A Little Celebration
"Poor girl," I kept thinking to myself all day. Her birthday will forever be consumed in Christmas readiness, market craziness, the end of a Uni semester or school term. And I've discovered I'm not one of those mothers who has the date and party ideas in mind a month (or even a week) beforehand.
And so we did what no responsible mother would think of doing for a first birthday. At around 4 pm, we sent a message around to a bunch of friends, all single students, inviting them around for coffee and cake at 7 that evening.
I was expecting three or four, knowing that at this time of year, students disperse after their exams for their 3 month summer break. But then Sharon asked if her sister and a friend could come and Dane brought Kylie along, an old friend living up in Queensland and down for a visit, and soon there were 15 good friends and two excited children, enjoying being up past bedtime, squashed into our small lounge room and spilling out onto the back verandah.
Rossi brought icing sugar because I'd accidentally used mine in the cake, thinking it was castor sugar. Tully helped me decorate the cake with Smarties, starting with a Christmas tree shape and soon becoming just a mountain of colourful sweetness, to which he didn't mind helping himself now and then.
Tim manned the coffee machine and someone else asked who would like tea. We turned the fairy lights on and everyone made themselves comfortable and fed Evie chocolate and giggled at her big, hungry eyes and no one sat by themselves.
I don't think I could have planned a better celebration for the first year of a little girl's life. Through the challenges of going back to uni and finishing degrees, job hunting, renting a small house and sometimes wondering if all the decisions which had led us to this point were wise ones, it was good to see and feel that despite the costs, the choice to live simply, make time for people and open our home, has given us wealth of another kind.