Open your bedroom door to the morning of your ten-year-old life. You are the first one awake and you wear footie pajamas; they are skull-and-crossbones manly footie pajamas with a shelf-life that extends comfortably into double-digits. Even if they squish your toes a bit.
Follow the candy-interspersed-with-Pokemon-cards path on the floor that leads to the kitchen. Your shuffles and the packaging wake your mom who mercifully fell back asleep despite waking up at an ungodlike hour fearing the surprise would be ruined by your going to the bathroom, because she and your dad actually said YES for once to the overpriced enormous icee at the movies last night. Your dad bounces out of bed immediately, which you can’t remember ever seeing on a weekend.
“I can’t even hold it all” you exclaim as you dump the MikeandIke JellyBellies Airheads and Pokemon packs onto the kitchen counter while taking in this sight…
Your older brother emerges despite his late night at a sports center Bar Mitzvah party where he wore a velcro suit and threw himself against a velcro wall for 3 hours.
He greets you with “Open a pack.” He wants to see if you got any good Pokes.
“Ummm, how about Happy Birthday?” mom redirects your brother. She has to use her teeth to form the consonants because her lips are busy smiling super big.
“Happy Birthday” your older brother, he tries again. He means it. Everyone agrees you should open a pack of Pokes even though everyone really wants to put donuts in their mouths as soon as possible.
Before your parents even brace themselves for the inevitable Pokemon card brand-new-pack-all-crap-cards anticlimax, you let out a gasp– you score a MewToo Ex. This is good news and this is only the first pack! Celebration/relief ensues.
Mom suggests lighting the donut cake on fire. Everyone sings and she shows you the “10” made by the cruller and the sprinkle donut on top. Your older brother asks for just one airhead, please? Your birthday brings not only candy and Pokemon cards, donuts, presents and new snow–your birthday brings power.
You get the DS game and the Harry Potter book and an owl puppet with a head that turns around. He looks a lot like Hedwig, but you might return the owl because the puppet you really want is a human puppet that says bad words on YouTube.
It’s 8 am and you’ve pretty much gotten everything you wanted plus that anime action figure that hasn’t even arrived yet.
Your dad eats 3 or 4 donuts and goes back to bed. You and your brother go to the basement for your favorite past-time; video games and rage. Your mom drinks her coffee and watches new snow falling, wondering about tracks the single-digits maybe left behind in their haste to leave the Imig household once and for all.
Ann–Aaah, to be 10 again…
Actually, to be 26 again, or somewhere around then, would be nice.
It sounds like it was a fantastic birthday.
My heart! 10 – big and small at the same time. This is so precious. Both the post and the boy.
Chills and tears!
Happy bittersweet tears. The magic you help create in your kids’ childhoods will never leave them no matter how many digits. <3
Steph
All just perfect. xo
And we haven’t even had the party yet! Thanks Sioux.
“Your mom drinks her coffee and watches new snow falling, wondering about tracks the single-digits maybe left behind in their haste to leave the Imig household once and for all.”
The tracks. They’re everywhere around here…
Comments are closed.