It’s not my party, but I’ll cry if I want to

Have you ever wanted the best for someone you love without realizing that you’re hurting them? In this recent memoir, I lament over childhood memories, come to an unexpected (and unwanted) understanding that I also let the past affect the present, and how being mindful is the only way to escape the cycle of hurt.

#Memior #Thisisreal

It’s 5:30 am and I’m up before my alarm clock. I sit in bed for a minute before putting on my robe and walk to the kitchen to have some toast. I feel excitement and anxiety in my stomach with every bite, trying to quickly eat. Why you do I have this giddy yet stressful feeling you may ask? It’s my daughter’s, Asa’s, seventh birthday and I want to make it perfect!

I want to make her feel special on her birthday. So, after gobbling up my toast I tippy toe quietly but briskly back to my bedroom to wake up my husband, Erik. “Come on, get up!” I demanded. “It’s already 6:00 am and we have so much to do.”

My poor husband was still in deep REM sleep. I could tell because he was snoring. If I had put a feather above his nose, like in the old Bugs Bunny cartoons, it would likely go up and down with a rapid rustling in between for the times he needed to take a deep breath. But did I care about breaking his sleep? N-O, because I was on a mission!

I wanted to do up Asa’s birthday the best way we could. Erik had picked up decorations the day before and we had agreed to a 1960’s-style door curtain made of streamers with alternating pink and purple colors for the entry way from her bedroom to the living area. We also had to put up a shimmery gold, happy birthday banner across the living room wall and even more streamers in the doorway leading to the kitchen.

Somewhere between finishing up the banner and starting on the last of streamers, I lost it! I wanted the streamers to be draped across the doorway of the kitchen in a fancy twist, but my husband couldn’t understand the concept right away. It felt like he was asking a ton of questions for what I thought was something simple and just needed to be walked through. He inquired, “where do you want me to tape this? How will this be twisted? Is it one color over the other, like a braid?”

I screamed, “I DON’T KNOW!” The pressure was too much and I said, “you figure it out. I’m out!” I stomped away back to our bedroom and shut the door.

A short moment later, my husband came in and asked, “what’s going on? What was that all about?”

To be honest, I didn’t have a clear answer. At first, I yelled “you should have been more patient with me while I was trying to figure out how to twist the streamers. You can’t expect me to remember how to do this. It’s been years since I’ve put up decorations.”

Erik quietly said, “ok?”

I asked, “what do you mean, ok? You’re not supporting me at all are you?!”

“Of course, I support you, Addie” he reassured me.

I said, “no, no you don’t. If you supported me then you would have not gotten into a fight with me before my important interview!”

“Humm?” he said.

I sighed and started crying because I guess it wasn’t about the streamers after all. I ranted about how he should have been more patient which quickly morphed into how he didn’t support me and then transformed into how disappointed I was about not doing well on an interview. But it wasn’t just about the interview, it was about something more.

“I just…just wanted to do well in the interview and get that permanent position. I’ve love contracting the last few years and learned a lot, but there’s no stability in it. I want to provide my kids the consistency and safety that comes with a permanent position.

Growing up, it was always boom or bust because my parents were farm workers and there were times we didn’t know if we could make ends meet. It was really scary, and I was worried a lot. I just don’t want that for my kids.” I said through glossy eyes.

“I know, I know,” Erik said while reaching out to hug me.

In that moment, I wondered what were the things that my own parents wanted to give to me that they didn’t have. I remembered how each year they threw me the most fabulous birthday parties, spearheaded by mom.

My birthday was in the summertime, picking season. So, my parents had work, which meant we had money!

My mom and dad pulled all the stops: there was a lot of food, balloons, and a ton of family and friends and their families. The parties usually started in the early evening and continued long into the night with dancing and karaoke to top it off.

They were fun times! But behind the laughter and jubilations laid deeper motivations.

My mom used to tell me, “Ning (affectionate word in Tagalog for young girls), I never had a birthday party growing up. We were so poor and there was so many of us – ten in total – that my parents couldn’t afford to give each of us a birthday party. So, they chose to celebrate only the oldest and youngest kids. The ones in the middle, like me, were forgotten. It really hurt.”

I guess for my mom, throwing me birthday parties was a way to right a wrong that poverty (and bad parental choices) had taken from her. She was giving me something that she didn’t have, and she didn’t want me to feel like she did as a child. She wanted to show me that I was important to her and my stepfather even if we didn’t have a lot.

I appreciated my parents’ sacrifice, especially my mom. But sometimes it was hard to see the forest from the trees. Growing up, I felt those fabulous parties weren’t really for me. Sure, I was the focus of the celebration – my name was on the invitations, I was the one that got the presents and I blew out the candles on the cake. But I don’t think I was what mattered.

One time, for example, I wanted a themed party for my tenth birthday. That year, it was Barbie. The theme is important because it drives the invitation style, tablecloth, and overall color palate. Yes, I was that intense because I have a “Type A” personality. I even went as far as mapping out where the food stations and drinks should go, just like I imagined Barbie – the original boss babe – would.

I proudly presented my plans to my mom and she gave me a quick “uh huh”, which my ten-year-old-self considered a confirmation that I was heard.

But when the day of my party came, I woke up to no theme at all. Just a mishmash of embroidered Filipino table clothes, orange streamers, and – in my opinion – a messy setup because the food and drink areas didn’t follow the detailed map that I had provided.

This wasn’t the only time; all of my birthdays were like this. When I longed for a simple pizza party with my friends from school, my wishes fell on deaf ears. It was always Filipino food with family, my parent’s friends and their families.

