"Not again. Not next year. Not for my daughter. No." I groaned as I dug my heels in to the carpet to prevent myself from spilling on to the floor. My body didn't want to sit. It was too tired to sit. It just wanted to drip on to the floor in a puddle and then stay there. My whole being wanted to pull the plug and go home. The problem was I was home. It felt as if I had spent my entire life on my feet. And when I did try to sit, I found that my sitting muscles had atrophied. My body yearned for some rest. There was still work to be done, for my wife believed that the house was a mess. I believed we should toss it all and go to sleep. My beliefs did not get much traction.
You see, we had just finished our son's fourth birthday party that day. It was an afternoon of mayhem for us, something akin to jaywalking through the charge of the light brigade with kids volleying and thundering around us. There were thirty of them, give or take a couple, between the ages of ten months and seven years, all with a reactor inside them supplying inexhaustible sources of energy and throats lacking decibel control and arms that waved about while speaking as if they were trying to get both their thoughts as well as themselves off the ground. My contribution to this population of boisterous children was two - a ten month old daughter and a four year old son. The party was possibly my son's idea of how it would be just inside the gates of paradise. My daughter caught the excitement as well and demonstrated it through much of the afternoon by giving considerable voice to her opinions in a language known only to her.
All afternoon we had been smiling, me and my wife. While she is somewhat of a natural - being a serial smiler, such afternoons of being on not even civil but positively convivial behaviour takes its toll on me. My lips were so tired they had curled up and gone off to sleep nestled on my chin.
Birthday parties are as much for parents as for the children - in fact the first two or three birthdays are entirely for parents. The kids couldn't care less. Sometimes, the child has to be kept awake (my eldest lost the battle to remain conscious about half-way through his first birthday) for key moments like cutting the cake or else you would have a very irate one year old, who, incensed at being woken up is now refusing to have anything to do with the cake or the cutting of the same. Sometimes, on the other hand, the birthday child has to be kept away from his own cake since a child is often under the misconception that he has first right over his own birthday cake. In the modern world, the first right is of the camera, and through that medium, of facebook.
Birthday parties follow a set routine: Children enjoy them overtly. Moms enjoy them overtly and covertly. Dads drink beer.
For reasons I have been unable to fathom, I have seen that mothers always find stuff to do at birthdays that is directly relevant to the party itself: Organizing games, cutting the cake, calling order, feeding people, making play dates, in short, running the show. Fathers, in the absence of beer wander about like lost souls in a desert on the lookout for an oasis. The only useful things that I have seen a father do (your truly included) is to ferry pieces of cake around and spring to action when chairs or tables need to be moved. The same happened in my son's birthday party as well. In my wisdom, hence, I had told my wife I would take care of the drinks and so I made sure the cooler was well stocked with beer and wine. An hour before the party she came on her customary tour of inspection.
"Where are the drinks?" She asked me. I proudly showed her the neat rows of bottles and cans in the cooler.
"What will the children drink?" She asked me again.
I was stumped, but I handled it well. "Juice!" I said, inspired.
"Where is it?" She queried. Years of experience have taught me that the words "Trust me" are deemed to exist in the English language only as long as the woman in question had not married me. Ever since our wedding day, "Trust me" has been gobbledygook and that too gobbledygook in an extinct language.
"At the back." I said, praying I would not have to show them.
"Ok." She said and went away to take charge of the food and entertainment section.
I quickly made myself scarce and went and bought juice and cola. Of course I had to think of an excuse in case I was asked where I had been gallivanting moments before my only son's birthday party was due to commence, but the question never came. Here is where smokers win out. They don't have to account for a fifteen minute slot of time as long as they come back smelling of stale smoke. As you can see, even crap has advantages once it is not on your side.
I spent most of the evening skillfully avoiding collisions while making sure the other dads had beers in their hands constantly. I was also reciting "If" to myself since it seemed to give me hope. My wife was running around as well. She was like a whirlwind - here, there, everywhere. I thought I would offer her some words of wisdom as support. The next time she passed me I said "If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs.." She gave me a funny look. "Nobody is losing their head," she said. "This is how people have fun. I think you are losing your head." She said quite pointedly.
I realized that the only thing that my wife and I had in common post the birthday party was the fatigue. Hers tinged with happiness and hope that this would happen again, mine tinged with relief that this was over for another few months.
