Day 274

Right now I am eating dip by itself, minus the object one would usually immerse into a dip, unless one counts a finger.  For lunch I ate hummus...with a spoon, straight up from the package.  As a predinner snack I read w another spoon and the jar of peanut butter beside me.  What's wrong?  Am I menstruel, eating away my fears in various sauces that distress the waste line?  I saw this movie once with Meg Ryan, scratch that, I watched this scene of this movie once with Meg Ryan, since I kinda loathe her right now, she's my new Gyneth Paltrow, who've I've actually buried the hatchet with.  Anyway, Meg's character was eating a stick of butter right off the cube.  I could do that, I think.

I'm not going to share why I've been indulging in such unhealthy eating habits today.  It involves getting my feelings hurt last night and me knowing I need to have a conversation with someone who may not have meant it, and a pattern of me sweeping everything under the rug to belong, and the fault is probably also mine for just not standing up for myself (can you believe I would not be able to stand up for myself?) but I haven't in this case and now I'm done with that being my reality.  It's no one in my family or even anyone who reads this blog, but I still will stay rather vague.

Last night 20 boys were in my parents' house for C's 12th birthday party.  I had people question my sanity when I asked C who he wanted to have come and he rattled off all the boys names like a drop in the bucket and I wrote them all down and he and I proceeded to contact each one by one.

I think my mental health was also put on trial when I decided that the party should be 4 hrs long so there was time for all the activities and no one felt rushed.  My reasoning was quite simple:  I wanted C to feel like a million bucks.  I knew that as he embarks on these teenage years, there's going to be a significant time when he doesn't feel like a million bucks.  One of C's gifts lies in his ability to be a mediator and facilitator of different groups of people.  He doesn't like it when people haven't been introduced or when someone feels left out.  I completely understand how he feels.

I worried about the different groups of boys, half from school, half from the neighborhood.  Would they mesh?  Would all the boys get along?  They ranged in age from a couple of 9 yr olds all the way to a 14 yr old.  Something amazing happened.  I will liken this to the Scooby Doo sandwich that I used to indulge in in college, when I weighed a buck, ten.  You put everything you like on two pieces of bread from skittles, to captain crunch, to turkey, to tomatoes and you pile them high and bite into this sandwich and somehow as your mouth gets used to all the flavors, it works. 

The same principle happened here.  We had LDS boys, less active boys, boys of other faiths, some who wanted to tear around outside, some who smartly wanted to stay warm and play ping pong and shoot pool, some who cheered at a movie, some who just wanted to talk and keep shooting balls into the pocket of a pool table.  I constantly surveyed the scenes before my eyes.  These boys were figuring it out.  No one stood alone.  Everyone was hanging out together, there was laughter, like the crazy cool sound of 12 year old boy laughter.  They were this scooby doo sandwich that was just so tasty.

It turned out to be this experience that I will always treasure.  My son has been thanking me since it happened and you know what?  Every boy that came to the party said thank you and they were all just as polite as they could be and except for a cat getting thrown into a hot tub, I think it all went rather well...and you know what?  It was kinda funny that a cat got thrown into the hot tub, but I will never admit it to the boys...probably.

So I guess what I'm saying is that while I want to eat a stick of butter because someone called my mothering skills into question, I will never ever apologize for wanting my son to have this moment.  This one time where he turns 12, gets the priesthood, about to start junior high, passes the sacrament, joins the Young Mens program, all the milestones that comes with the age, and I want him to remember that his parents love him a whole heck of a lot.  And his friends do to.  We started the party with a prayer, believe it or not.  Every head in that room was bowed.  He has a pretty spectacular group of friends, one of whom was just baptized into the church because a group of these boys, my son as one of the ringleaders, made sure he felt included.   Happy Birthday, my precious C.