The Boy turns ten tomorrow. Today was his birthday party. He asked to invite his closest friends to the Met after school, and then have a picnic dinner in the park. A friend of ours shared a scavenger hunt to do in the arms and armor collection, and he's been excited to do it.
By way of preparation, he picked out day-glow yellow shirts (seriously, retina-burning yellow) and "designed" something to be ironed on to the front -- the silhouettes of The Loch Ness Monster and Big Foot, on top of and under, respectively, the word: "Believe!" These he delivered to his friends ahead of time so they could wear them to the festivities (and they all did -- bless their hearts).
He chose a "medieval" looking font for the scavenger hunt worksheet.
He decided that the picnic dinner (a sandwich, a bottle of water, some trail mix, a granola bar, and beef jerky) should be like MRE's... and he found a random almost-Johnny-Appleseed graphic that he wanted to put on the sticker that we put on the individual bags.
It gets better. The goody bag had a book, a poster, a party mask, and a s'mores kit.
I kept thinking that all of this cool randomness was my big reminder that he is becoming his own man, but circumstances showed me that there are other indications that he's growing up...
He has been looking forward to this trip to the Met for a long time. He didn't allow himself to read through the scavenger hunt too early for fear that he would find all the stuff on a visit and ruin the fun. He was also super excited to go into his favorite room -- the glassed wing where the Temple of Dendur is housed...
It was just rotten luck that the ropes, and the guard, indicated that the part of the Egyptian collection that we wanted to see was closed to the public because of an event. The Boy blinked and immediately recovered. The Girl said to me, "Well, at least it's not the arms and armor area."
Sadly, when we approached the doors to the arms and armor collection, we again saw ropes and a guard. And I saw a crestfallen look cross my son's face. However, within seconds he smiled and suggested we go up to look at the Van Gogh's.
We were still waiting for one more friend to show, so we couldn't wander far. How do you keep six kids who aren't necessarily museum lovers happy in one gallery for who-knows-how-long? I kind of pushed it towards having them all take a look around and report back/share their favorite paintings. The fact that they all cheerfully went along with this not-super-creative idea is impressive. Nice kids. After, The Boy led us all on a condensed version of the tour we recently had. Things picked up a bit when our last friend joined us and we went on to the Roman collection for a bit -- The Boy determined that there were enough things from the scavenger hunt that could be found there (who knew there was so much overlap? I guess he did).
I could tell that the dream of sharing his favorite parts of the museum with his friends fell flat. Instead of the seamless and awe-inspiring tour he had worked out in his mind, it was a fragmented, disappointing, perhaps under-appreciated experience. Though, the Met is still the Met (we had a friend once say of a Sondheim revival: "Even mediocre Sondheim is better than not-Sondheim.") We went on to the park and the kids played and we had our picnic.
What were the really good parts?
1. The Sister was, as usual, our helper bee. She stayed behind, waited for UPS to deliver the small plastic mythical creatures for the top of the cake, then after assembling the sandwiches shlepped all the food, including the cake, and the goody bags twenty-plus blocks to the Great Lawn. This was after she helped me wrassle the printer into submission, ran errands, and played her part in keeping The Boy focused on his math during the day. I hope that her example of goodness and service is something that has seeped into my kids. I hope it has seeped into me.
2. The party had to be today because of a zillion schedule conflicts. All of the friends who attended made major sacrifices to be there. Exhibit A: Friends M, O, and C (same family) are scattered throughout the UWS for school. The mom rallied to gather these scattered spawn (i.e. taking one kid out of school early, getting a taxi, etc. and so forth) in order to meet us. Exhibit B: Friend C lives in the Bronx. In order for him to attend the party his family arranged for him to spend the night at his Nana's house tonight. Exhibit C: Friend W lives in Queens and is usually only in our neighborhood on the weekends when he stays with his mom. His mom and dad agreed that she would be able to pick him up today after school, take the train back in, and he'll spend the night with her before they take the train out for school in the morning. Are you kidding me? So much sacrifice and extra work and kindness. From my perspective it's actually pretty unbelievable.
3. The cutest, most thoughtful, specific gifts in the world (i.e. The Boy recently said, "I have a coconut collection, though I only have one coconut." This prompted some friends to felt a gorgeous coconut. There was a "pocket poultry" book given... etc. and so forth). Gifts are always nice, but when they are so darn thoughtful they become glowing icons of what friendship is about.
4. The opportunity for the kid to be great. Most humans have it in them to be decent and demonstrate good perspective, but we aren't always given such clear moments to shine. With the closure of his museum galleries the kid was gifted the opportunity to show his goodness.
Dandelions were blown in the park, coins were thrown in a fountain at the museum, and a kid blew out a birthday candle. That's a lot of wishes floating about. My kid has made it ten years, he is a good boy, and he's surrounding by good people who are kind to him. Content.
