This post should be entitled ‘A birthday party for a little boy with no friends’ because that’s exactly what the month of May turned out to be all about. Z had expressed interest in having a party on the beach now that we were living in Florida and my husband and I thought it was a great idea. So, one day at the beginning of May Z and I went off to ‘Party City’ and selected all of the supplies. We decided on a ‘luau’ theme which seemed appropriate. So, we came home laden down with tiki torches and leis and set about the business of writing invitations.

Z was so excited that he could barely sit still and he insisted on writing most of them himself. I watched him with such love. That sweet little boy who can barely ever sit without vibrating, plunked his little bootie down in the chair, stuck his tongue out in concentration and finished every last one of the invites. 20 in all, as that was the number of kids in his new class. For my part, I had gotten a class roster from his new kindergarten teacher and we sent them out asking for an RSVP by May 15th. Then we waited…

And waited…

And waited some more…

By the time May 15th came around I was fit to be tied. Only ONE person had even had the courtesy to respond and that response was a ‘no’. What the hell were we going to do? Z was talking every single day about his party on the beach. His life was in such turmoil right now and all I wanted was to make this day special for him. I had done everything I could to make this party perfect and exactly what he wanted, but I didn’t have control over whether the other kids came! This was going to be an unmitigated disaster!

What had I done wrong? Did the invitations not have the proper postage? Was it because Z was new to the class and had only been in school 6 weeks? Or, the most likely scenario, was it because my sweet boy had NO friends? We knew that he had been getting into trouble at school again. More of the same as in NC, tantrums, fits and of course, the odd aggression toward the other children.

I decided to call his teacher.

‘The other kids are scared of Z’, was the intel that I received when I actually spoke to her. ‘He’s a wild card to them, they don’t know what he’s going to do next’

This was another moment where my heart broke into a million tiny shards. Z actually did think he had friends at this school.

He told me he had been trying hard, that he thought the kids really liked him. I had believed him, not because it seemed plausible, but because I wanted to so very badly. But the reality is, he hadn’t changed. We were moving to MN to get him more help at Mayo Clinic, in the school system, BUT IT HADN’T HAPPENED YET! He was still the same boy, with the same demons he had always had. We may have moved to a completely different place, a paradise of sorts, where the palms trees and the sound of the ocean lulled you into complacency, but Z had packed up his emotional baggage with his clothes and toys and brought them right along with us. Stupid me for thinking it would be different!

And what a bad mother I was for letting him get set up for devastation! I should have known and protected him. I could have told him we would have a family party, take him somewhere special. I had no business at all telling him he could have a party when if I had thought for two damn seconds I would have realized it would never happen. That people would never come!

The teacher (bless her southern heart), asked me if she could talk to Z then as he was still at school.

‘Don’t worry’, she told me, ‘I can make this work’. So, I hung up the phone and prayed.

Two hours later I picked Z up at school and he had an enormous grin on his face.

Mrs. N said she felt so sad because she can’t come to my beach party, so she asked me if I would have my party at school in my classroom instead! Can I Mommy? Can we have the luau

just for the family?

Choking back tears at the kindness of this woman I told him of course.

I knew full well that this was against school policy and that his teacher was WAAAAYYYY breaking the rules and I was blown away at her simple and effective solution. Not to mention the gratitude for this wonderful human being coursed through me with a chant that went like this… Now, at least, Z would never know how rejected he had been. His heart will be saved! He won’t cry! He will have a great birthday!

In the end, Z loved his classroom party and we did have a family luau but with pizza instead of roasted pig, because roasted pig is just gross. The day was a wonderful success and as I snuggled

Z into bed that night he whispered,

Thank-you Mommy. I had the best birthday ever!

If he only knew…

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