Happy birthday, Papa!
80
Saturday 17 April 2021
birthday
80
Celebrating 48
48
Kwasnica, an evening run, a bit of time with the family — a simple turn of the calendar. And not much else to say.
14
Today is L’s birthday. She’s fourteen, which means there’s enough adult in her now to imagine what she’s going to look like in her twenties. When she was born she looked like just about every other newborn: squinting and wrinkly, she looked like the most helpless and pure being in existence. Her skin was softer than anything I’ve ever touched, and she smelled like nothing else in the world, a creamy, buttery odor with musky notes of sourness and a base of sweet, freshly baked bread. I held her in my arms for the first time and realized at an elemental though conscious level that we would never be the same again. We were three, with our latest addition being the most helpless member of our new family.
I was so nervous holding her, worried that I might hold her the wrong way, might grip too hard for fear of dropping her, might not support this or that appendage properly and thus allow grave damage. I spent the first several weeks worried that I was doing something wrong. Those weeks of “is this right?” worry stretched to months, then grew into years, and while the end of that worry is in sight, I know that I will worry for the rest of my life about whether or not I did it wrong.
I see pictures of her infancy now, and I find myself thinking that I’d give significant money to have one more opportunity to hold her as an infant, to have her head nestled into my neck and her feet not even touching my belt. Perhaps that’s the magic of grandchildren: it’s a return to a time of helplessness when we can appreciate it and not simply worry about it.
14th Celebrations
The Girl turns 14 tomorrow. She’s taller than her mother, faster than her father, and (some days thinks she’s) smarter than us both combined.
Some things have changed in 14 years; some things have not. She’s still very particular (some would say OCD) about arranging things, and so she places the candles on her cake herself.
She’s still very particular about mixing foods (she doesn’t) and sauces (she doesn’t) and vegetables (except for peppers and cucumbers, she doesn’t), but she’s increasingly open to new things. For her birthday dinner, though, there’s only one option: crab cakes. I think we’ve done them for her three years in a row now.
Some loves have come and gone (dance and gymnastic have run their course and are now only memories) while others have stuck around (we’re now into our third year of volleyball).
Tomorrow she officially turns 14, but I might need a little convincing.
Birthday
K’s birthday today. We tried not to make it too big a deal. A nice breakfast; a little gift; a decent dinner; her favorite beverage.
Our creative daughter made a most-original birthday card out of some of the color samples she’s constantly collecting when we go to a home improvement store.
I spent most of the time outside. With the kids helping. From time to time.
Day 60: Eighth Birthday
A proper birthday has to start with a proper birthday breakfast and a phone call from Babcia. For E, this meant an omelette for breakfast. Never mind that this was only the second time he’s ever had an omelet, a proper omelette, but he fell in love with it earlier this week, on Mother’s Day, and decided that it was his favorite breakfast of all time. Making omelets though is a time-consuming task, so although I layered the sauteed onions, sauteed peppers, and bacon bits very carefully for the Boy, the rest of us got it all mixed up in scrambled eggs.
“I could have it that way, I guess,” he confessed. “It’s the same thing, just all mixed up.”
The phone call from Babcia was a little less fluid. E is reticent to speak Polish, so although he understands everything Babcia says, he usually responds in English then turns to K, expecting a translation. Today Babcia tried to help him out, tried to ease his anxiety. She asked him simple questions like, “Are the flowers blooming?” or “What color are the flowers?” Yet he was still reluctant to speak Polish.
School today for him was relatively simple. At first, he wanted yesterday to complete as much of today’s work in addition to yesterday’s work as possible. But yesterday in the afternoon he decided that was not the best plan after all. He was ready for some free time. This meant of course that he had all the work for today to complete.
At the beginning of this quarantine, a day’s worth of work was just that: a day’s worth of work. The amount was greater than it is now, to be sure, but he fussed incessantly how about the frustrations he was feeling, about the difficulty of the math problems, about the length of the readings. We are half expecting such antics today, interspersed with cries of, “But it’s my birthday. Why do I have to work on my birthday?” However, he plowed through his work with relative ease, making it through math, which was subtracting three-digit numbers from three-digit numbers, each problem requiring regrouping and then word problems, in less than fifteen minutes. He wrote two more chapters of his frog/toad book and was done.