You see, we had just finished our son's fourth birthday party that day. It was an afternoon of mayhem for us, something akin to jaywalking through the charge of the light brigade with kids volleying and thundering around us. There were thirty of them, give or take a couple, between the ages of ten months and seven years, all with a reactor inside them supplying inexhaustible sources of energy and throats lacking decibel control and arms that waved about while speaking as if they were trying to get both their thoughts as well as themselves off the ground. My contribution to this population of boisterous children was two - a ten month old daughter and a four year old son. The party was possibly my son's idea of how it would be just inside the gates of paradise. My daughter caught the excitement as well and demonstrated it through much of the afternoon by giving considerable voice to her opinions in a language known only to her.
All afternoon we had been smiling, me and my wife. While she is somewhat of a natural - being a serial smiler, such afternoons of being on not even civil but positively convivial behaviour takes its toll on me. My lips were so tired they had curled up and gone off to sleep nestled on my chin.
Birthday parties are as much for parents as for the children - in fact the first two or three birthdays are entirely for parents. The kids couldn't care less. Sometimes, the child has to be kept awake (my eldest lost the battle to remain conscious about half-way through his first birthday) for key moments like cutting the cake or else you would have a very irate one year old, who, incensed at being woken up is now refusing to have anything to do with the cake or the cutting of the same. Sometimes, on the other hand, the birthday child has to be kept away from his own cake since a child is often under the misconception that he has first right over his own birthday cake. In the modern world, the first right is of the camera, and through that medium, of facebook.
Birthday parties follow a set routine: Children enjoy them overtly. Moms enjoy them overtly and covertly. Dads drink beer.
For reasons I have been unable to fathom, I have seen that mothers always find stuff to do at birthdays that is directly relevant to the party itself: Organizing games, cutting the cake, calling order, feeding people, making play dates, in short, running the show. Fathers, in the absence of beer wander about like lost souls in a desert on the lookout for an oasis. The only useful things that I have seen a father do (your truly included) is to ferry pieces of cake around and spring to action when chairs or tables need to be moved. The same happened in my son's birthday party as well. In my wisdom, hence, I had told my wife I would take care of the drinks and so I made sure the cooler was well stocked with beer and wine. An hour before the party she came on her customary tour of inspection.
"Where are the drinks?" She asked me. I proudly showed her the neat rows of bottles and cans in the cooler.
"What will the children drink?" She asked me again.
I was stumped, but I handled it well. "Juice!" I said, inspired.
"Where is it?" She queried. Years of experience have taught me that the words "Trust me" are deemed to exist in the English language only as long as the woman in question had not married me. Ever since our wedding day, "Trust me" has been gobbledygook and that too gobbledygook in an extinct language.
"At the back." I said, praying I would not have to show them.
"Ok." She said and went away to take charge of the food and entertainment section.
I quickly made myself scarce and went and bought juice and cola. Of course I had to think of an excuse in case I was asked where I had been gallivanting moments before my only son's birthday party was due to commence, but the question never came. Here is where smokers win out. They don't have to account for a fifteen minute slot of time as long as they come back smelling of stale smoke. As you can see, even crap has advantages once it is not on your side.
I don't know if you have ever noticed, but a young child's birthday celebration is a study in organized randomness - Adults (almost exclusively grown up women) insist on sticking to a mental schedule of passing the parcel, pin the tail, pulverize the pinata, musical chairs, give alternating dirty and perplexed looks to husband throughout the party while the children follow some sort of 'grouped' Brownian movement. There are always bunches of kids running randomly across the room with their paths impossible to predict. Never is it a lone child. It is always a scattered group. And everybody is in a state of constant motion and constant speech.
It requires great skill to ferry beer across a room such as this, but my wife thinks this talent is overrated.
It requires great skill to ferry beer across a room such as this, but my wife thinks this talent is overrated.
I spent most of the evening skillfully avoiding collisions while making sure the other dads had beers in their hands constantly. I was also reciting "If" to myself since it seemed to give me hope. My wife was running around as well. She was like a whirlwind - here, there, everywhere. I thought I would offer her some words of wisdom as support. The next time she passed me I said "If you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs.." She gave me a funny look. "Nobody is losing their head," she said. "This is how people have fun. I think you are losing your head." She said quite pointedly.
I realized that the only thing that my wife and I had in common post the birthday party was the fatigue. Hers tinged with happiness and hope that this would happen again, mine tinged with relief that this was over for another few months.
3 comments:
Hope you're looking forward to anika's!
Actually, I am. This one would be a lot more in our control than when she gets older.
I too hate birthday parties and if A could, he would avoid his own daughter's!
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