To quote Mo Willems, “Party, PARTY, Party, PARTY!”

Yesterday was the final day of what seems like weeks of celebrating our oldest daughter’s fifth birthday.

Monday, her father and sister and I appeared at Mia’s classroom door with fruit kabobs and snapshots of our first little swaddled newborn and her subsequent birthday incarnations: as a big-eyed toddler, a chubby cheeked garden sprite, a little girl engrossed in her cupcake, a curly-haired fairy and, in a shot taken Saturday, a lovely little lady.

Mia beamed as she walked around the circle of children, carrying a tiny globe. A lit candle flickered in the middle of the group; her walk represented her five journeys around the sun. It was lovely.

“You sit back there and wahhh!” reminisced another mom who had been through the little Montessori ceremony herself.

For me, not right then. I was too distracted by the shiny faces and adorable (to me) but solemn (to them) comments of Mia’s classmates (“Does this have sugar in it? Sugar gives me a stomachache.” “I’m five!” “I’m not Mah-gret. I’m MAR-garet.”)

And I was thrilled they all (even picky Mia!) ate up the fruit kabobs. (A mango triangle, cantaloupe ball, pineapple chunk, kiwi slice, topped with a blueberry over the point.)

(I’m having a difficult time writing about this weekend linearly. Every thought sends me off on yet another essential tangent. If my brains were the Internets, this simple list of fruits would bear highlighted links. Links to, say, a site about the local/organic debate, and a Quicktime file of my local four dollar melon making squealing noises before it collapsed in a fishy orange wash of rot on the kitchen counter. Just the words “Mia” and “five” bear enough memory to crash my own internal hard drive.)

(Tangents such as . . . Most use of the links within the blogs that I encounter - including my own - seems earnestly literal. There must be some wired comedian out there using links in clever and ironic ways – a digital version of David Foster Wallace’s copious footnotes – perhaps the man himself? I wouldn't know. I read those kind of funny people in print, not on-line. Or I used to, when I had a little time.)

So, no, I didn’t tear up at Mia’s school. My reflective moment came later - family dinnertime that night. The hour was reminiscent of the holiday season, with the early darkness, comfort food on the menu (pot roast) and Dad assembling the zillion pieces of Mia’s new toy castle.

“This is the fifth anniversary of the biggest change in my life, well, my adult life.” I said to Randy. “Do you mind if I say it’s a bigger change than our wedding?” “No, I don’t mind. Of course it is,” says my husband, who I lived with contentedly for six years before marrying.