Goodbye Childhood Was the Theme for My 10th Birthday Party
A story about playing into the myth that growing up is intrinsically also a goodbye
We sat there on the department store’s tile floor, giggling together in the back of the toy section. Our laughs bouncing off of the white ceramic, etched with grey markings to make dirt look like design, the giggles re-bounding and re-consuming our faces as we huddled over boxes of brightly colored games. We were flushed with fun.
I love when laughs build on themselves like that. Gaining momentum in the small spaces they are trying to be quieted in.
As my tiny, tan, 9-year-old face grew serious, my mom’s blue eyes crinkled in curiosity, her eyebrows lifting inquisitively.
“Mom, I am going to be in the double digits soon. All grown up.”
She sighed and gave a small smile. We both sat there in the truth of it. A little sad for it.
“Next year, I am gonna be too old to get things like this for my birthday. Games and kid stuff.”
She nodded solemnly, her slight smile holding back her want to stop the years from turning.
“For my 10th birthday, two digits! Can I please please, for my birthday, have some of these board games? I’ve never gotten board games… and can I please, please, please have a small sleepover party? It’ll be my last party ever, I promise, so we can go all out! And we can theme it Goodbye Childhood! And have, like, silly smiley face decorations?”
Her red lips dropped open with half a scoff followed by half a breath to stay afloat in my dramatic ways.
Maybe I’d finally get the group slumber party I always wanted. Maybe I’d finally get some fun kid board games, and we could play something besides Scrabble.
July 13th, 2000 rolled around, and my mom sure did let me make it memorable.
We had an above-ground pool in the yard and six girls over for a slumber party. We wore bright pink, pointy birthday hats with smiley faces on them. I felt sorta weird theming the experience “Goodbye Childhood,” so I could milk a real party from my parents. But it was working! Maybe that’s why it felt so weird. We were a very frugal family, and hitting on this sentimentality was garnering a lot more fanfare than usual. They were taking my drama pretty seriously, and it was starting to feel pretty real.
The celebration offered me many things I wanted with a sure-fire promise that this would be it forever.
I even scored a vat of frozen mango from Costco! I’d find out later that day that I’d developed an allergy to mango when a big ol’ hives situation reared its rashy head. Turns out mango is a cousin of poison ivy, and if you eat too much of it too often, your body starts saying, “Nope!”
The same thing happened to my mom when she was young. She soothed my panic with the hope that, like her, the allergy could one day subside if I stayed off the sauce. My treehouse was in a mango tree, and we ate them a lot. It felt cosmically absurd to develop an allergy to my favorite food on this day; this day I finally got what I always wanted, a giant vat of mango.
I loved the whole idea of this ludicrously large container full of mango just for me.
I loved saying “vat of mango.”
Alas, shit happens.
I also did get a few rad board games. A few! Usually, on birthdays, our parents created a little scavenger hunt of presents and clues, resulting in a few tiny gifts and one big one. And they were often sensible things like a backpack or a book. But this year… I got multiple board games! And the vat of mango! And a slumber party! Goodbye Childhood, indeed.
The games were such a treat. Hungry Hungry Hippos, Mouse-Trap, all brilliantly dumb and wonderfully childish hooplahs that would really just be for me because the rest of my grown-up household would rather not. I was the youngest of the lot, and it showed.
My older brother Brian was turning 17 later that week! He stayed elsewhere that night and let me take over his room for my party. It had a couch and a TV and was further from my parent’s room than mine. So, we could fit all the girls in there and feel extra cool and watch a movie and be loud. I chose the movie Shallow Hal because of the hot chicks on the cover. The movie sucked, but it did feel very “grown up.”
Today, I turn 33. And while I kept my promise and lived in a style that was madly too grown for me throughout my pre- and teenage years, I am very in touch with my child-self now. And I love celebrating me and her in me. And today, we will have party hats, and games, and bubbles, and ribbon dancing, and play! And my mom, in spirit, will glow to know that it did not, in fact, end at 10. That her love of me playing goes on and on.
A hui ho,
Julia
In a great hurry to grow up and now happy to be childlike. thanks