This week my most exciting achievement is surviving yet another birthday party. That may not sound like much, but every time I make through another one of these I feel like a rock star. Friday afternoon as the yellow school bus pulled up in front of our driveway, about a half dozen girls came piling out, followed by 2 boys sauntering up the back trying to appear like they didn’t care. As I said last week, my daughter, Cassidy, just turned 10.  I conveniently postponed the party until this weekend as my husband wasn’t home last weekend. I wasn’t about to let him get off that easy, much as he might have appreciated that. I told Cassie she could invite “a few friends” over, which quickly blossomed into a total of 7.  As a concession to my middle son, Carter, who turned 11 in October, I told him he could invite one friend over. This was done somewhat for his benefit and somewhat for Cassie’s benefit.  There is nothing worse to a little sister than a big brother with nothing more on his mind than to cause chaos to his sister’s plans.

The evening was spent with various decibel levels of little girl squeals and giggles and lots of Dance Dance Revolution. Mom even had to take a turn at Dance Dance Revolution and I overheard one of Cassie’s friends saying, “your mom is really good!” I’m not sure if I should take that as a compliment or as a sad indicator of my social life - a middle-aged woman with enough time on her hands to be “really good” at Dance Dance Revolution. At any rate, I still have the ability to impress 10 year old girls apparently.  Not to be outdone, the boys challenged the girls to head on dance competitions and it was fun to watch. We had diary reading, scary stories, movies, and still more squealing and giggling. The boys did their best to pester, tease, and generally egg on the girls.  Between pizza, cake, and pop, the kids were all going strong when I fell into an exhausted sleep at 11:30, only to be awoken at 5:30 in the morning to more giggling. I am not sure if they ever slept.

To be perfectly honest, I am not one of those super moms who boast to “love” this tradition of birthday parties. In fact, usually I am stressed out about exactly what we are going to do, how many children to invite, transportation, food, cake, and of course my sanity, which on a good day can be stretched thin with just my own 2 children. By the time we were organizing the mass exodus of children on Saturday and Cassie asked if she could just have one friend stay the night again, I quickly replied, “Mom needs a break.” My mom of the year crown may have slipped a little right at that moment, but I think overall the party was success.

This whole experience got me to thinking about my own mom - and mine and my sister’s birthday parties. I remember many backyard parties with all the kids in the neighborhood, slumber parties, cake cooked in ice cream cones with frosting and sprinkles, balloons, and always many, many kids. I don’t ever recall my mom being flustered or having the look of “I can’t wait for this to be over” plastered on her face. I just remember fun, friends, and feeling like the queen of the world for a few hours. I hope my own kids will look back on their birthdays with the same fondness.

When I look back on pictures of Tyler's birthdays - especially the early years - we all looked so happy. I have often thought - would I have wanted to know he would get sick? Looking at these pictures, I would have to say, "no." It would have colored every thing we did with foreboding and sadness, whereas the happy memories we shared were truly happy. They are treasures - priceless.  They are my jewels, my heritage, my inheritance. I miss him so much sometimes. It can be crippling. These memories of ordinary things like birthday parties are a balm and I am ever so grateful I made the effort to create them when I had the chance.