The Birthday Party Circuit

From September to the following July, children's birthday parties run on a calendar that only one parent in each household is tracking.

The invitation arrives — by text, by school-bag note, by email to an address you had to specifically register with the school. Someone records the date. Someone buys the present. Someone navigates the increasingly specific requirements of children's party culture: the theme, the appropriate spend, the card that shouldn't be forgotten, the dietary requirements of the birthday child that you're somehow supposed to know.

Someone RSVPs. Someone remembers whether you RSVPed. Someone knows where to drop them and when to collect them and what the pickup arrangement was because the text conversation about logistics happened four weeks ago and needs to be located.

This someone is almost always a mother.

I ran the birthday circuit for years. I still do. What I've changed is that I name it, out loud, as work. Not to him — he knows. To myself. Because the act of not-naming it had the effect of making it invisible even to me, which meant I had no way to feel anything about carrying it except vaguely, generally burdened in a way I couldn't explain.

Next month: three parties. I know which three. He does not.

That's the starting point for the conversation.