A rare use of color in one of Emily’s drawings, inspired by the birthday party that Em went to a couple of weekends ago. That’s the birthday girl on the left, blowing out her candles. Em is the girl in purple dress with black velvet half-jacket and matching black shoes. The red things on the wall are a clock shaped like a strawberry and two other strawberries flanking it. These actually were in the apartment, they’re not from her imagination.
Em had a great time at the party. She got to take a whack at a pinata, have her hair curled with a curling iron by the older sister of the birthday girl, and watch the candles be blown out from a great distance (she’s afraid of fire). She also learned the perils of fancy dress shoes – her shoes were new and they did fit, but nonetheless after about three hours she came to me and said “my shoes hurt.” Welcome to womanhood, sweetie.
She and I were the only native English speakers there. The kids spoke pretty good English so it wasn’t an issue for Em, but it was a bit more daunting for me with the adults. I was able to communicate a bit with my rusty Spanish, but after a while there were so many people talking and crosstalking that I gave up and knitted while watching a Mexican beauty pageant on their satellite TV.
As soon as I pulled out the knitting, some of the little kids glommed on to me, so I taught them how to finger knit a chain and they were quite happy. Then someone asked, “can you make me a purse?” and like an idiot I said yes. I double-knitted a tiny pouch and gave it to the little girl, and she was happy. But of course, there was not just one little girl at the party, there were more than 20 kids. Ahem.
Anyway, I wound up making about eight. The last one was for the birthday girl and then I said that was all I was making. It was getting late. The girls were very nice, though, and brought me little bits of candy from the pinata, which I thought was very sweet. “You’re like a teacher! A knitting teacher!” they said. Well, I try.
Em got along great with the other kids, running and playing and generally behaving well. The other girls, who were very chatty with the knitting teacher, asked “Emily’s kind of quiet, isn’t she? She doesn’t talk much to people she doesn’t know, does she?” So that was their take on her. At 6:30 when she was pooped and lay down on the couch for a few minutes, the little girls said, “Emily’s tired, isn’t she?” Yep. It was pretty obvious to everyone.
After the cake, I asked her if she wanted to go, and she said no, she was tired but she was having fun. Finally I asked her at 7 if there was something she was waiting for. “I’m waiting to see everybody else leave.” Nice idea, but they live pretty much next door so they’re probably not going home until bedtime, and I have no idea when their bedtime might be. I explained that we have to drive and they don’t, and then she was okay with leaving. I was glad, not just because it was late but because she hadn’t cared for the cake and so hadn’t had anything to eat since arriving four hours ago.
As soon as we got home, she wrote a lovely unprompted thank-you note to the birthday girl and we mailed it off the next morning. All in all, a great success.
