A happy anniversary

I remember May 23 of 1992 fairly well.

It was a Saturday. I woke up at my parents’ house around 7 that morning, having moved out of my Back Bay studio apartment three days earlier. I did a four-mile run down Brook and Maple Streets, the same route I still do once in a while these days. We were having a late-spring heat wave that year; temperatures were already approaching 80 when I went running, and reached 90 before the day ended.

Later there was an appointment at a hair salon – a rare occurrence, for me – and a private Mass, arranged by Rick’s parents and hosted by mine on their screen porch, celebrated by a priest who was one of Rick’s grandparents’ best friends. Non-Catholics that we are, no one in my family knew that we should have bread ready when the Communion part came; my mother dashed into the kitchen at the last minute and rounded up a few pita pockets to get the job done. The priest looked bemused.

And then my sisters and I put on our dresses and headed to the Concord Academy chapel.

Yesterday, May 23 of 2013, was a lot different from that day. Instead of unseasonably hot and sunny, it was mild, cloudy and humid. I woke up at 5:10 for a stationary bike workout and then made breakfast. I administered antibiotics and ointment to the dog, who is recovering from eye surgery. Rick and I together attended an event in Holly’s fifth grade classroom, and then he went off to study for a certification exam while I loaded the car for a trip to the transfer station. Later I worked on some articles until it was time to head to my afternoon office job.

May 23 is our wedding anniversary; yesterday it was 21 years to the day since Rick and I became a legal entity. Comparing the two days, the one 21 years ago sounds a lot lovelier. Sleeping late instead of attending to pets’ medical needs; churches and salon visits instead of trash collection and office time. And yet as most married people soon discover, it’s the days of absolute normalcy that end up seeming to spell happiness far more than the big flashy occasions. Our wedding day was joyful….but so was yesterday. It was fun getting to be princess for a day back then….but it’s also fun getting to be mom every day now.

Our wedding day culminated in dinner and dancing and lots of well-wishing before we headed into the city to stay at an airport hotel for the night; we were boarding an early flight to Venezuela the next morning. Yesterday after work, Rick and the kids met me at Legal Sea Foods, where the four of us have made it a tradition over the past several years to celebrate our anniversary. We got home from dinner in plenty of time for Rick to conduct a business call, the kids to finish their homework, and me to return some emails.

Wedding days can and should be fabulous, but anniversaries are often about celebrating the ordinary. I was more comfortable in my everyday clothes yesterday than I was in my wedding dress, even if I probably looked a little better at age 25 than 46. Still, yesterday was a fine day. We’ve been very lucky, blessed with a beautiful wedding day and 21 anniversaries since then. I hope there are many more to come, though that may be a lot to ask for when we’ve been so fortunate already. But last night we all had seafood and clam chowder and came home happy. It was a fine way to celebrate a wonderful occasion, many years after the fact.

Gathering together

Yesterday our family calendar included two scheduled events. At noon, we drove an hour and a quarter south to Acushnet to attend a birthday party for my husband’s grandmother, who was turning 89. Late in the afternoon, we headed back home to prepare for a dinner gathering with my parents and my 14-year-old niece who was visiting from Pennsylvania for the weekend.

Long after the last dinner dish was washed and our guests had gone home, I stood outside in the chilly winter air thinking about the two gatherings. At the first one, we visited with my husband’s sister and brother-in-law, aunts and uncles, cousins, grandmother. We ate ice cream and birthday cake. We talked about movies, upcoming vacations, the younger cousins’ college courses, home improvement plans, jobs, the vagaries of estate planning.

At the second one, we talked about school administration issues and kayaking and the many, many different ideas my niece has for how to spend a gap year she may eventually decide to take before college. (She’s only a freshman in high school, but she’s familiar with the gap year concept because her sister did this a year ago.)

