Eight Year Olds Love to Party

She stood there holding the plastic-encased sheet cake in tiny hands. Her eyes were huge as I opened the door, and she looked up at me with bright blue eyes and said, “Lala, this is a bar!” as she confidently crossed the threshold into what she had been told would be a restaurant. “I’ve never been to a bar,” were her next words – spoken quietly and more to herself than to me.

She continued her comments as we walked toward the room dedicated to our party and got settled. She had been with me since I picked her up from school 90 minutes earlier, and she was already running the show. I was delighted to have been delivered of a leader –  at a grade school! – so late in the day. I needed the help, and her excitement was contagious.

“Is this our place?”

“Is it a bar or a restaurant?”

“This is really nice. Look at the pillows.”

“Should we put the cake and cards here?”

“Will they light the candles on all the tables?”

“This whole room is for Uncle Harl?”

“Can I help hand out the favors?”

Last week was a week like no other in recent history. My work life was overfull, my time with my son was at an all-time low due to his schedule and mine, every evening had harbored an event, and the whole week was to culminate in a celebration of my husband’s fifty years on Earth.

I clearly needed the help of someone younger and full of energy. I found her waiting for me in the carpool line already in her party dress and shiny sandals. We whisked off to the grocery store for the cake I had never thought to order, having prayed since noon that extra cakes could be found at my grocer. Plates and forks would be needed as well, and who better than an enthusiastic niece to make these decisions? She got a little tripped up on the math of how many sets of plates we would need to reach 50 if they came in sets of eight. “It would be easier with paper and a pencil. Just give me a minute.” As she thought the multiplication and division through, she found sets of 10 plates, and that made the decision so swift.

Special “number” candles were chosen, chocolate or white cake was debated, icing patterns were deliberated, and we were in the car headed to the restaurant within 20 minutes.

However, it was her decision on how to get her uncle’s name on the cake that makes me smile even now. It was found in the cracker aisle: Scrabble Cheez-its.

Always perfect with chocolate cake.

p.s. Bistro 303 is a restaurant and a bar. It is one of my favorite places in town, even after Derrick gave my niece a butcher knife when she went in search of something to cut the cake with. Well, a butcher knife and a Bic lighter for the big 5 and 0. She truly is a Girl Scout – no cuts and no burns!

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