Friday, September 18, 2009

Slumber parties, sleepovers and other rites of passage

Holly invited her friend Samantha for a sleepover. As the hosting mom, I got off easy: we were all at the same multi-family dinner party earlier and didn’t get back until 9, so I didn’t have to plan dinner for them or any early-evening activities. Now it’s late-ish and they should be in bed, but I’m having so much fun listening to them chatter and play that I can’t bring myself to enforce any sensible rules just yet. They set up a spa of sorts (proving, I suppose, that the spa concept is archetypal, since I don’t think either of them necessarily knows what a real spa is) for stuffed animals. They laid out a bath towel on the hall carpet and arranged some jewelry, hair accessories and art supplies on it; now they’re giving each stuffed animal a bath in the bathroom sink. “You can rent towels, soap and Q-tips,” Holly told Samantha. “It’s $100; that’s all.” “That’s ALL?” Samantha gasped, certain that $100 was unreasonable for some soap, Q-tips and a crayon or two, even at an upscale spa. “Well, it’s only pretend money,” Holly said, showing Samantha a sheaf of bills that she’d removed earlier from the Monopoly game.

I know they should go to bed soon, but they’re having so much fun and it reminds me that for all the activities our kids do that I could not even imagine when I was their age – the Wii games, the movies-on-demand on TV and DVD, the Build-a-Bear workshops and pottery painting parties – there are simple pleasures that need no frills, and a sleepover is one of them. Girls are happy just to have the novelty of spending the night at each other’s houses.

I have wonderful, cozy memories of sleepovers from when I was growing up. I remember the homey security of my friend Carol’s house, where we’d play with her guinea pigs and be teased – in an altogether welcome way – by her brother. I remember my friend Jennifer’s yearly slumber parties, at which we’d eat mini Milky Ways from the freezer all night long and play Truth or Dare out on the lawn. (The other girls always chose Truth, because they had spicier tales to tell. I chose dare, because I didn’t, and usually ended up running down to the riverbank and back in my bare feet.) I remember sleepovers with my friend Julie in high school when we’d stay up so late and get so tired that we’d start hallucinating while we were talking, and other times when we’d get the notion to go walking in the woods behind my house in the wee hours, scaring ourselves with the strange shapes of tree stumps and branches. (Wandering around outside was not uncommon at sleepovers when I was growing up. That’s the one thing I did that I can’t imagine letting my kids and their friends do, but at the time, we’d never heard scary stories about kids getting hurt in the woods.) I remember the party when my friend Hope turned twelve: her mother brought us to the movie “Grease,” and then we stayed up all night watching Saturday Night Live and reading Seventeen Magazine and I was as happy as I could possibly imagine being.

So if Samantha and Holly end up with cozy memories, friendship memories, from tonight, it’s fine with me if they stay up a little later than they should. They can sleep late tomorrow. They’re still so young and may have a very long friendship ahead of them; if this is one of the steps along the way, I’m happy to be a part of it.

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Running Streak Day 769: I spent the whole day writing and finally fit in 1.4 miles, up to the soccer fields and back, at 5:45. Hoping for longer runs this weekend.

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