Meredith’s Musings: Paper Party Hats

article by Meredith McKinnie

In my twenties, it always felt like my friends were living life while I was waiting on mine to start. They were getting married, having babies, buying bigger houses, taking grownup jobs. I was getting divorced, childless, moving back into my parent’s home, though with a big-girl job. I remember the endless weddings, always the bridesmaid or resentful of not being asked even though the whole ordeal can be a racket. I remember numerous kid birthday parties, with paper party hats and Minnie Mouse-themed two-tiered cakes. “Aunt Meredith” would always bring the good gift, a benefit of having little to no bills. I could splurge on children that weren’t mine. But it was always someone else’s celebration, someone else’s little person, someone else’s life. It was easy to forget I was living mine, even if I didn’t have a Christmas card worth sending.

We tend to define accomplishments in people. She’s married, then she’s on the accepted path. She’s having children, then she’s contributing to society. I felt I didn’t matter until I did the things society tells women they should, as if I was taking up air reserved for those who played by the rules. I now know better. As a result, I resented those reminders of my life not yet happening, other people’s weddings, other people’s child parties. I would lament to friends about the constant reminders. Most of them would give me the pity smile, insist I didn’t have to come. It was selfish of me to complain, but it had never had to be about anyone else. What bothered me was all that mattered to me.

Once married with kids of my own, I still didn’t look forward to kid parties, even though I had kids to take. With a family, our lives only get busier, and while it’s nice being wanted, it seems every weekend has a schedule. For my daughter’s first birthday, I quietly planned a family event. I didn’t want to bother anyone, as I had always felt bothered. My girlfriends weren’t having it. They insisted on being a part of my daughter’s day, perhaps because they remember me showing up for theirs. Or perhaps because they know in reality how few there are or how fast it all goes. Just a year in, I’m beginning to learn the adage of time is true. Children are walking reminders of life’s speed; their milestones highlight the realization of our own mortality. And I realized, after the weddings, the kids’ parties, the graduations, then come the funerals, reasons we gather not to celebrate, but to respect a life lived.

Now closer to forty than thirty, I notice the joy in grandparents’ eyes at those same parties I once lamented, the excitement of my mother finding the perfect shower gift or obsessing over the right wrapping paper. Celebrations of life are simply that. And more pointedly, they’re not an acknowledgement of death. Every time I call my 71-year-old father, he’s attending a funeral. Every elderly person I know reads the obituaries religiously. It’s where they find the people they once knew, the people they outlived. They keep watch because the likelihood of a familiar name is too common. The reasons to celebrate become fewer than the reasons to grieve.

They say youth is wasted on the young. The truth is, we just don’t know what we have, how fragile it all is, how quickly it all goes. I’ve learned to celebrate the reasons to celebrate, revel in the goodness and the recognition of the milestones. If I have a baby shower, a ten-year-old’s birthday party and a wedding all in the same weekend, it’s evidence I’m blessed with friends who want me included. Having people who matter with events that matter is worthy of celebration. I look forward to invitations in the mail, post them proudly on my fridge, stack my Google calendar. I dress my daughter in her fluffiest party dress at any chance to wear one. The celebrations won’t last forever and paper party hats can’t come often enough.