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Little pockets of special-ness
By Betsy Richter | 6:47 pmShortly before bedtime last Thursday, my daughter appeared at my elbow in tears. Her special day – her long-anticipated eighth birthday – hadn’t turned out quite the way she’d imagined after all.
Sure, she got the toy she’d been lusting after -a Gameboy Advance SP. She’d had a special dinner the night before with her dad, where she got showered with several of the other items on her wishlist. And I’d taken the day off from work to go on her class field trip.
But we hadn’t done a special dinner. (I was battling the aftermath of oral surgery and had deferred it to another day.) We didn’t have cake, or candles to blow out. And even though she had a birthday book made by her class at school, and we brought a special treat for after-care – well, it turns out that no one had sung her Happy Birthday.
As a result, I had a teary little girl on my hands – “I thought I would feel special the whole day long, and I hardly felt special at all” – who immediately tried to retract her feelings once she saw that she’d provoked a stream of waterworks on my end. So I pulled her into bed with me, held her for a while, and we talked about how the specialness doesn’t always stick around as we grow older.
I reminded her that we still had more birthday events to come: her party in a week and a half; a planned sleepover with another friend who wouldn’t be at the party; some extra time with Dad over Memorial Day weekend. And she reassured me that she hadn’t meant to make me feel bad or complain – instead, she was wrestling with the fact that her shiny golden bubble of anticipation had just burst against the hard-edged reality of ‘just another day.’
Last night, we settled on sushi at her favorite restaurant tonight for her ‘makeup dinner.’ She gorged on shrimp, miso soup, edamame, and tamago galore – followed with mango ice cream, of course. The entire restaurant sang her happy birthday as she beamed from ear to ear.
And with any luck, she’s learning that sometimes it might be more rewarding to have the extravaganzas parceled out in small doses over time – days on end, strung together with little pockets of special-ness.
Topics: Drama Mama | 2 Comments »
May 31st, 2006 at 12:25 pm
Little growing-up lessons can be hard at 8. And at 42. :-) I’m glad she has more upcoming specialness.
June 2nd, 2006 at 4:20 pm
Aw. Now I’m all weepy! The pain of broken anticipation. Sigh.