My girl Sunday

Getting ready for the party starts when I bring her a clean shirt and she barrel rolls off the side of the bed, getting her leg stuck between the frame and the wall, then insists I change her into a dress because her friend might be wearing a dress (that friend, as it turned out, had come from snowboarding and was wearing a base layer).

When I ask her to put her boots on she runs into the closet, but we finally get down to the car and soon she’s kicking her brother’s seat, and then she kicks his fingers and he cries. By the time we’re on the main road they’re both crying.

She’s saying Mom Mom MOM and I’m just looking straight ahead not changing my expression. It’s snowing and slushy and I don’t feel like indulging her. She keeps it up until we get to the turn off to the party and I head the other way, back toward home. She knows it and tells me she’s going to calm down.

We get to the party at the gymnastics center and she snags some butterfly wings someone had left out, and her friend won’t say hi to her until she has some too so we find some more and they run around in circles like ribbons. I’m dizzy when she runs over and gives me a big hug.

We hear the happy birthday song and she almost loses it again because she doesn’t have her wings on even though she had just asked me to take them off. She sits down and has a cupcake and is incredulous that her friend is allowed to have two.

Leaving is almost as big a scene as arriving. She doesn’t want ANYONE to go. The birthday boy’s mom, who is also there with her 1.5 week old baby girl, finally calms Immy down, telling her everyone has to go, gets her some chips, helps me get coats.

When I get them buckled in and look in the mirror I am sweating and have frizzy hair and boogers. Having lost my center would have been a nice way to put it.

It’s done snowing and I take a sip of my coffee even though it’s five p.m. The sun is setting behind the clouds. It’s actually orange and I realize I don’t remember the last time I’d seen that.

When we get home Jacob has grocery shopped and made some halibut our neighbor gave us. He puts the kids to bed and I clean the kitchen. When we debrief, the main idea is that the past month has been just as hard for our kids as it has been for us.

I had been saying at the party that Imogen’s situation has changed the least of the four of us: now, as my husband tells me, I’m different, not in a bad way, but I have less time to do what I was doing at the time, cleaning and organizing the kid play kitchen; i.e., being around at every moment for my kids, and it hits me that my starting a full time job, to my kid, is another way (of many) that I will show her that I am not just hers.

How was it? Jacob had asked our daughter when we got home.

I wore butterfly wings and hugged mom, Imogen had said.

So, that was her takeaway.  This time, I’m going to make it mine too.

That hug, and the sunset.

J.