Dashiell turned four on Tuesday. It was a big deal because we had yet to really celebrate any of his birthdays so far and my mother had promised to make a cameo. She showed up at his classroom for the two-bite cupcakes I bought at Whole Foods and came to get Conrad with me after school. I introduced her to all my friends, which was fun until they kept saying things like, “So this is your infamous mother!” and “I feel like I meeting a legend!”  Thanks guys. She mentioned more than once over dinner that she was glad to know she was a legend in her own time.

I’d been preparing for Dashiell’s party for days and I couldn’t wait to give him his gifts and cake. From the photo it looks like it worked out. The look you see in his face here isn’t the sheer delight of a homemade cake, it’s because we have a tradition to save one special gift as an actual birthday cake topper that started when I covered a cake for Conrad with Star Wars action figures a while ago. For Dashiell, I put a Batman and a Green Arrow action figure on his cake and while I don’t think he was expecting them, clearly he’s glad we came through.

That night after my parents had left and the boys were asleep I crawled into bed and admitted to David that I thought Conrad and I had been pretty anxious about Dashiell’s birthday and he mildly rolled his eyes, and said, “If Dashiell’s birthday is going make this family anxiety ridden we need bigger problems.”

I explained that for Conrad it’s hard to watch your brother get so much so fast and the fact that Dashiell acted horribly demanding more presents when there was none must have been comforting to him.

Of course it was silly to be stressed over a four year old’s birthday, but I just wanted to make sure it was everything we were building it up to be. And my mom’s arrival added a extra layer of intensity. No matter how organized I try to be before she comes—I vacuum my silverware drawer and try to make sure there is salt in the shakers—small things slip out of my control and I look like I’m losing my grip on the dinner because we don’t have enough clean cloth napkins that match or I misplaced a present or I forgot to get a number “4” candle for the cake. And I’m thinking, she doesn’t even know how many dead ants I vacuumed in the windowsill.

She and my dad went outside for awhile so she could smoke and I noticed them laughing from across the street while the kids played with Dashiell’s unexpectedly powerful new bow and arrow that turned out to be recommended for age 8 (Ok so, I didn’t check the age. He’s been asking for a bow and arrow for weeks). Lately when I see my parents  (which is less and less often), they tend to argue because my dad doesn’t hear as well as he used to and my mother is worried about all the money they’ve lost this past year. But for a moment, watching them across the street they looked happy to be on the other side—literally, and I heard them talking about the time Andre, my brother tried to teach my mom how to kick a football. The stood there way past my mother’s cigarette burned out and I wondered if they were  watching their memories come alive on my front lawn: the houseful of boys running from the front door and out the side, tripping over their shoes and waiting for one of Dashiell’s arrows to get stuck on the roof and watch me climb out in my dress to get it.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 21st, 2009 at 4:46 pm and is filed under Random acts of mothering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.