But what I found myself thinking about was how they were similar, and how much of the day we had spent sitting around tables with our family members, enjoying conversation and food, sharing ideas and memories and plans and hopes, happy to see relatives whom we normally don’t see enough. My husband’s relatives mostly live an hour or so away, and we tend to see them at large gatherings at holidays. This was a relatively small gathering by their standards – about 16 people rather than the typical 30 or so – and it was good to be able to talk with everyone there. I made a salad, expecting it to be lost in the crush of an enormous spread of food, but in fact it was the only salad, and the other guests were remarkably complimentary of it, which meant a lot to me. Dinner with my parents and my niece featured a simple menu – homemade macaroni and cheese, plus steamed broccoli, and gingerbread with whipped cream for dessert – but it was wonderful to just spend time around the table and talk as we ate.

Family gatherings can be a mixed bag, but both of yesterday’s events reminded me of how rewarding these moments can be at their best. It’s just good to spend time together, to connect, to host and be hosted. Celebrating another birthday with an 89-year-old has so much meaning for us; it’s remarkable to me that Rick still has a living grandparent at all, and that she’s happy and healthy enough to attend her own birthday party makes it all the more significant. Welcoming a visiting 14-year-old niece feels equally important: we see her just a few times a year, and it’s always good to find out what’s new with her in terms of interests, hobbies, academic passions, plans for the near future.

Having both get-togethers in the same day reminded me of how connected we are in so many different direction to relatives of all ages and all branches of our family tree. We’re lucky to have this, and we’re lucky to have days like yesterday, days dedicated to immersion in family events.

When the sixth graders do the serving

By my calculations, last night’s Sixth Grade Spaghetti Supper was, I’m fairly certain, the 35th annual of its kind. If I’m right, I was at the inaugural one in 1975, and as far as I know, this fundraiser has taken place every year since then.

We attended throughout the years that my sisters and I were in junior high, of course, and then I resumed the habit when my family moved back to town in 2001. Most families with children younger than high school do attend, and so do plenty of singles and couples without children at home. For many Carlisle children, the annual foray to the school cafeteria for the Spaghetti Supper, throughout their toddler and preschool years, is their first and definitely formative peek at the campus they will eventually inhabit for nine (or, if they attend preschool there, ten) years. For kids and adults alike throughout the community, it’s a much-anticipated chance to gather for an informal and always upbeat evening meal.

And every time I attend, I’m struck anew by what a great tradition it is. It’s typical to wait in line for at least a half-hour, but in the crisp October early-evening air, that’s never unpleasant. Dozens of kids run around on the school plaza; adults catch up with friends. By the time you finally get seated, you’re hungry enough that the rudimentary menu of spaghetti, tomato sauce, garlic bread and iceberg lettuce salad tastes delicious.

But the best part is the wait staff, made up of the entire sixth grade class. Wearing white shirts and pants or skirts, white aprons and typeset nametags, the kids are at their absolute best: attentive, respectful, cheerful. In fact, in years past, I thought the kids had to audition for this job and only the best were chosen, because in nine years we’ve never had a single sixth-grade waitperson who performed without the above qualities. But now I know that every student is required to participate, and how they all happen to be on such impressive behavior is simply this: it’s a special occasion and they know they’ve been called upon to show their best side.

This year was the first time I witnessed this as a parent rather than just another member of the public. I expected Tim would be a little bit grudging about the requirement that he put in a 90-minute stint waiting tables, as he’s not normally an extrovert or a laborer. This is the same kid who has never yet poured himself a glass of water without first arguing with me about why I should do it for him or gotten up during dinner to find himself a knife rather than ask me to do it. Wait on other people? Tim? To my ear, it was a contradiction in terms.

But as most teachers and many parents with more experience than I have already know, this is what happens when you pose a challenge to an entire class of kids and make it clear you expect them to succeed at it: they succeed at it. It’s that simple. Like all the sixth graders of previous years, Tim and his classmates did a wonderful job. Because we were willing to wait in line for a little extra time, Holly and I were able to get seated at Tim’s table, a ten-seater, so not only did I order from Tim myself but I got to watch while he served other diners as well. “Hi, I’m Tim,” he said, exactly the way the parents on the service-training team had taught the kids to do. “What would you like to drink? Do you want regular sauce or vegetarian? May I take your ticket?”

