Health / Wellness

Pandemic Party Pass

Rainbows do emerge from storms, and COVID-19 has given us a chance to be more thoughtful about our children's birthday parties.

By Eden Davis Stephens  
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Ed. note: This is the latest installment in a series of posts on motherhood in the legal profession, in partnership with our friends at MothersEsquire. Welcome Eden Davis Stephens to our pages. Click here if you’d like to donate to MothersEsquire.

I, like you, am ready for this pandemic to be over. I’ve stared at my phone too much, I am tired of looking at the smudges in my house, and I just want to be in public without weirdly half-holding my breath. But rainbows do emerge from storms. Many pandemic pluses have been listed already: working from home, extra time for hobbies, societal pass for day drinking and other modest vices. My personal addition to this list is the removal of the invitational birthday party. Not great for the economy, but EXCELLENT for my anxiety.

Social selection has not been my forte. Nuptial planning was a prime example. A small wedding with family with a larger casual reception became a “micro-wedding” and giving in to my mom’s selection for an officiant. It all ended with the very predictable elopement that upset my parents and made a handful of friends feel weird. Once I succeeded at social estrangement for a major life event, I leaned into more, not less, awkwardness. Why have a conversation when you can just feel periodically ashamed?

When I became pregnant, I envisioned all the ways my daughter’s childhood would differ from mine. She would not wear hand-me-downs. We would go to Disney World for vacation. She would attend and host birthday parties. All the semi-privileged experiences of the middle class. This was the upside of being a lawyer! Now I can backdate the justification for all the law school debt, right?

When the time came in pre-K years to celebrate the passing of time, the first natural reaction was gasping at the the cost-per-attendee. $25 a head for mediocre pizza, colored sugar water, and two hours of screaming on inflatables? OK. Great. MEMORIES.  (“But only for half your class. I guess just the girls? Yes. We will do this on birth gender.”)

It wasn’t fun to be on the other side. No one wants to give their child explanations or excuses when peers talk about an event she was not invited to attend. But overall, a circuit was made with children from daycare and our neighborhood school. We started a routine. I’d get a wadded invitation from a cubby, and we’d buy the respective gift in the hour preceding the party. I’d snap and post some photos of my daughter having a GREAT time, and the silent pact among parents in the circuit would remain intact. She attends theirs, we invite them to ours.

My family likes a good festival, and our city is big enough to discover new things each year. This past Christmas we went to a nearby community center to see Santa and play games. Several children waved hi to my daughter, who gave the tepid response that often embarrasses parents. (“Well, say HELLO back. That wasn’t a response — that wasn’t even a twitch. She seems NICE.”)  It occurred to me that none of these children, despite also attending a small neighborhood school, were in the “birthday circuit.” How can that be? Why do I not know their names?

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I knew why, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself. This program was designed to provide children and families with Christmas activities they might not otherwise enjoy due to financial limits: dinner and seasonal treats, pictures with Santa in matching gear, and games and activities with coveted prizes at the end. My daughter’s reluctance to acknowledge a classmate mirrored the times as a child when I felt like an outsider simply because my family was economically different. Friends were not allowed to play at my house because poor is often equated with dangerous. My face would burn in shame when an adult assumed I didn’t know about something because it was an activity that cost money. Often, their assumption was correct.

In this bizarre period of time, I’ve come back to unpack that moment among the other items in my Unconscious Bias bag. Do children like who they like?  Yes. They are a person with preferences just like anyone else, adult or child.  Am I shaping her world though? Also yes. The choices her father and I have made about her education also affect her sense of community. Is that community circle wide enough? Probably not. It is up to us to help her understand and accept the different economic and cultural background of her parents and her peers. Perhaps this is through a party invitation, perhaps it is by participating in more events offered by the city.

I dream of the time when I no longer doom scroll the newsfeeds, can sit inside a coffee shop for hours and ignore my dirty house, and accidentally mouthbreathe when I get lost in thought among strangers. Dreams aren’t enough though if I want to change the things I can, starting at home with the children I am raising. When the opportunity to intentionally build a better world arrives, I hope to awkwardly and resolutely meet it.

Eden Davis Stephens is the Deputy Executive Director of the Office of Administrative Hearings within Kentucky’s Public Protection Cabinet. She has adjudicated a variety of administrative hearings over the last 8 years, from parole revocation to tax appeals.  Eden recently led the pilot re-entry program modeled after Drug Court under Kentucky’s Department of Corrections.  She is proud to be a former Public Defender, and strives to increase the public’s access and understanding of the judicial system.  Eden likes to write, but rarely does so outside of professional prose for adversarial situations.  Her parenting wish to not have boring children was granted.  She is very excited for her creative and headstrong daughters’ futures, but is very tired from the mothering patience required in the present. If you feel so led, you can Friend her on Facebook at Eden Davis Stephens or follow her on Instagram @superedentica.

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