In the afternoon, we headed back down to the spot where we’d caught and inadvertently killed a minnow yesterday. I thought perhaps we might have a repeat, feared it in some ways — who wants to just go around killing little fish? Yet E was keen to try again. We did try again, and caught three fish. Two of them made it back to the water fine.
One of them — well, we didn’t quite hook him in the mouth but somehow hooked him through his body. He was already bleeding when we pulled him out of the water.
While we were down there, L came to the balcony and yelled across the yard, “You guys need to come back! Now!” At first, I was afraid that something had happened to Papa. Of late he’s been spending afternoons on the deck wallowing in nostalgia by exploring songs he hasn’t heard in decades, all thanks to Spotify.
Instead, we all got a pleasant surprise:
E’s best friend’s mother drove him by our house to wish the Boy happy birthday.
As for our celebration, we played a trick on him that Nana and Papa played on me a couple of times: give him something that’s relatively worthless without the other item. Like a cable to hook up a laptop to something suggesting that it might work with an old laptop, then giving a new one as a surprise (a la Nana and Papa).
We gave him a tablet case and screen protector. He’d been asking for a tablet for some time, and we thought we’d see what would happen if he got only the empty shell. “You can keep and maybe you’ll get a tablet next year,” I suggested. “Oh, that’s great,” he said very calmly — not really upset, not really thrilled.
Then, when he opened Papa’s present, lo and behold — an Amazon Fire, just for him.
Finally, there was the cake. L began working on the cake yesterday and decided to add to it today. A two-tiered cake, each with two layers.
The slices were impressive to say the least. K and I split one: she took the top tier, and I worked on the bottom one. The Girl is getting the flavors down — she’s still not thrilled with the presentation, though.
“Patience and practice,” K said to her. Though perhaps not quite so much practice while we’re all locked down.
Previous Years
13
Today we became parents of a teenager.
I sit and look at that word in wonder. “She’s thirteen,” I said to myself multiple times today. “Thirteen!”
She’s no longer interested in getting toys of any kind for her birthday. She’s no longer interested in watching cartoons. She’s no longer interested in so many things that once meant the world to her.
Now she watches Grey’s Anatomy and advises K on make-up brands. She picks apart K’s and my words, looking for semantic loopholes — “But you said…” — and no longer turns up her nose at movie recommendations coming from me.
She’s as tall as K now, as stubborn as anyone we know, as sweet as a thirteen-year-old can be (and that age can be incredibly sweet — I wouldn’t have worked with thirteen-year-olds for as long as I have if it weren’t for that). She’ll stay up as late as we allow (probably later), sleep as long as we let her, and fuss at the silliest things — just like a teenager, I guess.
She’s more beautiful than we could have expected, more aggravating than we would have wished, funnier than we deserve, and often sweeter than honey.
Except when she’s not
Which means she’s officially a teenager.
Seventh Birthday
Babcia called while I was taking the Boy to school; Ciocia M, who is E’s godmother and virtual aunt, called in the afternoon; everyone else wished the Boy well throughout the day. Today, the little man turns seven.
Yesterday I was explaining to him that, technically, he turns seven at about one in the morning.
“Do you want me to wake you up then to wish you happy birthday?” I asked. The response was predictable.
Birthdays deserve to be filled with special little treats, and so the Boy had a chocolate croissant and a doughnut (both from Lidl, the only chain supermarket with actual baked goods that could be called “baked goods”). He took a batch of cookies to his class to celebrate his birthday with everyone. He got the cake of his choice after the dinner of his choice. Treats everywhere.
And he finally got a BB gun…
Papa was eager to give lessons on safety and handling.
46
As of today, I’m on the back half of my forties, the downhill slide to fifty. Truth be told, it’s all been a slide, year to year.
It doesn’t seem like I’ve changed that much since the time I worried about the things the Boy worries about: how do I compare to the other boys? Am I as fast? Am I as coordinated? Am I as brave?
How do you console such worries? How do you reassure your son in this hyper-masculine culture about his fears of not measuring up to the other boys? The truth is, I not only worried about such things when I was young but continued stacking myself up against others and finding myself coming short well into my twenties thirties forties. I think most people who tell you they don’t do that are lying, probably to themselves first of all.