With its absence of restaurants, pubs and coffee shops, Carlisle lacks group gathering places, so evenings like this when so much of the town shows up for one event are a big deal. A small number of similar celebrations dot the calendar throughout the year: the Christmas tree lighting in December, the Fire Department barbeque on Old Home Day weekend in late June. But this one is a little different because it involves kids at their best: working hard and rising to the occasion.

That’s not to say it didn’t take nearly every single parent of a sixth grader working behind the scenes to pull off this fundraiser. We started back in the late spring and continued working throughout the summer on efforts such as recruiting auction donors and disseminating publicity, not to mention the efforts in the past 24 hours to prepare 1200 meals. From an objective point of view, the serving the kids do is a very small fraction of the overall effort required to make this event work. But at the same time, for them, in my opinion, it’ s a developmental leap forward when they are the ones doing the serving, and in that respect it’s very different from other community events.

Tim surprised me, and many other parents probably felt the same way about their children. Twenty-four hours ago, I wasn’t sure he could do what was expected of him: talk to strangers, find out what they wanted, serve them with polite efficiency. But he never indicated that he had any doubts about doing it, and now I see why. Given the chance, he and all the other kids proved themselves up to the job. I’m proud of all of them, and I hope they are just as proud of themselves.

Kids' birthday parties: Keepin' it real

Coincidentally, the boston.com Moms blog linked to this Associated Press article just a day after my 7-year-old called out to me from the post-bedtime darkness of her room to say she was mentally planning out her next birthday party. This is the kind of thing she thinks about while she’s falling asleep, and she wanted to update me right away so that I could start my part of the planning. Since her birthday isn’t for another seven months, I didn’t feel it was anything I needed to act on too quickly, but I was still curious to hear what she was thinking. Turns out she wants a penguin party this year, with penguin party favors, black and white cupcakes, a slip-and-slide in the yard and slushies for a snack.

Holly has planned her own birthday parties ever since she was five. To me, they never quite feel like the height of simplicity as her visions usually require quite a lot of materials-gathering and baking on my part. Reading this article, I couldn’t help but think it might be easier to just hire a clown, order up a bubble machine, sit back and let the fun happen. Instead, I’m usually busy pre-assembling puppets for a craft project, whipping up frosting for the cupcake-decorating contest, putting together a playlist of dance hits for freeze-dancing, and so forth.

Nonetheless, I’m glad that not only Holly but just about all of our social circle favor simple, backyard birthday parties. Oh, sometimes we go to parties where a juggler or guitarist will perform a set, but for the most part, even when clamor about over-the-top kids’ parties was in its pre-recession heyday, the concept wasn’t popular in our circles. And I’ve always found that notable because we know plenty of families who spend huge amounts of money on recreation in the form of kids’ extracurricular activities and family vacations. It’s not that they couldn’t do these kinds of parties; it just seems not to be a priority in our community.

But I do empathize with the mother in the party article who says her baby’s first birthday party was really for her. And actually, I think she’s right. Getting through the first year of parenthood is a major milestone. Tim’s first birthday party left me with wonderful memories. He didn’t yet have friends of his own, so we invited all of our friends. It was a beautiful day and we had a cookout on the patio at our old house. Halfway through the party, Tim went down for a nap and I visited and laughed with all the old friends I hadn’t seen enough of since Tim was born.

These days, the kids’ parties seem easy. Although in the preschool and early elementary years we tended to have big gatherings to which the whole class was invited, the traditions changed fairly quickly as the kids and their friends grew older. Tim is now eleven, and for the past few years, he’s favored a small-group approach, inviting just a few friends to a special event. One year he invited a friend to our family’s vacation house in Maine for the weekend; another year Rick took him and two other boys to Six Flags. This past fall, he had three boys for a sleepover; they went bowling and then played Wii games late into the night. Not only is it much easier to manage these small groups, but I like the way my kids now take part in planning their own celebrations and choosing activities they really like – roller coasters, baseball games, whatever – rather than the free-for-all parties of their earlier days.

So on the one hand, I’m sorry to see children’s entertainers getting less work; as a writer, I always appreciate any opportunity for artists to find employment. But I think cutting back on over-the-top parties might benefit everyone else: parents, birthday kids and friends alike. It’s fun to figure out how to have your own kind of fun, without bringing in the pros. And in my experience, as long as there’s ice cream somewhere along the way, it’s pretty much a sure thing that birthday boy or girl and guest alike will have a good time.

