Mixed feelings.
For my daughter’s birthday, she wanted to have a party at “My Gym” with all her classmates. Most of them speak Spanish as their first language, so I dutifully sent out invitations with my phone number, directions, etc., in English with a Spanish translation at the bottom. My Spanish isn’t great, but it’s existent. We also invited some cousins she has here in town. We got no RSVPs except from her kindergarten teacher, who was going to bring her son. We rented out “My Gym” for a party, a three hour block of time at a cost of several hundred dollars. We bought a cake, ice cream, and punch.
You know who showed up? Yep, nobody but the teacher and her kid. It was my daughter, all alone with the music blaring, and me and my husband and my parents, and the kindergarten teacher with her toddler. And none of her friends.
Saddest. thing. Ever.
But kids are resilient. She went outside a number of times during the first half hour looking for folks, but she got over it before 45 minutes were up. We explained to her that her friends wanted to come, but they couldn’t. Most of them didn’t have cars. (Actually, we think that’s true, 75% of her classmates are from Latin America and according to the teacher don’t have a lot of money. I don’t even know if the concept of RSVP – though I didn’t use that term – is universal. Also, this was the day before the pope died, and we think some were probably going to Mass.) We decided that what the hell, we had three hours booked, it’s not like they could suddenly find another birthday party to fit in, so we’d use the place, by gum. And we did. God bless the folks at “My Gym,” they really made sure she had a good time. They offered to halve the fee, but I didn’t feel right doing that since if we hadn’t been there, they definitely could have booked another party that would have paid them full fee – and they did work their keisters off.
That was around April 1st.
Tonight, I got a call from the mother of one of the other kids in Emily’s class. She spoke only Spanish, but I managed to communicate with her well enough to establish that she wanted to know if, because they’re doing some kind of kindergarten graduation thing tomorrow, we were supposed to bring our kids in at 9 when the ceremony started, or bring them in at 7 as usual. I was able to get across the correct info.
I could not figure out why she was calling me, when I’ve never spoken to her before in my life, don’t speak Spanish as well as most of the other parents, and our kids don’t have any special bond besides attending the same class.
Then I realized – she must have kept the invitation which had my phone number on it, and I guess I was the only parent whose phone number she knew.
She kept the invitation from mid-March until now.
1) I admire her resourcefulness in thinking of that resource and utilizing it.
2) I am angry that she chose to not breathe a word about not attending my kid’s party.
3) I am pleased that I was able to summon enough Spanish to communicate with this woman.
4) I’m just damn pissed at the world in general, because my kid is trying to reach out to others but doesn’t know how, and the world isn’t making it any easier.
Time for bed.
