Postcards From The Edge

POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE—OF PARENTHOOD
February Postcards

THE FAMILY GROOVE'S RESIDENT MOM-ENTATOR,
SASHA BROWN-WORSHAM, REMINISCES ABOUT POP STARS,
PARTYING LIKE IT'S 1999 AND THE PURSUIT OF PRESENTS

...CUZ I AM A MATERIAL GIRL

At my fifth birthday party, I wore my hair in pigtails, donned a blue gingham
dress, called myself Dorothy and marched around, insisting that I should win
each game.

After all, it was my party. I should win—and cry—if I wanted. And that was exactly what I did. I cried so much that my mother threatened to take away my gifts if I did not stop. Still, I cried. My five-year-old logic held that it was my birthday and therefore every game—be it musical chairs, pin the tail on the donkey, the cake walk—should have one winner. And that winner should be me. Clearly, I had a lot to learn, both about birthdays and the world.

Now my first baby is turning one. Besides the obvious drama and emotion surrounding this milestone that also heralds the start of weaning and two days a week of childcare, I am deciding what to do about her birthday party. In recent years, the birthday party industry has grown considerably from a couple magicians and a guy who could make balloon animals to the $500 an hour “children’s entertainers” and 20-foot trampoline blow-ups that mark today’s kid fiestas.

It’s enough to make any good liberal want to shout about excess, carbon footprints and corporate greed—a good liberal, anyway—which I, apparently, am not, since I plan to live it up, sister. My daughter is getting the works: three cakes, 40-plus attendees, a gift table that spilleth over. We are renting a massive indoor play space—for more money than some pay in rent—that will probably have scores, legions, mounds of gifts from friends, family and friends of the family, all helping her usher in her second year of life.

Material Girl

Is it over the top? Probably. At one, she barely even understands what a gift is, let alone why she is receiving scores of them. So isn’t it my responsibility as a good parent to teach her about the evils of greed and encourage her to follow the path of material celibacy? Um, nope. Not this Material Mama.

Was I born this way or did my love of all things Madonna and being an only child until I was nine create me? I may never be able to answer that question, but I will certainly ponder it while sporting a pair of Jimmy Choos and a Marc Jacobs bag. No wait. Scratch that. I am a mom now. Make it: Tory Burch flats and a Petunia Picklebottom diaper sack.

My parents coddled me. They bought me everything I wanted. When Cabbage Patch Kids were in, I had five. I formed a club in elementary school designed to shun the girls who did not have (or maybe could not afford) Guess Jeans and Coca Cola tops. In short, I was a nightmare. So, why would I want my daughter to even resemble the spoiled consumer I was at eight?

Because somewhere in this liberal body beats the heart of a girl who knew all the lyrics to Material Girl, backwards and forwards, whose father used to refer to her as his little MG. And while I know I do not want that exactly for my child, I also know that I cannot deprive her of a thing. I want her to have, have, have, even if it is trite, silly and probably unneeded. I want her to have the best clothing, the best toys, the best of everything.

Each time we go out, it is all I can do to resist buying her that pink, lacy bib or those adorable puffy overalls. How about that precious train set for the 12-month-old? She would love that. And as long as she has a train, she also needs overalls and a striped engineer hat. My husband worries I will create a monster but I worry that I may have already created one—in utero.

The blood that courses through her veins may already be infected with The Materialism. God forbid it should ever go airborne. This is my kid. And my kid would be wearing $128 True Religion jeans had her father not shaken me in the store as I was preparing to unleash my credit card.

Perhaps it is an issue of material versus emotional wealth. Perhaps I was lacking in the latter. My father traveled for months at a time during my childhood, sending stuffed bears when he missed birthdays, presents when I probably needed his presence. And yet, I drank it in. I learned to love what I did have, the brand new earrings, the sparkly pen, the brand new Swatch. The funny part is, neither of my parents was particularly materialistic. My mother had two pairs of shoes, one for summer and the other for winter. My father had clothing we wore in high school. But I knew stuff was love—that the more I acquired, the better.

Twenty-two years later I know the truth. I know the therapist’s line: things are not love. My husband refuses to give into commercialism and usually does nice things for me for major holidays—a foot rub in lieu of an iPod, a homemade CD over one from Amazon. Most of the time I understand that what we have is more important than a Marc Jacobs bag, the time we spend more precious than the ruby bracelet I have been coveting for the past few months or the iPhone screaming my name from its home at the Mac store. Most of the time, anyway.

As I have grown, I have at least started to understand the value of a dollar and begun to grasp the concept of cash over credit, thus teaching me that there are scores of things a girl just sometimes can’t afford. These are tough, but important lessons. And I am sure my little girl will learn them, if not from me than at least from her dad, the penny saving man with whom she shares half her genetic makeup (thank goodness).

He will teach her all the clichés I missed: a penny saved is a penny earned, etc. He will teach her to work for what she wants, the same way he worked for his Nintendo, for his bike and for his first car. When my husband wants something that costs more than $100, he goes home, goes to bed and ponders. If he still wants it the next day, he buys it. “There is a difference between wanting and needing,” he tells me. I believe him. And someday he will tell my daughter the same.

But not for this year. This year she will have her cake and presents, too. And I will resign myself to 1,000 more plastic items cluttering our living room and 25 more thank you notes to write, which my daughter will help me with by dipping her tiny hand in ink and stamping them—because even a trying-to-reform material girl knows the value of a handwritten thank you. Even if I am not thriftier than when I was at five, I am eminently more grateful.

—Sasha Brown-Worsham

Sasha Brown-Worsham is a mother and freelance writer who lives in Boston, MA where she writes and chases her suddenly mobile daughter around the house.