Tim is 11 years old today!

Today is Tim’s 11th birthday. He will have to forgive me someday when he realizes that I abandoned the yearly habit of writing him a long letter on his birthday sometime around year 5 or 6. (And I abandoned the monthly habit of writing him a medium-sized letter somewhere around six months!) Best intentions, and all that.

Well, I wrote a book about him, along with dozens of essays that have been published in various newspapers – he’ll just have to be content with that. (Or, as some of my readers who are also parents have pointed out to me, I should consider myself lucky if “content” is how he’d describe his feelings about some of my essays. Come on, doesn’t every mom at some point write an essay about her son’s fascination with his athletic protective gear?)

I love celebrating Tim’s birthday. I love the memories it brings back and the sense of accomplishment it engenders. Eleven years of Tim – tell me that’s not an accomplishment. A blessing, to be sure, but an accomplishment as well. I love him, but I certainly do not always understand him. Last June, while I was at the Aspen Summer Words writers’ conference, I had such an interesting discussion with author/writing instructor Bill Loizeaux. We discovered we’d both had the inexplicable experience of meeting our daughters at the moment of their birth and knowing certain things about their personalities at that instant that turned out, years later, to be absolutely accurate. I actually wrote in my journal, still in the hospital, when Holly was one day old, about the kind of person I already knew her to be: generous, kind and good-natured as long as you don’t step on her toes, in which case she’ll be uncompromising about defining her space and making sure you stay out of it.

I laughed as I wrote, knowing I couldn’t possibly have any idea what her personality would be: I was either purely imagining or else projecting, describing the daughter I subconsciously wanted to have. And yet seven years later I know that the description really was Holly. Something about her newborn squawks and sighs, her scrunchy pink face, her curious dark blue eyes – I knew. I knew her character in those minutes after birth. And Bill had the same experience with his daughters.

After he and I discussed it, I thought about the conversation again and realized something I’d left out: But it wasn’t like that with Tim. I don’t remember inferring his personality on the day he was born, or the days when he was an infant. I remember – and I’ve written about – gazing into his eyes, and him gazing back into mine, as we both wondered what it would be like getting to know each other and spending our lives together. But I didn’t know his soul the way I did with Holly. And, I realized as I thought about it that day in Aspen, the amazing thing is I still don’t. Tim is still a mystery to me. I know his preferences – fantasy fiction, baseball, crisp lettuce doused in vinegar, sleeping late on weekends – but I don’t absolutely know what makes him tick. I don’t know how he thinks or who he will someday be. I didn’t eleven years ago, and I don’t now.

But it’s always such a pleasure on his birthday to think about all the celebrations we’ve had for him since his birth and all the ways in which he’s changed. His one-year-old party, on a sunny day in our pretty little yard in Framingham, when we invited all our friends – because he didn’t have his own friends yet – and celebrated the fact that we’d made it through the first year. His four-year-old birthday, when he and his preschool classmates were hoisted into a Peter Pan sling at One Stop Fun to sail through the air. His seven-year-old birthday, ten friends at the Spinners game, the sky clearing after a day of gusts and rain which we did not fully realize then were the outermost edges of Hurricane Katrina. (We held his party two weeks early that year because the Spinners, a minor league team, end their season on Labor Day.) His nine-year-old party, just his friend Austin with us in Maine, when Rick prepared a lobster- and clambake.

This year he wants to do laser tag; for various reasons we’re postponing it until next month, but he doesn’t mind. Tonight my parents took us out to dinner at Tim’s favorite restaurant. He ate all the crab Rangoon he could hold; I ate masaman curry and thought about how much tastier it was than the turkey sandwich a nurse offered me on Tim’s original birth day (since I’m a vegetarian, it turned into a lettuce sandwich for me. Not terribly satisfying after giving birth.). Then we all went back to the house for his favorite dessert, chocolate mousse pie, which I had made earlier in the day. He’s a happy 11-year-old; I’m a happy mom. I may not understand him really well, but I certainly do love having him as a son.