Meera’s 5th Birthday (2 of 8)

PREFACE: Before proceeding please read the following fine print—

DISCLAIMER: There is lots of chatter these days on the internet and everywhere else about the downfalls and pitfalls of mothering in the modern era of Mommy-Blogs and Pinterest and Facebook and Google. I am totally sympathetic to a lot of this in the sense that I do think it is outrageously awful for us moms to compare ourselves to what we see online. We will always come up short in our own assessments (or, at least, most of us will– myself included– especially if we’re even the slightest bit perfectionist-oriented, competitive, or self-critical). Thus I feel compelled to explain, just a bit, about the motivation and inspiration behind my CRAZY party-making. See below.

NOTE: I do these parties as much (if not more so) for me as for my kids. I love doing it. It is important, I think, to acknowledge that. This is not an wholly altruistic, selfless, “all for the children!” thing going on here. And this is definitely not a one-up, or ‘keeping up with the Jones’s’, or trying to out-do all the other kids’ birthday parties thing. All year long I work ridiculously hard at my job as a Professor of Sociology at Lehigh University. My job is intellectually challenging and requires intellectual creativity. But I don’t get any chance to pursue very many of the other aspects of my creative self. And it just so happens that the end of the academic year (when I’m most burnt out from my job, and when I finally have a chance to take a breather for the first time in 9 months), and the month of K, O, and M’s birthdays (which I want to mark and celebrate in a big way), all collide right smack in the one little month of May. It is like a whole academic year of pent up creative energy suddenly explodes in May. I also will admit: I love being a mother and I love kids and I love throwing parties and I love bringing people together for any kind of large or small celebration (thank goodness for my career or else I’d surely be one of those crazy ladies on Pinterest who makes the rest of us look bad with her endless outflow of creative-over-the-top-mothering-crafting-entertaining-to-the-9th-degree; my career is enough of a distraction to guarantee that I’ll never be one of them). So, for one month each year I let myself go wild. I take off the reigns and let it all go. I try not to think too much about what everyone else thinks of me (because I know they think I’m ridiculous with this stuff!). I just let myself go nuts. And so, May is insane. I become this totally insane birthday-party-creating mother. But it is insane in a whole other different way than the rest of our year. And by the end of May I’m totally completely 100% done. It is all out of my system and life resumes to normalcy. This is all just to say that the process of making the parties is a therapeutic, cathartic, good experience for my own mental health.

SPOILER ALERT: If you are prone to compare-and-contrast, where being a mother-or-woman-or-person-at-all is concerned, then you should know in advance that this set of posts about Meera’s birthday is not in any way meant to make you insecure or questioning. Only the opposite: this is just me being crazy-old-me and shouldn’t ever be compared to or contrasted with you being you. I want to be sure to say the following, especially because I know many young women [in particular, female PhD candidates who hope to be Professors-and-Moms someday] are reading this: 1) This crazy-birthday-party-throwing aspect of me is highly unusual [possibly unique?] for academic women. That should go without saying. 2) Please see this as an example of ALL THAT CAN BE. Not an expectation, or a bar set, or a standard to strive for. My hope is that this will be interpreted simply as I mean it to be: As proof that we can fill our lives with the things we choose. We can be mothers and professors and we can be intellectuals and party-planners. We don’t have to do it all. And we can’t do it all all the time. But we can do bits of it all some of the time. We can find ways to choose to be ourselves. And we shouldn’t have to apologize for it.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: I could not do this without my mother. I have the vision. But she helps me to actualize it, and we work great as a team on things like party throwing. I also could not do this without my husband who accepts this ridiculous part of me and puts up with me to being just this insane. I also want to say thank you to everyone who sees these parties (in real life and online) and doesn’t judge me. Thank you for having my back! xoxxo

And now, without further ado, Meera’s 5th Birthday~~~~~~