For All Tomorrows Parties

It was my beloved son's birthday on Friday and for a slew of reasons it wasn't really that much fun. Skint, bad venue, stuff to sort with the ex, and the consequent mood of the two grown-ups there didn't help. So I decided to have another when he was back with me on the Monday, a chance also to celebrate the resolution of a long standing problem resolved on that miserable Friday.

That was a whole lot more fun, as three of his favourite people turned up, his mate from over the road and my best friend and her son, both dancing fools and, in the case of the mother, someone who can ignite children like fireworks. Much more like it, I thought, big present, party poppers and bombs, cake, cake, pizza, cake, balloons, LOUD music and pointless skidding on shiny floors. He, we, had a great time, felt like a big family for an hour or two there, something he's always wanted, and me too, I guess. I felt sad too though, because we are a small broken family in reality, and I kind of feel that was his last kids birthday party, a lost chance to have given him what he wanted, and another of the growing list of lasts to remember. And to hold fast to.

Afterwards, with the boy in bed sleeping (or reading under the covers with the sneaky-light my sister gave him i hope) I had the glitter festooned front room and the dying fire to myself. Looking at the mantelpiece I counted 7 birthday cards. All beautiful, funny, loving; all from people who genuinely loved him (mostly family), but not as many as in previous years. Easy to workout why. For one, the ex and me couldn't afford the 10 boy event parties we would normally have, loads of people in that particular boat this year, but it's more than that. He has lost friends, and has made very few at his new school.

Because my son is not in the least sporty, no football no rugby, not even surfing or skateboards, nor interested in brands or TV, he has always struggled to make many friends. His interests are wide and varied but not 'normal'. No problem with that, neither are mine. Because of all that, it took him a long time to find the good friends he had at his old school, but sadly none of them of them went to his new one. Even worse I guess, as in all Big Schools the fiercely conforming nature of kids is amplified and encouraged by the usual hegemony of team sports as THE school achievement, and reinforced by the burgeoning presence of Americanised 'scene' groupings. The desperate need for kids of that age to identify with a group (particularly among girls I think), media driven via shit like High School Musical, magazines and teen films, splinters the school into fractions whose main purpose is to exclude, rather than include.

Maybe it was always so, as a young wolf I felt much the same, but the pressures on conforming and the number of groups were far less, and the mobility more fluid. They were more about personality types which could change, than about looks, stance and clothing. Looking back, even the lesser pressures I felt caused me to turn inward, and I spent some very lonely and unhappy years being bullied and keeping it from my parents, because they wanted me to be happy and I didn't want to worry them. Then, suddenly, in my last years at Big School, the werewolf genes kicked in, and I grew hair and muscle and sharp teeth, and started collecting scalps, big time.

Satisfying but ultimately wasteful. I'm smart, me, and I should have used that to get out and up, instead of wasting my time on revenge for the time I was forced into the wary emotional stasis of being the outsider. Took me a long time to grow into myself, rather than the opposite of what I had been forced into becoming at school, longer than I want it take my son. That's if there was problem of course. No real reason to think my spastic, stuttering vector of a life would be necessarily visited on my son.

So the next day We had a long chat about the new living arrangements, school and friends and hope and fears, and how it was all going so far.
Which is when I heard the words I dreaded.
"Dad, they call me names..."