Happy Birthday, a year on

I have been waging a slow and entirely ineffective war against Chuck E Cheese’s over the past year. The map on the website shows that we would have to move to either Vermont or Wyoming to live in a Chuck E-less state, and as neither of those two eventualities are likely just at the moment, I have had to bring the battle into my own home. Every time a commercial comes on the television and I hear the jingle "where a kid can be a kid", I say to my kids “but actually, Chuck E Cheese’s isn’t nearly as fun as it looks on the tv is it?”. They either chorus “yes it is” in unison, or don’t answer at all. This is how I know my attempts are ineffective (perceptive, me).

In spite of this, I did manage to avoid going there for 4-yo’s fourth birthday party. By a sneaky undercover operation, I made sure that a rival venue, Pump It Up, was higher up her list of desirable venues by the time her birthday came round. Pump It Up seems to me to be an altogether more healthy set-up (although still fairly rancid and not very parent-friendly). It’s a large barn of a place filled with bouncy castles and a huge inflatable slide. Apart from this being a broken limb waiting to happen, and a session there resulting in wild, hyped up children, I’m quite in favour of Pump It Up (“Pump Them Up” as a friend calls it). So thus it was that 4-yo had her party there, or half of it at any rate.

Technically speaking, she didn’t have her party there. That would have involved paying Pump It Up a serious amount of money for them to order pizza, and give me the use of the party room. So we just went along to the Preschool Play Session with half a dozen small friends and their mummies, had a good bounce around, and then came back to our house for nibbly snacks, birthday cake and a big slice of delicious plum pie. We didn’t do games and there were no pink frocks, but I satisfied my party-organising yearnings with decorating a room and a table, and filling some party bags. We had an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen, which was very exciting for me, since I’ve been wondering what Dairy Queen was like ever since I first heard the song Ariel by Dean Friedman, which must have been around 30 years ago (and if you’re struggling to remember that one, here's a youtube link. The clip is is 4 mins 21 secs long, but you’ll recognize it within the first 4 secs, I promise, and you can thank your lucky stars that, in this age of clickable choices, you have the option as to whether to listen to the whole thing or not).

The cake had some fancy candles on it, which burnt with different coloured flames, and which I’d bought in the MoMA Design Store during my trip to New York. Oh how smug I felt, until I saw them for half the price a couple of weeks later in my local Wal-Mart, and until I lit them, and found out that the flames, though quite possibly of interestingly varying hues, were almost invisible.

A year on, the whole birthday event had a much happier feel to it. My daughter had friends to invite, I knew how to get to the venue without puzzling over a map, we had a proper home to make festive, and I incidentally satisfied a 30 year long thirst for knowledge.

And the plum pie? Ah yes. I should explain about that. Many years ago, when I was in a dismal job which I truly hated, a friend of mine who was commiserating with me told me to look for the plums. There must be some projects, he said, which you like dealing with, which you seek out of your in-tray and put to the top. They’re your plums. Look for them. Actually, there weren’t any, not any at all; it was a dreadful job. The advice, however, has lived with me, and has helped me through many a dull situation. Not that becoming a Midwesterner is dull. I didn’t say that. But there is a certain dreariness in the slow process of growing roots in a new land: feeling a stranger the whole time, being an outsider, searching unsuccessfully for kindred spirits. That does get dull after a while. So I have had to employ my strategy of looking for plums. And I have found them. They were there at 4-yo’s party. Not a ready circle of mums from the same preschool or neighborhood, but a selection whom 4-yo and I have discovered in different places. None of the 5 of them had met each other before – I seem to have plucked my plums from different trees. They all helped make 4-yo’s day special. They know her well enough to know what present she would really like. They enjoyed her pleasure as she opened them. They are the people I can go to both for practical advice, and for a chewing over of the more puzzling questions of motherhood and life. They have, without exception, helped me out with a bit of childcare when I needed it. They make an effort to understand my extraordinary English take on life. I’ve even tried out the Chucky Jesus thing on one of them, and she laughed. I believe they would feel a gap if I was here no longer.

Birthday cake and plum pie. A rich and satisfying party mix.