Don’t get me wrong, I look back at those times very fondly and I know that my mom meant well. But that’s the thing about good intentions, they have causalities if we’re not careful. As much as my mom wanted to make sure that I got the love and attention that she never had, she also inadvertently dismissed my wants and needs in an effort to change her past.

Ah, the past. The past – I feel – has played a central role in my mom’s decision making. It didn’t just affect choices of how my birthday parties would be organized, it also drove other things.

I remember one Christmas, there was one lone box with my name on it under our make-shift Christmas tree. Winters were hard for us because there wasn’t much work for my parents, so getting any present was exciting. I did what any normal kid would do, shake the box and feel it out to see if I could tell what it was. Unfortunately, I had to wait for Christmas to see the surprise, and boy was it an unexpected.

At about 1:00am in the early hours of Christmas Day, and after a very tasty Nochebuena dinner, I was allowed to open my present. I walked briskly towards the Christmas tree and picked up my gift, gently peeled the wrapping paper off and opened the box. It was a gold watch.

“Do you like it?” My mom asked excitedly.

“Yes.” I said reluctantly.

I guess my mom could sense my disappointment and asked again, but this time with a sense of sadness in her voice, “you don’t like it?”

“I do, I do, it’s really beautiful. It’s just…it’s just I thought you would get me one of those plastic watches…the Swatch,” I replied.

This upset my mom so much that she grabbed the watch – box in all – and walked away towards her room. She turned halfway there and said, “you’re an ungrateful child. I didn’t have anything like this when I was growing up.”

I remembered crying because I didn’t know what I did wrong. I was grateful for getting the gift and I knew that my mom (and dad) worked hard to give me something so nice when they had so little. But in my 12-year old mind, I didn’t see the practicalities of it. Like when I first opened the box and saw it was a gold watch, I thought “wow, this is beautiful but when would I wear it?”

I was also afraid to be responsible for something so expensive. I remember thinking “I can’t wear this to school. I might lose it. Or worst, someone will take it.”

And to be honest, I just wanted to be a kid. And the “it” watch at the time was the coveted Swatch.

I don’t want to downplay my mom’s gift or intention because that watch – to my mom – was more than a time piece, it represented overcoming hardships: losing her father at just 15 years old, having to move to Manila so she could provide for her family, leaving me and the only home she had ever known for the Middle East in hopes for a better life, only to be physically and verbally abused by her first employer.

My mom endured so much. The only solace she had was when she made her way to America and married my stepfather, who was the kindness person in her life (and mine). But even then, life was harsh because the only jobs available for them was out in the fields doing backbreaking work in extreme weather - blistering heat in summer and frosty temperatures in winters.

That watch was a way to say, “we’ve made it!” In a sense, she was giving me a life that was a little easier; One that was not fraught with so much anguish. This gift and the birthday parties was a way for my mom to rewrite her story and correct the past. The only thing is, we were living in the present.

At present, I was 12 years old. While I could understand how much my mom had gone through and done for me, I was just a kid. I wanted the silly themed parties and pizza with my friends. I wanted the fun watch that everyone else had. But most of all, I wanted to be seen for who I was at the time.

It is too much to expect a child – or anyone for that matter – to shoulder the burden of rectifying previous wrongs because it’s impossible to change the past. If I could take all of my mom’s sadness away, I would. But I can’t change what happened in her life. All anyone can really do is learn from it.

Still crying in Erik’s arms, I asked “Gosh, do you think they heard us arguing? I hope that I didn’t wake the kids.”

Erik said, “I’m not sure if they heard us. But let’s just try to make Asa feel special today.”

The words “…make Asa feel special today” brought up so much emotion. Half of me was like, “of course I want Asa to feel special” but the other half…the other half felt, “hey, I’m trying to work on something more important. I’m trying to bring stability, something greater for our family. I can’t think about Asa right now.”

Then, I caught myself…How could I say that I can’t think about Asa right now? Isn’t that exactly who I should be thinking of at this moment? How could I have made my daughter’s birthday about me when I had suffered through the same thing when I was a kid?

Throughout my childhood and into my adult life, it hurt me when my mom let the things that happen to her control our present. But here I am about to do the same thing. Why?

Yes, it’s because I want Asa and Sean to have a different life than I had, but – if I had to be truthful – it’s because I don’t want to feel the pain of that hardship again. Without even knowing it, the past crept into the present much easier than I thought.

I guess it’s too easy to make my mom the bad guy because it’s hard to parse your actions from your intentions, especially when you desperately don’t want to repeat the past. But I also don’t want to let her off the hook completely because, as a parent, it was up to her to become aware and understand her own motivations.

Like my mom, I want more for my children. I want them to have consistency and stability. I want them to have a childhood that isn’t full of adult concerns. I want them to have a different life than I had. The way to make that happen is to be mindful of the present and not to make my love ones pay for the past.

My need for a stable home for them shouldn’t put a burden on Asa, Sean or Erik to say or act a certain way or to come second. I have to see my intentions as well-meaning goals that have to be tempered with seeing the people around me in the present time. And right now, I need to think about my daughter’s birthday by making her feel like the most special person in the world the way she wants to be celebrated.

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Adelina Elo is the creator and writer for Successfully Trying, a blog housing her creative writing and memoirs. Adelina, a marketing communications strategist by trade, has always wanted to be a writer but was too afraid to do it. Now as a mother of two she wants her children to find their way in life through self-exploration and the act of doing without the fear of failing. To serve as an example for her kids, she created Successfully Trying.