Golden

Hello and welcome to a wet Saturday here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is August 15th.

This past week, the Youngest celebrated his golden birthday. I remember my golden birthday. I was 7 years old. I had 2 parties: one with my immediate family and then one at my aunt and uncle's farm. Now that I think about it, maybe they just had a party-party and I thought it was for me because it was my golden birthday, because when you're a kid, golden birthdays are a very big deal. 

I have a photograph of my dad and me at the extended family party. My dad looms large, with lumberjack arms and a deep tan from summers spent working outside on his myriad engines. Maybe he'd built a garage that summer, or had repaired a roof. In any case, when I look at that photo, to me he looks like a live version of the phrase "strapping young man," at age 34 and despite smoking- let's just say - 4 packs of Marlboros a day. And in the photo, this brown (relatively healthy), strong man is holding my hand - a tiny paw, in comparison - of a small, pale, fragile-looking girl with a puffy pink eye, swollen shut by poison ivy. 

I was a poison ivy magnet. I'd usually get it at said aunt and uncle's house. And it wasn't just a few patches of annoying, itchy blisters here and there. It was thick carpet swaths that covered disconcerting acreage across my body. It was so bad, my aunt would set me up in a lawn chair covered with a clean bedsheet so that I could practice bending my legs (yes, it was that thick behind my knees), while the blisters seeped their crusty ooze.

Fortunately, for my son's golden birthday, no children were harmed by any poison ivy.

His birthday celebration actually started months ago with early birthday presents. During baseball season, my husband bought him a swing trainer to improve his batting skills.

How could I say no when he got super excited about a handmade bow and not one, but two - because you can't play alone! - marshmallow shooters at an Arts in the Park event? "It's for your birthday!" I reminded him, assuring myself it was an especially worthy purchase because it wasn't a toy made in China, but by an artist - a lovely retired man who understood well the spirit of boys.

"It's for your birthday!" I said again during an emergency trip to Scheel's in Grand Forks to buy a new pair of cleats and a glove, because he had decided, unbeknownst to me, not to bring either to his last baseball tournament of the season because he thought he "wouldn't be able to play anyway." (He did play.)

"You can pay me back with any birthday money you get," I said when he presented the results of a successful search on eBay for a Waggle hat he just had to have.

"You know you're not getting any presents from us on your birthday, right?" I told him in the days leading up to the "real" birthday. "Yeah, I know," he said.

And then came the golden birthday sleepover bash of the summer.

Eleven boys came to our house last Saturday evening with Nerf guns, water guns, flashlights, sleeping bags - and, yes, more presents - in tow.

Twelve boys is a lot. Admittedly, because of what happened last year, I felt somewhat nervous, so I prepared with the first-aid kit, had a 911 plan in place i.e., call one of the moms who's a nurse, and had the hubs set up a tent outside to create more sleeping space.

While twelve boys is a lot of bodies, it's also the quantity needed to have two teams for: baseball games, water gun fights, Nerf gun fights, Ghost in the Graveyard tag, and those quieter moments when the kid crew broke into smaller groups to play Rebounce, jump on the trampoline, watch a movie, or just talk.

And, finally, the day he'd been waiting for since his last birthday arrived.

"Am I really not getting any presents?" he asked.

"Yep," I answered.

"Okay."

I give him credit for taking it so well. It had been more than a birthday day; it'd been a birthday season - something my 94-year-old friend assured me once is absolutely reasonable. I tried not to feel too bad for him. It had truly been a golden birthday of the best kind.

That night, after the phone calls from his older siblings, a special dinner, and ice cream left over from the birthday weekend, I had one more present to give him - a card from his grandma - I had been saving for the very moment when he'd fully resigned himself to the fact that there were really, honestly, not going to be any more presents. He beamed with joy. He savored the card. He crowed with delight at the cash inside.

And then, I gave him one last-last present, happy I'd saved it from my Prague trip back in April for this very moment.