Perspective on Goody Bags

The day after tomorrow is Cole's birthday. As usual, I've overdone it. Every year, where Cole is concerned, I overdo it. This year, I told myself that I'd just pay one of "those places" - you know, the annoying sports bounce kind of place - since that's what he wants, and they'd handle everything for me. But here's the thing. The party falls in that obscure late afternoon-kinda dinner time hour on the Friday spring break starts, so I realized I need to feed everyone. And "those places" offer pizza delivery, in other words, they'll deliver something containing everything my birthday boy is allergic to. So after a protracted argument with that place about getting around that rule, which argument occurred on the phone while my children watched in horror with expressions that read "Wow, she gets as mad at other people as she does at us!", it was agreed that I could provide a different dinner. Which I now have to cook. And then there's the guest list, that kind of got away from me, and I've been chewing my fingernails anticipating coughing up even more money to cover the kids that exceed the limit, but it seems we've scraped by at the 11th hour. And now I face an afternoon of stuffing scary goody bags with cheap and creepy toy goodies, none of which are edible, because I refuse to send kids home with a bunch of candy the birthday boy can't eat. Plus, let's face it, I'm doing the parents a favor. Who needs cake and Red No. 40 high-fructose corn syrup in the shape of a ring? I don't know how this happened because I am NOT the mother who does crazy birthday parties. But it appears today I am. But before I embarked on the goody-bag stuffing task I've been dreading for weeks, I checked my emails really quickly, and then hopped over to a blog I follow - a 12-year old boy from our church drowned last September in the flash flooding that roared through NoVA (which flooding caused schools to be closed only the third day into the school year). A tiny creek in their neighborhood, which no one had ever given a thought to, had become a raging river and swept him away from his family as two of his friends stood by the bank. His mother runs our church's bookstore, and she writes a blog that made people roar with laughter before her son died, and now it just rips your heart open. His birthday was last weekend - everyone in our church was wearing blue ribbons and little cross pins made out of Legos. I think about him, and his family, every single day. Every. Single. Day. I didn't even know them, really. On her blog is a video someone took of a gathering they had on his birthday. Tons of people gathered outside their home and released hundreds and hundreds of blue balloons in his honor. Before they released them, everyone sang Happy Birthday. And there's this moment when the camera is focused on his mother and father as they sing, and suddenly they can't sing anymore. His mother is obsessively caressing the ribbons of the balloons she's holding as she tries to keep it together. And at the exact same moment, she and her husband turn toward each other and just exchange this deep look of grief, love and . . . I can't explain it. But I burst into tears. Because I am so damn lucky to be stuffing these goody bags.