The Birthday

So Isaac had his birthday and turned six. It must be like the Grinch in Who-ville at Christmas – it comes without blog entries, comments, or tweets. Amazing. Better bloggers/mothers than I am would have posted many words accompanied by many pictures on the actual day of my child's birth. But you, dear readers, are stuck with me and the piece meal retrospective.

As I travel through the first year without my mom, every landmark is a landmine. Isaac appeared at my side at the breakfast table the morning of his birthday with a heart-shaped stone a friend gave him at Christmas time. “When I roll this around in my hand, it makes me think of grandmom,” he says to me. “Try it.” I dutifully take the stone. “Can you feel it?” he asks hopefully. “It makes me think of her because you think of her, honey.” I try to give it back to him. “You can keep it,” he urges, “I don't need it.” And so he doesn't. As for me, I carried it in my pocket for days.

We had a party. Isaac sharing my inability to narrow themes, had requested a T-Rex party with a pirate treasure hunt and a king cobra cake.

We played “Pin the Useless Little Arms on the T-Rex.” We had a treasure hunt for dinosaur bones (Inside, Arrgh, Matey! since the rain refused to cooperate. Successful thanks to my husband's mathematical genius and the small size of the guest list.). We played a dice game where the kids themselves were the game pieces tromping through a giant game board I constructed that I'm sure my son's friends' fundamentalist/creationist parents loved (“Ichthyostega crawls out of the swamp and breathes air! Move ahead 3 spaces!” and “Asteriod hits! Go back 100 million years!”).

What can I say? I'm here to offend. Really, I'm here to amuse myself and it takes priority over much else. How else would you expect me to survive half a dozen women I don't talk to on any regular basis and have nothing in common with parked on my couch for three hours discussing recipes and Facebook? Without other sources of sanity, I'd have to take a page out of Isaac's book and hide in the closet. Which is where I found him at the end of the day – the two girls at the gig otherwise occupied and content, the four boys engaged in a massive balloon fight in his trashed room, and the host, my sensitive son, holed up against the din and chaos. 

Below: Isaac and a friend at their behind-the-scenes tour of the aquarium - only available to 6-year-olds and up. Notice the birthday button.