Maternal Dementia

If she were alive, my mother would have celebrated her 80th birthday today. Short-pants left her a message in the sand, made with love.

“Mama,” she whispered, “in that sugar-morning voice, “Can I watch Gulli before school?”

I’m not super keen on the cartoon channel and I dislike the noise of the television so early in the morning, but she’d asked me so nicely. The night before she’d done all her homework without complaint, and I had a lot to do to get ready to get out the door at the same time as the girls, so I acquiesced. “If you get dressed and get your cartable together, then yes.”

De-facto walked into the living room and saw her forking her scrambled eggs without removing her eyes from the screen. “What’s this?”

It’s usually De-facto who’s slightly more liberal about TV permissions, though he has taken to making Buddy-roo earn minutes in front of her coveted kids channel based on the number of words for her dictée that she can spell correctly.

“It’s a special equation,” said Buddy-roo, “Mama said I could.”

Thirty minutes later we were walking down the stairs en famille, Buddy-roo giggling with glee because both her mom and dad were walking her and her sister to school, something that usually happens only on the first day of the school year.

“It really is a special equation!” Buddy-roo repeated.

“Occasion,” Short-pants corrected her, “and it is a special occasion. It’s mama’s birthday!” She parroted something she’s heard me say more than once in the last few weeks: “it’s her very first 49th birthday.” I suppose that qualifies as a special equation.

The girls started singing happy birthday, again. We’d celebrated as a family the night before and I’d done my best “how lovely!” shtick after opening Buddy-roo’s gift, a wooden box she’d painted – part of an arts & crafts kit she’d gotten for her birthday – wrapped in an Air France baby blanket left over from one of their first trans-Atlantic voyages and now used for swaddling their dolls. I remember that, as a child, the not-quite-panicked-but-urgent press to give a gift but having no means or money to obtain one. I’d scan my bedroom for something I liked enough but wouldn’t mind not having anymore and present it with hopes that it would please. I think the best “Oh, this is lovely” performance was by my sister, who once made an enormously satisfying fuss over a piece of cotton in a small white box.

Modeling such graciousness is key, how else will they learn to accept all gifts with tact, focusing on the gesture and not just the gizmo? Not that it’s always easy (that’s another post, someday) but one must at least try.

Getting to school on time was slightly more complicated since De-facto and I were pushing bikes with us. The plan, unveiled to me in its semi-entirety only that morning, was that after dropping the kids at school I would be whisked away on an overnight to celebrate. The first stop: Gare de Lyon, the train station for the southeast gate of Paris. There we bulldogged our bikes onto the train that took us out of the city, to Fountainbleau, where we rode for a bit through the forest before stopping to tour the chateau there, a venerable museum of secret doors and French royal history. Then a picnic in the gardens there before we set out for the final destination, which turned out to be a 2-hour bike ride away, to a many-starred luxury hotel, Chateau d’Augerville.

The trip wasn’t a total surprise. De-facto had been watching my Google calendar to be sure I didn’t have anything scheduled, although we have differing accounts of when he informed me of the excursion and how much preparatory information was relayed. He’d arranged a patchwork plan that was part-babysitter-part-neighbor to cover child-care, though I felt compelled to intervene just a little to make sure all bases were covered, getting little people to and from rehearsals and recitals that made being out of town on this particular day slightly more complicated. But there have been enough butchered birthdays in the past for me to appreciate the complex level of scheming and planning he’d gone to just to assure that I felt celebrated on my birthday. That in itself is the best gift.

Though there were moments that I wondered whether the birthday trip was more for him than for me. Like when the hill I was pedaling up grew steeper and steeper and just when you thought it would crest it kept going and I wondered why I was on the 3-speed city bike with two of our three packs and he was on the mountain bike (albeit aging) with 15 gears. We’d borrowed bicyles from neighbors and friends – I don’t own one anymore because I Velib’ around Paris and the bike I gave him for his birthday last year is still a coupon in his desk drawer, despite my occasional nagging to redeem it – and he somehow ended up on the lighter more suitable-for-countryside-hills model. This was probably the lowest moment of my birthday and I let loose a few snarling expletives under my breath so that when he circled back to check on me I was able to keep the promise I’d made to myself to be appreciative at all costs.

Once we switched bikes, I sped by him while his gangly knees pumped up and down on the front-basketed Elvira-Gulch bicycle and my mood improved instantly.

Like every bike trip, there were highs and lows. Pedaling carefree along forested lanes, there’s nothing like the weee! of being on a bike in motion or happening upon the haunting ruins of an old cathedral, open to the sky. But also those typical rough moments: the one kilometer you’re obliged to travel (with a head wind) on a route nationale with 18-wheelers rushing past and nearly topping you off the shoulder, or the I-think-we-took-a-wrong-turn and that means we have to ride back up that hill we just raced down in a full weee! state of mind. Or the plan to stop at a café in the next village except the next three villages don’t have a café and your water bottle is empty and you’re parched but saving that orange in your pack for a real emergency. But if you know this about bike trips, you ride it out – pun intended – and in the end, when you pull into an elegant chateau and sit on the terrace with a cold draught beer, looking forward to a nap, a shower and a gastronomic dinner, well, then it’s all worth it. It makes for a very very special equation, no matter how you’re counting your birthdays.

