rough party

[kimblanchard]

Katie and I were invited to a birthday party today (Saturday) at the home of some new friends from our church. Jordan turned 4, and she is a sweet little girl in Katie's Sunday school class. Her mother is the coordinator of children's stuff at the church - probably the title is a little more specific than that.

The party was absolutely beautiful. Pink balloons, family and friends coming and going as they could make it. Homemade pizza, girls playing dress-up, boys rough-housing in the backyard, women watching the kids and gossiping, men watching football and dozing. The cake was three hours late in showing up, but nobody noticed because of the lack of structure. Presents and a pinata, but not a pinata that gets beaten up - do we really want kids beating Strawberry Shortcake with a stick? Pinatas have always bothered me on that count - eventually a cake. No end time, people just leaving when they had to.

All in all, exactly the way parties are supposed to be. No goofball clown showing up for a 22 minute performance at precisely this time or that. Not an assembly line party at some corporate place designed to take your money. A party you had to clean up after. (Thank goodness we were out of there before cleanup started.)

So basically, exactly the kind of party Becky would have had year after year for Katie. And so it was all I could do not to cry the whole time. Tuesday will be six months, and at times the wound is so raw I look at my chest to see if it is bleeding. Becky would have been so completely in her element with these people at this kind of a party. And I was, too, for stretches, when I could talk football with the men.

But, on a brighter side, my brother's Philadelphia Eagles' cheerleaders lingerie calendar officially autographed by Gregg Easterbrook (author of Tuesday morning quarterback at nfl.com) arrived today. My brother wanted a copy of this calendar, but his wife would not understand such things. So he arranged for me to order a calendar and have it shipped to Gregg in DC, who signed it and mailed it to me. Now I can give it to Pat as a birthday present, at which point he is honor bound to keep it. I claim it is cool because of the TMQ graph, not so much because of the basically nekkid cheerleaders. And the wrath of Bonnie is focused on me, not on him. And if deflecting the wife's wrath is not in a brothers job description, I don't know what is. And I got to spend a few minutes tonight searching the calendar very carefully for any extra signatures or notes from TMQ. I wouldn't want any wisdom to pass me by, so I wanted to look very carefully at each month. As TMQ would (and did) say, Ye Gods!

And now to sleep.

Curtis

[JoniRobertWilson]

Sometimes, it's the "nice" things that make us miss our spouses so much. I know Alex and I went to a skating party the other night for his elementary school and all the parents were sitting around talking. Our table was always full of "couples". The table where the husbands liked coming with their wives and kids. There were always about 4 couples and we'd all sit around and laugh. The women would all talk about how good looking hte PE teacher is and the men would all grumble. It was an empty feeling of huge proportions. I always liked sitting there by Robert and listening to his "take" on everything. It was always witty and we always had a good time. His absence, like everyother time was like a huge hole, unable to ever be filled.

And by the way, You can throw a party like that for your little girl too! You can - you might not "flow" through it like Becky but you can. Do it for both of your girls.

And don't use up that calendar.

[kimblanchard]

We did have a party pretty close to that for Katie back in the day.

And I have inherited the calendar. I forgot the sister in law reads this site from time to time, and my brother was outed. So any attempt to deflect the wrath failed pretty badly. At the same time, I would remind her of his fidelity in fessing immediately to his poker winnings rather than bankrolling his card games for months.

It is the nice things that make us miss them most. We don't miss the ugly times, few as they were. I think more than anything else right now I miss waking up in the middle of the night and knowing that everything was okay because Becky was right there.

Curtis