She throws a fit that I can’t find the song she wants in the car and there goes our nice peaceful drive. D is even more planned than me, and he often says what stresses him out the most about parenting is that element of the constant unknown—the worst was when they were younger and in that stage where you were never sure if they would sleep through the night. I don’t think he’s slept well since going through that the first time around.

But then I think about my life and how many things have not gone to plan. I think about how even though we’d like to think our plans will make us happy, true happiness doesn’t come from the circumstantial but the unseen, and the unseen grows more through unexpected situations that are a result of God’s sovereignty than through what we thought we wanted.

And I am increasingly convinced that the most spiritually significant parenting that I do often occurs in how I respond to interruptions in our day. Sure, I can plan for Bible lessons, sing hymns, model prayer, and I do, but what probably makes a bigger impression on her is how I react to her whining, or disobedience, or fears. In those situations, there is no doubt that her reaction is objectively wrong, or disproportionate, and I would be right to react in anger or frustration, and I often have (it’s bad when you find yourself arguing with a four year-old), but I can also transform it into a gospel moment. I can draw a deeper lesson out of it about misplaced desires that take us from the better things that God wants for us, or about fears that we all have and the freedom from anxiety that only God can give, or about what forgiveness really means.

All that requires that I stop to gain a certain level of insight into her underlying emotional needs in the moment, and that I’m at a pretty reasonable place myself. But I’m trying to realize that it’s not all lost if misbehavior or accidents ruin the plans I have for the day. Sometimes, life happens in the interruptions—that’s where it’s all at, and stewing over how inconvenient they are is counterproductive. And that’s how the best moments come anyway: surprisingly. Like when she said out of the blue the other day that she wanted God to be in her heart. When they give each other spontaneous hugs. When we see something pretty on a walk and I can explain how nature works. When they lie all heavy against you in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm. Some of the best things in life I couldn’t plan for even if I tried.