The Things We Keep

On first birthdays, family traditions, and one year of becoming.

Everyone tells you they won't remember their first birthday.

And they're right, of course.

My daughter won't remember the gingham tablecloths or the little pies lined up for dessert. She won't remember her beautiful strawberry birthday cake, or the berries we hung from the trees for the children to pick. She probably won't remember everyone gathering around an old wooden high chair and singing Happy Birthday to her.

But I will.

Her dad will.

Maybe that's part of what first birthdays are really for.

Our Cutie Pie Is Turning One

We decided on “Our Cutie Pie Is Turning One” for the theme.

The invitations were gingham, and I carried the pattern onto the tables with matching cloths. There were pies from local farms—far too many, as it turned out, and guests were happily sent home carrying the extras. Fabric and a hand written “Thank you berry much for coming” were tied on little jams for everyone.

I made a prosciutto and melon salad with burrata. My mom made a berry salad with a creamy yogurt sauce. And in an effort to remember that hosting doesn't require making absolutely everything ourselves, we ordered sandwiches from our local deli and macaroni and cheese from another local shop.

It was simple summer food meant to be eaten outside and passed around a table.

The cake, though, was anything but simple.

My sister, who is pregnant herself, made the most beautiful strawberry cake for her newest niece, along with matching cupcakes for the little ones. Last year, she made a blueberry cake for our oldest daughter's birthday. Blueberries were her favorite then; strawberries are this little girl's now.

Without really intending to, we've begun another tradition.

I think that's one of my favorite things about having children. Sometimes you don't realize you're creating a tradition when you begin it. You simply do something because you love someone.

And then you love it enough to do it again.

The Things We Do Again

There were several pieces of the party that had been here before.

Much of the decor was reused from our oldest daughter's first birthday. Rather than feeling like I needed to reinvent everything for another child, I found myself loving the familiarity of bringing those things back out.

Especially the high chair.

For our oldest daughter's first birthday, we used an antique wooden high chair and hung a sign behind it with a little poem I'd written for her, along with the date and time she was born.

This year, I did it again.

A new poem. A different birthdate. Another little girl sitting in the same chair.

It occurred to me while preparing everything that perhaps this is how a family's traditions begin.

Not necessarily with something elaborate or something passed down for generations.

Sometimes it's just an old chair.

A cake made by an aunt.

A mother writing a few words about her baby because she doesn't quite know what else to do with the enormity of watching her grow.

And then one day you realize:

This is what we do.

Four Generations

My mom was beside me through much of the preparation.

She helped clean the house, prepare the menu and do all of those little things that somehow multiply in the hours before people arrive.

There is something particularly tender to me now about being mothered while I am mothering.

By the time everyone gathered, my grandmother—my mom's mother—was there too.

Four generations of women in one place.

My grandmother. My mother. Me. My daughters.

And there was my mother-in law as well, sweetly holding our girl and helping alongside.

I'm not sure I would have understood the weight of that before becoming a mother myself.

Family can be complicated. Gathering people together doesn't magically make every relationship simple or every history disappear. But I've been thinking lately about how much can exist alongside that complexity.

Someone can stand beside you in the kitchen and help you prepare food.

Someone can bake a cake for your child.

Someone can show up.

And sometimes love looks remarkably ordinary while it's happening.

Making a Home for It

Of course, because we are apparently incapable of hosting people without also completing a house project, my husband was finishing our powder room right up until the party.

When it was finally done, I felt so proud of him.

We've spent so much of this season working on this house—painting, fixing, planning and slowly making each space feel like ours. Sometimes the unfinished pieces can feel endless.

But then people arrived.

The door opened. Food was placed on the table. Children ran through the yard.

And suddenly the house wasn't a project anymore.

It was doing what we'd been working so hard for it to do.

It was holding our family.

Picking Berries

For the kids, we hung play balls from ribbons throughout the trees and let them “pick berries” to go along with the Cutie Pie theme.

It was one of those small ideas that ended up being far more exciting to them than anything elaborate could have been.

They ran through the yard collecting them, and I found myself thinking about how often that's true with children.

The things they love aren't necessarily the things that cost the most or photograph the best.

Sometimes someone just hangs pretend berries from a tree and tells you to go find them.

One Year

The night before the party, our daughter barely slept.

New teeth were coming in, and my husband and I were awake with her, worried about her pain and trying everything we could think of to make her comfortable.

It felt almost fitting.

Because while first birthdays can look beautiful in photographs, the year leading to them doesn't always.

There have been nights like that one.

There have been days when caring for two children felt natural and days when I wondered how everyone else seemed to know how to do this.

I've had to learn how to navigate the world with two little people depending on me. How to get everyone dressed and out of the house. How to divide my attention without dividing my love. How to comfort two people who need me at the same time. How to remain myself while becoming someone's mother all over again.

It has been beautiful.

And it has been hard.

I am proud of myself for both.

So when everyone gathered around that antique high chair and began singing Happy Birthday, I felt the tears coming.

I tried to hold them back.

There she was.

The baby we'd carried home.

The baby we'd stayed awake worrying over just the night before.

Now reaching toward this enormous strawberry cake while the people who love her sang her name.

Everyone says she won't remember this.

But I remembered everything.

Not literally every feeding or every sleepless night or every ordinary Tuesday. But somehow, standing there, I could feel the distance between the person I was when she was placed in my arms and the mother standing beside that high chair.

She had transformed.

And so had I.

Being in the Picture

I had spent the days before the party doing what mothers so often do before gatherings.

Thinking.

Cleaning.

Planning.

Making lists.

Wondering whether there would be enough food.

There was, incidentally, far too much pie.

But eventually there was nothing left to prepare.

People were here.

The berries were being picked from the trees. The cupcakes were disappearing into little hands. Someone needed something. Someone was laughing. The dog wandered through the yard. The cake was no longer pristine.

And for once, I tried not to stand outside the moment managing it.

I stepped into it.

There are photographs from that afternoon where everything isn't perfectly arranged. Someone is halfway into the frame. Children are reaching for the cake. I'm leaning over the high chair. My husband is standing beside me.

And I love them.

Because I don't only want my daughters to someday have photographs of the beautiful things their mother made for them.

I want them to see that I was there too.

The Things We Keep

Eventually everyone went home.

We packed up leftovers and sent people away with pie. The gingham tablecloths came off. The dishes made their inevitable return to the sink.

And another birthday became part of our family's history.

Soon I'll put the decorations away again.

The antique high chair will wait.

Maybe next year my sister will make another cake. Maybe years from now my daughters will roll their eyes affectionately when I pull out the poems I wrote for their first birthdays.

I hope so.

Because I'm beginning to think a family is built partly from these things.

The recipes we make again.

The decorations we carefully fold instead of replacing.

The people who stand beside us in the kitchen.

The old chair that holds another baby.

The cake made by an aunt.

The grandmother and great-grandmother who come to celebrate.

The little traditions we didn't know were traditions until we found ourselves doing them again.

Our daughter may not remember her first birthday.

But someday I hope she knows how deeply we celebrated the fact that she was here.

And perhaps that's what the first birthday is really for.

Not remembering.

Marking.

A year of her.

A year of us.

A year of becoming.

And all the things we loved enough to keep.