Mother's Day Tea

Almost two weeks ago was the annual Mother's Day Tea Party at my daughter's elementary school. My friend Tina and I signed up to be co-hostesses, which meant that we had to decorate a table, smile through adversity, and bring enough finger food to feed twelve people.

Upon arriving at the school cafeteria, Tina and I were greeted by the event coordinator, a woman named Suzanne who signed all of her emails in hot pink Lucinda Sans.

"I remember you!" Suzanne said when she saw me.

Once I saw her, I remembered Suzanne too. We had met last summer at community pool. Suzanne grew up in North Carolina, but moved to Philadelphia with her husband and two children eighteen months ago. At least twice a week, I would pull up my lawn chair next to hers and ask her to tell me stories of the Motherland, so I wouldn't forget.

"Tell me again about pulled pork sandwiches," I would say. "And houses that have double sinks in the master bathrooms and no popcorn ceilings."

Needless to say, Suzanne thinks I'm weird. Being from the South, however, Suzanne is far too polite and well-mannered to ever say this out loud.

One of Suzanne's goals for the evening was to teach the room something about Southern hospitality and good manners. Her lessons went over pretty well with all of the party guests, with the exception of Table 5, which was filled disproportionately with kindergartners and women from New Jersey.

"I could eat a buttload of those," said one of the kindergartners' grandmothers in a thick Newark accent, pointing to my dessert tray. "What's in this?" she asked, after taking a bite of a key lime tartlet (I made up the names of my desserts myself...they sound fancy, don't they?).

I obliged by rattling off the list of ingredients.

"What's in this?" she asked, holding up a mini cheesecake. I repeated the same list of ingredients, substituting cream cheese for lime juice.

"How about those?" she said, pointing to my third dessert, a chocolate mousse. I was growing a little tired of the routine, so I told her that she could find the recipes for all three desserts on the back of a can of store-brand sweetened condensed milk.

I wasn't able to count how many desserts the women from New Jersey ate, or in what variety or order, largely due to the fact that I was preoccupied with the task of getting my daughter to take a picture with me. Like most of the other girls in the room, my precious darling was still in shock over the expectation that daughters would actually sit next to their mothers at a Mother's Day tea party.

My daughter and her pint-sized friends reached across the table until their fingertips touched and puckered their lips into sad frowns. "This is so unfair!" they wailed.

"Knock it off," said one mom to her daughter. The daughter refused to speak to her mother for the rest of the evening. My daughter's revolt came in the form of a picture boycott.

"Just one picture!" I begged. "Please!"
It was not meant to be, at least not by her own free will.

At the end of the evening, and with the assistance of two very buxom New Jersey women, I grabbed my daughter and pinned her on my lap.

"Take it quick!" I yelped to Tina, who was holding my camera.

In the picture, I am smiling. My daughter is about ready to spit the contents of her mouth on my lap.


*****
Anyone have any similar tales of anguish?