PARTIES, GUILT, AND LOVELY'S MOM

I admit it. I am scum. I am the lowest of the low, one who should not have possession of an angelic, cherub-cheeked little child. I am dirt. I am not worthy of the name Mommy.

I am--yes, I can say it--a Mom who hates birthday parties.

The stress, my gosh, the stress a birthday party causes me. Did we invite enough people? Too many? Will the moms all stay, and will I have to chat with them? Do they think we invited the whole class just to get lots of presents? Should we have the kids bring donations to some charity instead of gifts? Is there enough cake? Is there too much cake? Is the cake hideous? And, biggest question of all, Are The Kids Having a Good Time?

I worry about all this stuff before, during, and after the party. I am referring, here, to a party where you invite the whole (preschool, kindergarten, first grade, whatever) class, where you don't necessarily know the families that well. Kids love to invite the whole class, and I've done my share of that with our two oldest. With our next one, I didn't invite the whole class so much, but I compromised and invited whole groups--like, everyone from her cheerleading team. It turns out that I still worry.

I stress so much over birthday parties that I never get the thank-you notes sent out afterward. Never. I still don't see why a kid should have to send out thank-you notes for a present if the giver was there in person and the kid said Thank You, but around here, the best moms send out notes.

So I make a list, during gift-opening, of who gave what. Then I lose the list. Every time. I finally decided that it's a passive-aggressive semi-intentional losing thing. Has to be.

I've just realized, thinking about this, that my birthday party insecurity might very well date back to my own tenth birthday party. February 1, 1973. We had just moved to a new city--McPherson, Kansas--a couple of months earlier. My mother invited all the girls in my class, best as I can remember, probably so I could get to know them.

I was an odd, backward kid. I read too many books. Everyone else was doing the normal 1973 kid stuff, while I was basing my expectations of birthday parties on what I read in books from the library, which I realize now were probably published in the 1950's.

I'm not kidding. I remember getting a party book at the library, and being so excited about planning that party. I expected the other little girls to show up in party dresses and play Pin The Tail On The Donkey. That's what the kids in the book did.

They showed up in bell bottoms. I rushed to my room after the first couple of girls arrived, and I took off my ruffly dress and put on pants. It was too late, though--they had Seen Me in my ruffles, and they knew just how clueless I was.

I don't know what the other girls expected to do for Party Activities, but our planned games and lumpy homemade cake were not it. I walked in on one girl saying to another one, "This is the worst party I have ever been to."

I'm forty-four years old, and it still upsets me to write that. No wonder I have Birthday Party Issues. Please have a good time. Please don't let my kid's party be the worst one you ever went to, please please please.

Let us hasten to that blessed day when they are all teenagers and just want to take a couple of friends to a movie, and I never ever have to throw another birthday party as long as I live.

My insecurities are blooming today, not over one of my kid's parties, but over one my kid went to. Francie went to a Chuck E. Cheese party where everyone from her preschool class was invited--twenty kids.

I told the mom that I was going to leave Francie there and run some errands, and she said what they always say--"Sure, fine!" Dang it, I've had preschoolers with me for nineteen years now. I take every opportunity to get out alone. I came back an hour later and hung around for the end of the party.

The other moms were doing what the other preschool moms do, and what I don't do--hanging around, talking, laughing, planning playdates. I'm the outsider. For one thing, I'm basically introverted and don't chat well. People who don't know me well don't particularly like me (not much has changed since age ten, I guess . . . )

For another, I have a kid in college. Most people with preschool kids are just getting into the groove of the parent thing. It's still new. They are happy to make friends with people who have kids the same age.

If you're four, at our house, you are not going to get the dance lessons or the tumbling classes or the expensive birthday present. Your older sibs are going to get that stuff, if anyone does.

And if you're invited to something--say, a birthday party--at the same time as the high school spring band concert, well, we just won't tell you that you got the invitation, so you won't feel bad about it. We can't do everything, and the older kids' activities take priority. (And Grandma has gotten tired of the way we just keep having these doggone kids, and she's not as willing to babysit as she once was. I can see her thinking: I was babysitting their four-year-old fifteen years ago. Why on earth do they still have a four-year-old?)

And then there's the fact that we no longer live in the neighborhood where all those kids are going to go to school, anyway. I don't think that any kid in Francie's preschool class will be going to her elementary school. They're the suburban types, we're the university neighborhood/older neighborhood types.

Anyway. When I went back to the party, it looked like every other mom had stayed. I felt like scum. What if something had happened? What if she broke her arm? What if she was just, well, her usual active self (which she probably was)?

I hate feeling like scum. Especially when, dang it, I went all the way to Haiti to get this kid. I fought the INS for her. We did without a decent car to pay the fees required to get her adopted. It's not like I'm not committed to being her mom. I worked hard to get to be her mom.

All those other moms in Francie's class took the easy route to get THEIR kids. They just went to the hospital and popped those suckers out. Hmph.

See, I'm feeling defensive, even though I know there's no reason to. Those moms, the moms that stayed, they weren't interacting with their kids when I got there. They were sitting around a table together, talking, while their kids--and Francie--ran around and played. Their kids are a way for them to make friends. I have six kids and no time for friends.

Francie and I had a good time bowling together with her last few tokens. Really scummy moms don't bowl with their kids, right?

Tomorrow happens to be Francie's birthday. We'll go to Grandma's and have cake and presents. Then, next week, is Francie's party. We're going to Chuck E. Cheese, but I couldn't see inviting all twenty kids from her class, and couldn't very well leave some out, so we're having other kids. Two of our old neighborhood kids; two adopted from Haiti; Francie's sisters, of course; and a little girl from church. If everyone comes, ages will range from three to ten.

Francie's friend Lovely, who was also adopted from Haiti, will be there. I'm so grateful to Lovely's mom--when I said, "I hate birthday parties," she said, "Oh, I'm so glad you said that--I do too." Sounds like she has the same "Oh no do I have to chat?" attitude that I do.

And she couldn't possibly be a better mom. She's a single mom, incredibly patient, with Lovely, and now a new baby coming from Ethiopia. I can't believe some of the things she reports that people have said to her, including a couple she works with. They both work in the medical field, they can't have kids, and they have decided they would like to adopt internationally too, but that they "can't afford it."

You gotta be kidding me. Okay, think that stuff, if you really feel you can't give up anything in your budget to adopt, but don't say it to someone who's paying for her second international adoption by herself!

Lovely's mom is single and supporting one, soon two, kids who would otherwise have had little to no chance in life. I used to be fairly comfortable in my impression that, since she's a nurse, and her sister watches Lovely for her when she's at work (no daycare payments, I figured) her income probably covers their needs pretty well--until she mentioned that she pays her sister what she would have to pay the hospital daycare. And Lovely goes to preschool, too, which costs money. Next year, with two of them to pay daycare on, and one preschool, it's going to really add up.

Lovely's mom and I have hinted at what we feel when people we know go on cruises or vacations instead of adopting a starving kid from someplace. We can't afford vacations.

I'm so glad she hates birthday parties.