R.S.V.P.

Dear World Wide Web,
Every time May 12th rolls around I become a year older. It’s my born day, birthday, date of birth, day of birthing, and coming into the world day! Whatever you want to call it, my mom will only remember my birth as, “ The in vitro fertilization that caused me to lose a day and a half of sleep.” However, this year is completely different story.
For the past few months she has not been yelling at me about cleaning up after myself, dressing like a man, or calling me fat. Instead, she has been heckling me with guest lists, caterers, music selections, and cotton candy machines. This June 5th is the celebration of the sixteenth anniversary of, “The in vitro fertilization that caused her to lose a day and a half of sleep.” That’s right, it is the big one six.
It still has not hit me that on June 5, 2010, two hundred people are flocking to our modest home to celebrate my birthday with us. Seriously, I’m not exaggerating, my mom and I counted the R.S.V.P’d guests so we could place an order for the caterer and the cake; when I found out two hundred people were coming to our house, my mouth literally dropped to the floor.
I was shocked! My mom began to list who was flying in when and when we were supposed to pick them all up from the airport and to my surprise, I started to cry. It was such an overwhelming moment for me. I seriously left the living room and locked myself in my room and spent hours bawling. My mom could not figure out why I was crying for such a long time, but here is something to think about. It is a really overwhelming moment when you realize that there are people, no matter where they are, love you for you. I always knew that I had a big group of loving family and friends, but I had no idea that they would all be prepared to fly from as far as Pasadena, California to spend a day what was once just a nominal to me.
With the birthday party coming up, I asked my mom what the big deal about this party was. She looked at me square in the face and began to stroke my hair as she tried to steady her voice. She told me, “Raysoo, your father and I love you very much and we cannot believe how quickly time has passed. We wanted to have this party so we could make sure we were not hallucinating and everyone else we knew could see that you are growing up too fast.” Again, someone opened the flood gates in my tear ducts as I clutched on to my Ammu as she tried to calm me down. I never really realized how important this tradition is to my family, all I can do is just smile and remind myself how blessed I am for such a loving family.
Moral of the story here is that at some point we all cry. For example during this party planning period, all of my family members have cried at least once.My dad started tearing up when he saw how much the bill was going to be, my mom cried when I tried on my birthday outfit, and Zahara cried when she found out how many presents I am going to get.


Not as caffeinated,
DECAFdork