Life is not kind to most little boys like E, boys who are actually sensitive to others’ feelings, who can spontaneously show compassion and empathy. Who take a little while to settle into new sports. Who are so scrupulous about following rules that they ask daddy when on the road, “Daddy, how fast are you going? Are you speeding?”
I don’t have answers. I don’t even know if I understand the questions.
K and I talk about it. We encourage him. We support him. But we’re not there on the playground when he’s struggling to keep up with the other boys as they run about. We’re not there when kids are mindlessly cruel, and he struggles to understand why people could be so mean.
Good souls win in the end, don’t they? I look around the world and struggle to find an answer to that question other than, “Afraid not.”
12th Party
Sports and Ice Cream
The Girl had her first volleyball game today. It was as one might expect when the majority of the girls playing haven’t had much experience on the court. Most volleys were one of three types:
- A serve that doesn’t make it over the net or lands outside.
- A serve that plops in front of a player who, through a lack of experience and a bit of accompanying fear, made a slight effort to go for it.
- A serve that is returned and then plops in front of a player on the serving team, through a lack of experience and a bit of accompanying fear, made a slight effort to go for it.
Not a lot of action. But a lot of excitement: the girls were all thrilled when they managed to make a serve (which actually happened quite frequently); they were shouting encouragement and joy when they managed to return a serve; they encouraged each other when someone messed up.
It was a beautiful thing to watch.
While the Girl was playing, the Boy was having soccer practice on the other half of the court due to the unpredictability of the weather this week. He finished his hour-long practice drench in sweat and as eager as ever to play more soccer.
It was a beautiful thing to see.
The afternoon brought the Boy’s birthday party. We had an old-school, kids playing in the yard party. There were water balloons, brownies, sprinker antics, chips, volleyball over the sprinker, soda, soccer in the sprinker’s mist, ice cream cake, trampoline flights, pizza, and endless laughs.
It was a beautiful day to experience.
Birthday Party
It started with that warm sunlight that is a sure harbinger of warmer weather. The young leaves diffuse the light, making everything glow. It’s something I’ve tried to capture several times but have never really managed.
Perhaps I just haven’t tried hard enough — maybe I do that purposely to leave the mystery in place.
Soccer today was camera-less. I’ve taken probably a thousand pictures this season — what could happen today that hasn’t already happened this year? I cheered like a normal parent, sitting at the sidelines, not so worried about getting the shot as simply living in the moment. It made me think that I should leave it at home more often.
Today’s game was a loss — number two for the year. It wasn’t a horrible score: 3-1. Last week we were on the other end of a complete overwhelming of the other team. It was something like eight or nine to zero. For the entire second half, I was hoping the other team would score something. So perhaps it was a sort of mild karma today. Over-winning is not a good thing, and I was actually pleased to see them lose.
While E was learning how to lose, K was cooking and baking, preparing for Papa’s birthday party. On the way to Nana’s and Papa’s, K related an amusing story about E. He’s been struggling with tying his shoes. When it came time for new shoes, he’d insisted on Under Armor shoes because Nikes are no longer fashionable. However, this meant laces. He’s been trying to master the art of tying his shoes, but it’s been slow going. The other day in car line, though, a little girl asked him to tie her shoes, and since then, he’s been tying his own.
At Nana’s and Papa’s, we knew the aunties were waiting — a surprise for Papa.
Back home after the celebration, we planted more, weeded more, pruned more — squeezed a bit of a typical spring Saturday.
Eleventh Time
The Girl’s birthday, falling in mid-December, is during a most inopportune season: there’s Christmas, school concerts, church obligations, another friend’s birthday (in early December). There’s just no time to have a party, so once again, we put it off. Last year, we turned it into a New Year’s Eve party with two of her closest friends; this year, we waited until today.
The girls started with a little slime-making — it’s an obsession L has had for some time now, and we’ve gone through countless bottles of glue over the last year.
The interesting thing, for me, was that only one of the two girls from last year was present this year. The other has had a falling-out with L. L explains that it’s a complicated social situation, and while I thought such dilemmas would not be appearing in elementary school, I guess it’s just a harbinger of things to come.
But there are always new friends, new adventures.
