Is it tomorrow?
This is what Sawyer asks when he wakes up.
He asked it this morning, and yes, indeed, it was tomorrow. The aftermath of a rave in my house. Jordan’s 6th birthday party was a disco party like the last three have been; the same group of people (mostly – a few additions, a few absences) have been coming to this same house since Jordan turned one. The difference now, of course, is that almost everyone who had just one kid at that first party now has two. And most of them are old enough to cause some serious destruction.
In college, you knew a party had been a success judging by just how ravaged the house was. It’s clearly no different when you’re throwing a costume dance party for a six year old and you invite her friends, their siblings, and their parents. Just like in college, every single bed had been occupied by someone other than it’s rightful sleeper before the night was over. There was a parasol perched in a jug of apple juice, leggos everywhere, lost bits of clothing (a pirate mask, a gold coin belt, a single black rubber boot, three pairs of socks) strewn about under and over the furniture. Tom made chicken noodle soup the next day and dumping the remains of a vegetable tray into the pot, a lone plastic army man dropped in. There were probably way too many empty wine and beer bottles for a celebration of a child’s birthday. It was a good party.
But I’d stop just a little short of saying it was the best ever. Enter the Birthday Girl. The one I discovered this summer has a strong aversion to loud noise. It was a wee bit loud at our house with more than sixty people in it. And Jordan’s friend Alessia, the one she apparently likes fighting with as much as she likes playing with, showed up early. And so the first two hours of the party had Jordan cowering from the noise and trying to find an unoccupied room to spend time with her friend in. All the while miniature pirates, hippies, fairies and princesses were attempting to spend time with her as well. There were tears shed, doors slammed, feelings hurt and notes written. There was also dinner eaten and marshmallows toasted which helped. A loud and rousing Happy Birthday over two huge dutch oven cakes helped a lot, but not as much as the bath she took right after. It had been such a huge success in LA that I thought it would be the perfect place for her to center herself and have some quiet time with Alessia. When she emerged at 8:30 (the party invitation said 5-8), the disco ball was going and the music was rocking – and the birthday girl had a wonderful time.
I think it was sometime near 9:30 or ten when I was dancing with Sawyer and he was exhaustedly reaching for the disco ball as if in a haze, and I knew it was beyond time. Party raging, I put my kids to bed. A few people started to notice they had their jammies on, toothbrushes in mouths, and started to herd their own broods toward the door. There were probably only a third of the partygoers left at this point, but it still felt like a rager.
Some wonderful folks helped clean past when their spouses had hoped they would, and Tom and I stayed up ‘til midnight, removing duct tape from the disco ball cords, washing dishes, restoring order to the chaos. Jordan, Sawyer and Alessia slept. After spending all day on food, neither Tom nor I had eaten a thing and I hadn’t had enough alcohol (or water) to have any effect on me. So after a while, so did we. It took a long time for me to fall asleep. I was thinking of Jordan, of how strong she is, how her passion and intensity extend through all the things she loves to do: reading, bike riding, swimming, monkey bars, jump rope, school, being a big sister, baking, playing pretend. I was going over the details of her birth in my mind, trying to remember the long and crazy timeline, easily recalling the moment she was put on my chest, what her beautiful face looked like, and how full of love I was. Exhausted, much more so than after a kid’s rave.Although, come to think of it, her birth was crowded, noisy, wild, and ran much later than I expected.We both cried during it but had a great time in the end. Perhaps it was an apt celebration of her birthday after all.
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