matching tracksuits

Five years of joy and frustration, smiles and cries, small victories and smaller defeats all culminate today. Technically, the birthday is next Friday, but try explaining that to L today.

All week it's been the same refrain: "How many days until my birthday party?" And who could blame her when the birthday party involved drawing (almost) anything her imagination can inspire?

Two years ago, we went for an art birthday party and K kept it in the back of her mind as an original yet fun party for the Girl. Today is that day, a day of blue backgrounds and gray elephants, trunks up, tails down, trunks down, tails up -- whatever each child wishes.

The instructor is just as you would imagine her to be: questioning ("Is this the inside or the outside of the elephant's ear? The outside, right? What part is pink, the outside or inside?") yet ultimately accepting of the young artists' decisions ("You can make it any color you like; it's your elephant. But what part of most elephants' ears are pink?").

The kids work, the adults talk, and the afternoon slides by in a smear of every color imaginable, all accompanied by continual laughter and chatter. The artists check each other's work, make comments, ask questions, offer suggestions.

Yet there comes a time in every artist's creative endeavors when a decision must be made. Paul Valéry once said, "A poem is never finished, only abandoned," and I'd imagine that most visual artists feel the same. Yet cake, ice cream, and presents waited, so the creative process was sped up with the assistance of technology.

And after some cleaning,

and a ceremonial hanging of the art,

it's time for the cake. It's the first year K didn't bake the cake for L's birthday, and certainly every atom in K's Polish body screamed, "It's not right! You can not be a good mother and not bake your daughter's cake!"

But somehow we all survive.

The presents make up for everything.

And the greatest present of all: so many people took so much time out of their Saturday to come share the Girl's day.