Fifth Birthday Party
The Boy woke up at six this morning, ready to go. He’d been worried since Wednesday when he came home with a fever: “Will I be okay by my party?” he asked. Certainly. So this morning, he had his materials packed — cars and guns and other toys stuffed into the book bag Nana and Papa gave him for his birthday earlier in the week — and by the door by half-past-seven.
Later in the morning, he was packing his goodie bags for his guests, filling them with the Polish sweets he and K had chosen at the local Russian store (of course it’s called “Euro Market” or something similar, but like most Euro Markets, it seems, it’s a Russian owner). I sat down and glanced at the “Time Machine” links just at the bottom of the page as is my Saturday morning custom, and there was a post about holding the Boy when he was just a few weeks old.
Long gone are the days when you can hold him in the crook of your arm. Now it’s difficult to pick him up. When he falls asleep in Mass, it’s always in K’s arms, and I almost always end up holding him during the Liturgy of the Eucharist, which means figuring out a way to kneel and hold a sack of concrete.
By the time it was actually time to head to the party, the Boy was more than ready, all nearly-fifty pounds of him.
The party itself was bliss for him. Many of his friends from pre-school came, as well as neighbors and kids from the Polish community. K brought some games for everyone to play, including a sack race, but in the end, what was most successful was what was simplest: E’s toys.
The Girl, though was sick, which accounts for her absence as well as Nana’s and Papa’s.
44
10th Party
We’ve done it ten times now, and there are some constants, as there would be with any birthday parties. What’s changed, however? The gifts. Toys are gone; jewelry has arrived.
Ten
K and I woke about the time we arrived at the hospital ten years ago.
We were eating breakfast at the time I was filling out paperwork and K was wearily filling in her midwife on the progress thus far.
By the time the kids were up, K was in the huge tub preparing for a water delivery.
When L was opening her present, she was still almost an hour away from delivery. By the time E was licking the maple syrup off his plate after a birthday breakfast of French toast, L was getting closer but still not there.
By the time my students were partaking in their improvised opłatek celebration, K was holding a clean and fragrant little girl who had already taken over our lives entirely.
By the time our neighbor Santa arrived, Nana and Papa had already arrived and been reveling for some time in their new status as Nana and Papa.
Ten years and everyone around us, except for L, wonders how the time disappeared so quickly. Hasn’t L always been this tall? Hasn’t E always been tagging along behind her?
Nine
A day of double goodness. First, the Girl turned nine. It happened when she was arriving at school — 8:05 to be precise. I wished her an official happy birthday when I got back from work in the afternoon. In the meantime, she had cupcakes at school and got to go see E’s first concert.
Dinner was her favorite: rosół. Clothes for her Caroline made the perfect birthday gift — all in all, a good day for her, I think.
Ninth Try
What makes a perfect birthday party perfect? It’s not number of guests, for if that’s the case, today’s party would be very far from perfect. It’s not the price of the gifts, for no matter how much one spends on a present, more is always an option. It’s not the cake, though in the case of E and his destruction cake a couple of years back, it certainly made a positive impact.
Having a part in the planning and preparation of your party would be an element of a perfect party, a perfect sign that double digits and more approach. The Girl chose a craft-centered party, spending several weeks researching and thinking about which activities she wanted at her party. In the end, she chose holiday-themed crafts: gingerbread decoration and Christmas tree baubles.
Morning was dedicated to baking gingerbread, then, in various shapes and sizes. There was also significant cleaning as one of the guests is allergic to cats — never before has the Girl’s room and the living room been so thoroughly cleaned. Early afternoon was decorating. And finally, after putting the balloons in place and dressing both Caroline and herself in matching outfits, the Girl was ready for the guests.
Once the girls arrived, the Boy, though, felt suddenly left out. He went into the living room, flopped down on the couch, and said, “Daddy, I’m boring. I’m not doing anything.” The girls headed down to the trampoline and he just watched from the balcony. “Don’t worry — you’ll get to do all the crafts with the girls. You’ll decorate some gingerbread and make a bauble and do whatever else you want to.”
After crafts, pizza and a movie, and a bit of fingernail painting. And finally, we cleaned up the mess, and I asked the Girl, “So, was it a perfect party?”
“Pretty much.”
And that’s the best present she can give to K and me.