Grandparents and parents put their presents together on Friday evening when everybody assembled to celebrate Mabel's birthday. And the reason Mabel is wearing a pink ruffled nightgown in all these pictures is Pajama Day at preschool. She had the privilege of deciding it would be Pajama Day at preschool because it was her birthday, and she also decided that her own pajamas would be the special nightgown I made 35 years ago for her mother when her mother was four years old and which now belongs to Mabel.
The first present Mabel opened was a unicorn backpack for kindergarten. She liked the backpack so much that she stopped the present opening right there and took Grandma and Mamma into her room with the new backpack to play school
Meanwhile, Dad made Mabel's favorite food for dinner – buttered noodles with Parmesan, plus cut-up plums in their own tiny bowl. He also made Birthday Cake – chocolate, served with chocolate ice cream, as requested.
Blowing out birthday candles is mystical work at the age of five. In one sense Mabel was already five. She was four on Thursday night when she went to sleep and five on Friday morning when she woke up, and she knew that very well. Yet behind this belief (and unexpressed) was the deeper belief that blowing out the candles is the true and actual moment when everything changes and a new age of being arrives.
