The only essential ingredient to the birthday party (and if it's your birthday, there must be a party) is the song — Helena must sing "Bonne Fete" — but the event is often accentuated with hats, "tea" (with or without juice, and these days usually featuring special imaginary cappuccino for me), play-doh cake with popsicle-stick candles, and, my favourite, des cadeaux.
Here is a recent present, plucked by Helena from the table by the door and lovingly personalized. (Fortunately, I've already read that page.)By far the biggest present of this last weekend was the weekend itself, being relatively child-free so that J-F and I could revisit the scene of our first date 10 years ago, and other familiar places, and old friends.
Also, I've been enjoying not reading War and Peace and the thrill of finishing a book after only a couple hundred pages, namely, Isabel's Bed, by Elinor Lipman, and Little Children, by Tom Perrotta, both very funny and excellent light reading.
4 comments:
My kids did the same thing. Ritual is so important to them; I guess it's an imprinting thing? Dunno...
As long as you don't actually age a year during each of these birthday parties, I suppose it's rather fun to be feted so frequently!
Would you recommend Isabel's Bed? I've read Then She Found Me by Elinor Lipman but nothing else.
Funny, Devyn always talks about birthdays and asks others, "Is it your birthday?"
I really like Elinor Lipman's novels - Isabel's Bed was the first I read and I loved it.
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