The party invitations pile in, Fêtez mon anniversaire! It feels like almost every weekend we’re taking one of our children here from 2-5, the other there from 3-6. The hardest part has been the confounding decision of what kind of present to buy for a young schoolmate (hoping always to avoid being the parent who adds more little pieces of plastic to the ever mounting pile that every mother hates) or the negotiation with De-facto about who delivers and who does the pick-up. Each time we arrive at an apartment that is tidied and decorated, snacks are set out in a neat line of little bowls, the arts & crafts table is prepared and poised to stimulate little imaginations. The parents are fresh and enthusiastic, calmly noting our portable phone numbers just in case. Smiles and see you in three hours. Or more. One party last month lasted from 1 until 6. Lord, that woman had courage.

When we return to retrieve whichever child we’d dropped off for the afternoon celebration, that same apartment is bouleversé with children scrambling around in a sugar-frenzy. Haggard parents open the door, patience tested, tempers suppressed. Our child is then thrust in our arms with a quick gift bag and thank-yous all around. Occasionally, a glass of wine or champagne is served as we come to reclaim our offspring; a celebration of the party’s end – or perhaps the methodology for endurance.

De-facto and I have long managed to avoid the party-with-a-dozen-friends racket. Short-pants’ July birthday always falls during the summer, when everyone is out of Paris and so are we, and Buddy-roo’s October birth date conveniently falls during the 2-week autumn school break, called Toussaints, another moment in the year when we leave the city to spend time at our country house.

We’ve still celebrated our children’s birthdays with a party, but it’s always been a small one, with just the four of us and an aunt or grandmother who might be handy, and the two neighbor kids who live on the farm down the road. Well, and just to make it pleasant, the four or five adults who live nearby. In truth: we’ve been throwing parties for us, adapted to include the birthday in question.

This year, Short-pants has more than hinted at her desire to have a full-on birthday party with her school friends – not just the convenient neighbors – and she is getting too old and too clever to accept “it’s summer vacation” as an excuse. We could no longer delay this parental duty. It’s been a good ride, we got away with being slackers on the birthday thing for a long time. But now it’s time to rise to the occasion.

Today, school lets out at noon (it’s Wednesday) and at two o’clock there will be twelve invited guests under the age of nine assembled together playfully in this rooftop apartment. Pray for good weather, so we can divide and conquer, move some kids down to the courtyard for games, rotate them around for different activities. (Some of our “workshop choreography” may come into play.)

De-facto, the guy who’s normally up for any kind of shake-up, keeps toning down the plans that Short-pants and I have dreamed up for the party. Last weekend she and I brainstormed a bunch of activities and games that might fit in with the theme she has selected for the party: mandalas. When we went to choose among all our ideas (one per post-it), De-facto weighed in heavily with simplicity as his primary criterion. I know he’s right. But the mandala-pizzas were such a good idea! And covering the entire floor with paper and drawing a mandala mural: Brilliant!

Have I mentioned how over the moon Short-pants is about her mandala birthday party?

About this I have mixed emotions. There is obvious delight that comes with witnessing her anticipation of the event. Each morning this week she rises smiling, counting the days until her party. She cannot contain her excitement, yesterday she was nearly jumping out of her skin. At the same time, I wonder, why do we make such a big fuss about birthdays? Is it appropriate to want to be pampered? Or do we just raise expectations that lead to later disappointment? Or else that’s just my story; I hope this is not something she inherits from me.

As much as I’m dreading it – having all these kids under foot at one time, anticipating the decibel level of 12+ sets of enthusiastic vocal cords, preparing for the inevitable re-arrangement of entire home – I know how much this means to her. She is everything an 8-year-old going on nine should be, her enchantment and excitement, leading up to the party, is worth every moment of pain and sacrifice we will endure.

And who knows, maybe we’ll even have fun?

Birthdays are not to be shared. It’s the one single day you get to yourself, the day you were born – the day you opted into this planet. It’s your day. There’s no reason to be magnanimous about it.

I know this because the double birthday party I celebrated years ago with Debbie West was an exercise in being gracious, a task that was really too advanced for my consciousness at the time. Her mother made the most elaborate gingerbread house cake with colorful jellybean trimming. The sixteen candles – our ages added together – dispersed across its roof were too hard to blow out in tandem, the song lengthened uncomfortably at the point of our names. Debbie’s, of course, came first.

Most of the gifts we received were identical – the same duets of birthday wrapping paper folded around matching puzzles, coloring books and Spirograph kits. Except the Barbie Dolls that Susan Olsen brought: Each gift tag was carefully labeled with one of our names in the fine, formal handwriting I recognized as Mrs. Olsen’s, but obviously her mom must have randomly assigned the boxes which were packed with fraternal twin Barbies.

Debbie got the blonde doll. But she was a brunette. Shouldn’t she have gotten the doll with the matching hair? I opened my box in sync with her, noticing the hair color instantly. Before I could stop myself the words popped out, “but I want that one!” The doll in question, of course, the one in her hands, not the one in mine.

I’m pretty sure that everybody heard me, but it was as though each and every person – young and old – tacitly agreed to ignore what I had blurted out. My 8-year old self was too young to be gracious was nevertheless old enough to know that this was not the appropriately thankful response to a gift. I stared at the doll and pretended to love her, knowing the eyes of a roomful of good girls were upon me. But I could not contain the tears that naturally manifest after such a disappointment, tears which burst out from me at full volume.

“It must be too much excitement,” I heard my mother say, “all these girls and all these gifts.”

This is why when Buddy-roo has a moment like this, I redirect her frustration as a good parent should, but inside: mountains of empathy. I suppose if you asked De-facto for his point of view on my birthday spirit, he might suggest not that much has changed.

But birthdays are something. You gotta make them happy, or else they’ll make you sad.

Later at home, after the party, my mother placed the doll prominently on my shelf. I let it sit there, untouched and unloved, eventually letting it fall to the back of the queue of dolls and stuffed animals, neglected, rejected – the other Barbie.