Dining with Squirrels

Lucy turned six last week.  And we experienced the full range of emotion, let me tell you.

She woke up on her birthday with light streaming out of her face, smile so wide, face taut with happiness.  This lasted all day, from the pink rice krispies for special school snack to pancakes for dinner, as requested.  She has quite the following, this girl, cards and packages and phone calls flowing in all day.  I imagine it’s a little like Gwyneth Paltrow’s life everyday.

This Sunday was the long-planned birthday party.  The theme was fish and butterflies.  The advertising industry is going to have to try a little harder with this one.  Perhaps a computer chip implanted at her next doctor’s visit.  She’s the one who wanted to be the sun for Halloween, but ended up wearing a Swedish folk costume supplied by Farmor.  She now owns 4 Webkinz and don’t think it’s not driving her brother insane that she refused to register them online, but insists on cuddling them and wrapping them in blankets and re-naming them daily.

Anyhow, fish and butterflies.  We had four of her friends come over, kept it small, very homespun.  Craft, snacks, games, present, cake, playtime, bye-bye.  And she was fine until the first guest arrived.  But when she refrained from making the craft, I felt a slight shift in barometric pressure.  Really nothing visible to the naked eye, but I had an intuitive shiver, like a dog before the earthquake actually heaves the buildings.

I won’t do a play-by-play, but she left the room crying twice and actually shrank away from the birthday cake.  I have photographic proof of this, Lucy cowering as Mommy and Daddy cheerfully blow out the candles on her cake.  Her blue fish cake.  To be clear, I had put those trick candles on it, the ones that won’t go out no matter how much you blow.  And that apparently involves a good bit of sparking on the candles part.  I wouldn’t recommend them.

She did perk up a bit after the cake, her love of sugar deep and abiding and unwavering in the face of birthday party stress.  And her dear little friends partied on like little social soldiers, even playing “princess and maids” for the last half-hour of the party.  You can guess who was the princess.

But that night, as Lucy was falling asleep, in that moment when children’s defenses are down and the truth of the day comes out [sadly, the same moment that parents’ defenses come down as well and the truth of how badly they want this child to just GO TO SLEEP is thrumming loudly in the room], in that dim and quiet moment, Lucy informed me that she did not want a party next year. Maybe just a friend to come over and play.  Yeah, kid, my thoughts exactly.

I don’t really feel like figuring it all out.  Yeah, expectations run high.  Having your birthday at Christmas time is nutty.  Being a hostess does not come naturally to a six-year-old, especially one who would prefer to merely be the Center of Attention, the Grand Poobah of the Party.  Whatever.  I did her — and myself — the favor of letting it go.

Party aside, she is now six and we love her wildly.  Watching her grow up is painful and glorious.  Kind of like her birthday.