When Small Things Grow Big

   

Well, we pulled it off, folks. Christmas has come and gone and we survived. I'm sure you're as relieved as I am. This time last year, I had this same sense of relief, but also a feeling of letdown. You see, my daughter has a Christmas birthday (actually it's three days after), so I usually have to plan a party the weekend after Christmas.
     Last year, sick of the grind, I planned the birthday in mid December instead. My reasoning was that it's hard to find a day that everyone can make it during that busy Christmas week. People are traveling, visiting, working or recovering from various alcoholic and culinary indulgences.        It's getting harder and harder every year to coordinate this party.
     Plus, did I mention her birthday is also my wedding anniversary? It's a big drag to have to clean all the bathrooms on one's wedding anniversary. Doesn't really propagate warm, fuzzy feelings of marital bliss. Neither does making a meal for twenty people, decorating a cake and stashing Christmas presents or dusting and vacuuming around the ones that can't be stashed. I'd much rather be lying around like a slug leafing through my wedding album in front of a roaring fire. Last year, that's exactly what I did. Yet in the absence of the big family party, I found that I kind of missed all the hullabaloo.

So we went back to having it on the actual day. Not everyone could make the party. Some were out of town or working, but it worked out that the ones who missed the celebration last year could make this one, so it's all good. We ordered yummy Middle Eastern food in the hopes that it would provide a nice balance for all the rich stuff we'd consumed over the holiday. Which it did, according to the guests. And I'm thinking that I'm pretty grateful for my daughter. For the privilege of personally witnessing her transformation from an itty-bitty baby with Billy Idol hair and Mick Jagger lips to a blonde version of Audrey Hepburn. I'm grateful that she was born at such a celebratory time. And that  I was able to welcome a new century in with bringing a brand-new baby home from the hospital. (My first.) I'm grateful that the only Y2K glitch that year was that the hospital lost her first photo. Pretty benign as Y2K glitches go. The photo was probably pretty ugly anyway. (If you've ever seen a first-time baby pic, I'm sure you'll agree they look a bit...distorted.) Besides which, we took more. A couple trillion or so. Here's celebrating my small daughter who became big. She's well on her way to striking out on her own someday, while we look on with pride. Not bad for a year's work. Or fourteen.