The Party Never Ends

The festivities are still carrying on. Having a child turn twelve is not like having a child turn one. You plunk their chubby little cheeks into a highchair, you sing them happy birthday, you take a bunch of pictures, you go to bed. With twelve, you enter the Land of Negotiation and Expectation. “I like Sunday,” Elphine moaned, “but it turned out to be just a regular Sunday.”

“I know, I’m sorry,” I said limply. “It’s a work day. The day of the most work. That’s why we did something on Friday and we’re doing something again tomorrow. As you get older, you need to begin to count events and surprises as being ‘for your birthday’ whether anyone meant them to be that way or not. Someday you’re going to have to work on your birthday.”

Still, she seems pretty well satisfied with herself.

I whacked her hair off, on Saturday, because it was not doing what she wanted it to, and the idea of growing it long seemed to be losing its intrigue.

If I had a better pair of scissors I probably could have done what she wanted, but I did not, and so it all came off, and I think she seems relieved.

At the end of our long work day we finally sat around and she opened all her packages.

Pens and pencils, modeling clay, paint, little notebooks, chocolate molds and chocolate, two new dresses.

Matt tried to take a panorama picture but no one would be still and so this was the result.

Elphine and Alouicious are pretty good friends, I think. They are so leggy now. And sarcastic.

And wound up.

Once everything was opened and Elphine was arranging and rearranging, the little girls lost interest and took up their station on this rocking chair, smacking into the desk as they played with the Russian nesting dolls and my tiny tiny tea set.

Then, suddenly the sky turned golden and strange and we all ran outside to look at the light.

So I’d better stir myself and check the weather, again. Will it be braving thunder showers back at Cole Park? Or playing it safe in some shop full of donuts? And she wants cobbler, and either meat pie or peanut sauce. And then I have a week off before the next birthday.