One afternoon, my mother and father sat at the kitchen table in our house in the peace capital of the world, Tehran, to discuss my upcoming sixth birthday.
“Let’s do Monday,” my father said.
“I think there’ll be a curfew and air raids,” responded my mother.
“Tuesday?”
“Air raid.”
Fine, Wednesday then.”
“I have to stand in the ration line at 5:30 a.m. Thursday morning,” complained my mother. “I can’t entertain guests the night before.”
The conversation continued like this for another few minutes, until it was decided that dozens of family members would be invited to our home Friday night.
“That’s actually better,” said my mother. “If the Sepah (paramilitary police) think we’re having some sort of forbidden party, we’ll tell them the truth: Everyone’s here for Shabbat dinner.”
“We’re having a party for me?” I squealed.
“We’re having family over for dinner, and it’ll coincide with your birthday,” clarified my mother while stroking my hair. “Here, you can start descaling the trout for appetizers.”
That year, amid the final year of the Iran-Iraq War (1988), food rationing, hideous inflation and whatever genocidal sermon our Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was spouting against the “Zionists and Americans” every Friday morning, I had a birthday party at home. It featured cassette tapes that played gloriously forbidden Persian music (recorded by self-exiled artists in Los Angeles), deep fried trout, and my mother’s patented homemade cake, topped with white frosting and giant red grapes. It looked like a big face with pimples.
Very few guests brought me presents. Instead, they brought my mother Chinese-made crystal bowls as hostess gifts and told me my greatest present was getting to say I was still alive. In hindsight, they were right.
And there were no goodie bags; only a few relatives who stuffed some pistachios into their coat pockets upon leaving our house. For some reason, no one asked to take home a slice of the pimple cake.
I’ve more or less taken on a part-time job by trying to plan my son’s fourth birthday party at a local park.
Over 30 years later, I’ve more or less taken on a part-time job by trying to plan my son’s fourth birthday party at a local park. I first cross-checked the date with other parents (there are at least two other parties taking place the same day), then secured all of their emails so I could send them an online invitation. I searched for a cute theme and messaging for the invitation, since “Let’s celebrate that we’re alive!” no longer applies (or, in a pandemic, does it?).
The party will be fish-themed because my son is going through a clownfish phase. I’m making detailed lists of everything from how many paper plates will be needed to what songs a lovely children’s entertainer should sing. I even bought a giant, inflatable whale costume for my husband, complete with a little battery-operated fan near the rear-end that will ensure the costume is properly plump and tall (the head reaches over seven feet). If the giant whale terrifies any children, I’ll show them a picture of Saddam Hussein and say, “Now this is the real face of terror.”
I don’t know if I’ll secure everything that’s needed for this birthday party. I have a job, household responsibilities, a family, an emotionally-demanding guinea pig, and a pile of laundry on which my kids have placed a makeshift flag and declared as their own sovereign territory.
But the real bane of my existence is the demand for something I find truly noxious: the goodie bag.
Yes, I must prepare 50 bags containing all sorts of “goodies” for children to take home. Thankfully, Amazon has many options for fish-themed items that will be used once and discarded by other adorable four-year-olds. Unfortunately, I am fantastically, inflexibly cheap.
Is it an indescribable blessing to have kids and to plan their birthday parties? Of course. It’s also a blessing to be able to afford everything from a birthday cake to boxes of kosher pizza ($23 per box). If you see me slightly choking on all that rennet-free, overpriced kosher cheese, you’ll know why.
Do I love my child’s friends (as well as my own) and truly want to offer them a few hours of love, play, togetherness and refined sugar? Of course. This is the first year my son is having a birthday party for his friends (we normally celebrate with a small family gathering at home) and I want him to have a whale of a time.
Decades ago, someone started offering take-home bags at birthday parties and made everything harder for the rest of us. I wonder if this person also had a job and a mound of laundry with its own geographic coordinates.
But I feel ambivalent about the expectation to provide goodie bags at the end of the party. Who is expecting these bags? Not the parents, but the kids. Decades ago, someone started offering take-home bags at birthday parties and made everything harder for the rest of us. I wonder if this person also had a job and a mound of laundry with its own geographic coordinates.
I can’t help but ask, “Isn’t spending time with friends at a park its own gift (or goodie bag)?” If not, how about attending a party with pizza, a singer and an inflatable whale that will probably trip over its own fins on the grass? Can the kids take these memories and put them in a metaphorical goodie bag for years to come?
No, no they can’t. One of the reasons my mother and father lost everything and escaped to America is so that, 30 years later, I would have the freedom and resources to stuff plastic toys and bubble wands into goodie bags at their grandson’s birthday party. With great redemption comes many Amazon packages.
And my mother continues to ask me about the planned cake. Before she could head to the market for massive red grapes, I informed her that at least one guest would most likely be allergic to the fruit.
“Remember when you made me descale a whole trout for my sixth birthday?” I asked my mother recently.
“No, but no one could rip apart fish quite like you,” she responded. “Your work was very precise.”
I was flattered. “What a difference from the birthdays I had as a kid,” I observed.
“Not really,” said my mother as she cut a tangerine open for my kids. “Both parties include some sort of fish.”
Tabby Refael is a Los Angeles-based writer, speaker, and civic action activist. Follow her on Twitter @RefaelTabby
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