However, all that was before Susan's Sweet-sixteen Party. I was innocently folding clothes in the basement when Susan started her pitch. "Mom, I want to invite fifty of my classmates from school for a pool party on my birthday."
"What?" I gasped.
Undaunted, Susan laid it on me with a wail.
Children are smart, and mine had long ago discovered that they could manipulate me with guilt. I felt like Cinderella's stepmother, and within an hour, I had capitulated.
Preparations began. I booked the condo swimming pool and tennis courts, borrowed a volley ball set, ordered three six-foot submarine sandwiches, bought four cases of soda, a ton of potato chips, 15 spreads with crackers and a birthday cake with flowers and swirls.
Then the ill-fated day arrived. I had a premoition that I wasn't going to win the party-of-the-year award when large drops of rain splattered the Hallmark tablecloth spread neatly over the picnic table by the pool. Drops gave way to a downpour, and Susan and I were soaked before we could move everything from poolside to the garage. By this time, my teenager was in tears. I sent her upstairs to her room to dry her hair and face, while I opened card tables and moved refreshments to the basement.
As I departed to pick up ice at the corner service station, slick-clad children arrived by motorcycle, bike, car, and on foot. When I returned my small condominium was filled with unbrellas, soaked shoes and socks, and the smell of wet kids and clothes. The stero was turned at full volume to a rock station, and everyone seemed to be doing his or her own thing.
Susan had instructed me to get lost, and I was thinking about locking myself in my upstairs bedroom when I received a telephone call from Mrs. Zelenski about her poodle FeFe. FeFe had become excited by the storm and was in the middle of a convulsion. No one noticed, as I picked up my black bag and loaded my tools into the car. I reasoned to myself that I would only be gone the 30 minutes it would take to drive two miles to Mrs. Zelenski's house, give FeFe an injection of valium, and return.
It took 45 minutes to reassure Mrs. Zelenski and 15 minutes to do the rest. As I drove back into the condo parking lot, I saw what looked like a mob of teenagers gathered around the locked gate of the fence surrounding the swimming pool. At least five were in the process of climbing the fence, several were being thrown over the fence, and a good dozen were in the pool already. The girls were screaming and the boys laughing, whistling, and yelling.
Then, I saw Susan waving to me from our open garage. As I parked the car, I wondered what I had done in my previous life to invoke the karma I was experiencing now. "Mom, Susan whispered, "It's Mrs. Jones on the telephone, and she sounds real mad."
I stumbled into the kitchen and reluctantly took the receiver, trying to shield the cold instrument from the noise with my hand.
"Everyone knows," Mrs. Jones said, "when the Condo Association assigns the pool for a party, it is voided in the case of rain!"
"Yes, Ma'am, " I meekly answered, "I realize the liability involved and will do something about it right away."
It was at this point that I noticed with greater awreness the bedlam around me. The house was literally vibrating with sound; popcorn, crackers, and crabmeat dip spotted the floor and walls like graffiti, and the cat, a plastic rain bonnet tied around his neck, peered at me with a wild look from under the sofa.
"Why me?" I muttered, as I opened the back door and descended upon the wayward group at the pool. The whooping and hollowering seemed to diminish somewhat as I drew nearer. "You've got to stop this and come inside, " I pleaded.
It wasn't our fault," Susan's girlfriend Shelly, wailed, "It was the boys' fault. They are the ones throwing us over the fence."
I nodded and turned back toward what was left of my home. I pushed past three teenagers blocking the back door, closed my eyes, and ran for my bedroom. I changed my wet clothes and wished that I was the valium-dopped FeFe. Reluctantly, I left my sanctuary to face the pandemonium outside.
Kids were everywhere. I opened the front door for fresh air and saw the red glow of cigarettes illuminating an entwined couple sitting at the street edge. I shut the door and avoided what seemed like an entire football team of boys, chunks of ice in hand, chasing shrieking girls up and down two flights of stairs. "This is it," I finally yelled, after viewing the progressive carnage in the basement. "Go home! Everyone just go home."
It didn't happen immediately. Parents had to be called, motorcycles started, wet clothes collected, but gradually fifty pimply-faced adolescents disappeared from my small house.
"Why didn't someone tell me about motherhood before it was too late? Why didn't I take child rearing 101 instead of veterinary pathology?" I wailed. In spite of my protests, I knew that I had in some way asked for that birthday party experience. My guilt about moving my teenager away from school and friends had totally obscured my judgement. I had tried to win her love and good graces with a party that served no one, especially her.
Guilt is a hard one for me, but I'm getting better. Susan, no longer a teenager, recently mentioned that guilt trips didn't work on me anymore. There seemed to be just a hint of admiration in her tone. By the way, I'm taking Kimberly and a couple of her friends to the Chinese Place for her Sweet Sixteen Party.
