Emma Grace turned six on February 16th.
Six.
I remember turning six. We were living in Japan at the time, in our little American compound somewhere on the Japan Sea, and because there were so few children in the neighborhood, all the children in the neighborhood were invited, regardless of their age.
I remember that my grandmother sent me the loveliest nightgown, and I remember that my mother cut a six out of construction paper and that it hung over the table. And I remember, in my enthusiasm for being six, that I stood on my chair and spoke to this six, saying: “Hello there, Six! How you doin’, Six? I haven’t seen you, Six, for a long time!” I thought this was Very Clever.
I think this year was the one in which I put a tin of sugar in the basket of my bicycle with the intention of taking it to a neighbor’s house on an errand for my mother, and the tin opened and the sugar spilled All Over The Street. I think this was also the year that I found our cat, Missy. And this was the year I pushed four-year-old Raymond Rock down On Purpose, and the year I first returned home to the United States. It was the bicentennial summer, and it really felt like Something to be an American.
We always had homespun birthday parties when I was growing up. Of course, when we were in Japan, and where we were in Japan, there were no Chuck E. Cheese restaurants or decorate-your-own pottery places or other sorts of establishments that so beautifully lend themselves to such affairs. And so homespun birthdays are what we do around here (when we can’t use the pool), and it works pretty well.
On Saturday, February 17th, ten (10) little girls descended on our home for all the fun we could muster. We played all kinds of games, and these included the ones we always play: touch and tell (each child has a turn wearing the blindfold and guessing what is laid in her hands) and musical chairs (which, in our case, is always “musical construction paper rectangles” because we just don’t have room to play musical chairs for ten). And musical chairs Always Devolves into a kind of frenzied dancing, which I will tolerate just long enough to be sure I am ready to serve the cake.
Emma Grace has wanted desperately to be six since just after she turned five. Most of her friends have already celebrated their sixth birthdays, and this seems to count more than the fact that she has lost more teeth than many of them, and more than the fact that she is taller than most of them. “I wonder,” she said, just days before her birthday, “how my life will be different when I’m six.” “Will it be different?” I asked her. “Yes,” she said.
Emma Grace is six. She is terrified of bees. She never wants to get married, but instead wants to live here in the house with Bill and me and with her friend, Gillian. They will both get jobs and their meals will consist of popcorn, soda and wine, because that’s what grown-ups drink and they will be grown-ups. She will not go upstairs alone at night without the light on at the top of the stairs. She sucks her thumb. She likes very much to play with other little girls, but will also play cars with Everett. She makes empty laundry baskets into small boats and pretends to row. She wonders if she looks like me. She cleans the cat box, washes dishes, dusts the living room, empties wastebaskets and runs the vacuum. She wants to play the violin and she doesn’t want to play soccer. She wanted a princess birthday, and so her Oji-San (my father) made her cake to look like a princess castle. She was Most Pleased.
She invited all her dearest friends to her party, and also all the girls in her class in kindergarten, because All Of Them are her friends. She wanted a Barbie So Very Badly, and her mother Hates Barbie, but her mother bought her one anyway, just One, a Cinderella Barbie who lost her first shoe That Very Day. But we found it again, just like in the story.
When I was One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three,
I was hardly Me.
When I was Four,
I was not much more.
When I was Five,
I was just alive.
But now I am Six, I’m as clever as clever.
So I think I’ll be six now for ever and ever.
-A.A. Milne
