Adventures at Rasa Ranch #133

[Guest guest]

11/18/03 "Ananda turns Six"

 

This weekend, our little girl turned six. She had been planning the

celebration of her birthday for at least a month, and we compiled a

list of all of her ideas. Of course a dinosaur theme rang in

immediately as number one, and it was followed by other suggestions,

including a pinata*, balloons, party hats, etcetera. Last on the

list after the chocolate cake was ginger bread cookies.

 

As her father and I were still very much hermits at heart, filling our

peaceful nest with a dozen little kids and their parents just wasn't

our style, and we told her that. But by the time November 15th

rolled around, we were all prepared to celebrate easy at home, along

with Ananda's most beloved sister-friend. We had had nearly all of

the other bases covered, as I had been shopping on e-bay for bargain

dinosaur doo-dads for at least half a year. What we weren't prepared

for was the unexpected generosity of people who had been touched by

our child.

 

Our good buddy Dandelione scheduled his three-week, cross-country

vacation specially around Ananda's birthday. Dear friends of ours

drove six hours to be here in order to celebrate with us, and brought

in more gifts than we could count. We got a package in the mail that

was perfectly made to order for a six-year-old

sparkles-and-dinosaur-lover, from a real, live angel that none of us

has ever met in person. Even someone that Ananda doesn't know took

the time to search online for the ultimate dinosaur poster for her

and my oldest friend of seventeen years somehow managed to pull off

sending Ananda a birthday box full of surprises after having given

birth only two weeks prior, to her sixth child!

 

Our daughter got to blow out the candles three times this year, and

just when we'd thought the festivities were finally over, when Ananda

returned to school, her teacher, who had known how full our weekend

had been with guests and all, went out and got herself a dinosaur

cookie cutter and baked cookies for the whole class in honor of

Ananda. I was so moved, I lump rose to my throat. When Ananda and I

laid eyes on those T. Rex beauties, we really couldn't believe it!

They were made of ginger bread.

 

It is funny now, looking back, that Jim and I had even questioned if

being true to our own personal preferences would be depriving our

daughter of a birthday celebration all her own. What we found to the

contrary, in our wonder, was that, having given it the space of

surrender and not-knowing, the whole universe seemed to jump up at

the opportunity to plan a practically forty-eight-hour party in grand

style for all us, not just Ananda, in ecstatically fulfilling ways

that the three of us could not have even dreamed of.

 

 

 

 

*Would someone e-mail me and tell me the trick to typing the tilde

over the n? Thanks.