My son was turning three. I was counting forks.
A birthday at a water park had sounded wonderfully simple when it was still a sentence. Children could play. Everyone could eat. We would all be outside.
Then I started counting the people included in “everyone.”
The first food enquiry was for about sixty-five guests. The list kept growing.
Every time I thought I had finished, I remembered someone else I wanted there. My notebook was beginning to look less like a party plan and more like an attempt to seat everyone I had ever been pleased to see.
We had booked the Orange shelter at Cedar Park Resort in Bowmanville. There was somewhere to gather, somewhere to put the food, and a place I could direct people to without waving both arms across a water park.
I found this reassuring.
For approximately an afternoon.
Growing up in Scarborough, I had developed a lasting affection for South Indian and Sri Lankan food. Feeding people that way felt familiar to me.
We had Sri Lankan food from Nantha, and sandwiches alongside it. A little of both made sense for our crowd.
The menu was one decision. Getting it to the table was several more.
Who needed a vegetarian option? What would the children eat? Who would meet the food at the gate while the rest of us were already inside?
I wrote the questions down. Each one had a person sitting behind it.
Someone who would quietly make do rather than ask for something different. A child who would decide a meal was spicy before tasting it. A parent who would feed everyone else and forget to take a plate.
I knew that last woman. I was making her a list.
I also looked into face painting.
Fifteen children. An hour sounded generous until I imagined fifteen people each making a decision about their face.
I have taken longer choosing nail polish.
I left the enquiry open on my phone and went back to the food list.
On the day, I tucked the napkins beneath a packet of forks to stop them blowing away. Someone needed a fork. I lifted the packet. The napkins made their move.
I caught one against my dress and reached for another, still answering a question about where the food should go.
“Here,” I said, indicating a space that currently contained my phone, a bag and my elbow.
Beyond the shelter, water splashed and children called to one another. Every so often I heard my son’s voice among them. I would turn towards it, then somebody would ask me something else.
My husband arrived beside me with a plate.
“For you,” he said.
“In a minute.”
He stayed where he was.
I recognised this as a reasonable response.
Around us, people were passing food along the table. Someone shifted a bag so another person could sit. A question I had been about to answer was answered by somebody else.
For a moment, nobody needed me to locate anything.
I looked for my son.
There he was, legs swinging beneath the bench, busy with his own afternoon. I had spent weeks thinking about what he might need. Just then, he seemed quite pleased with what was in front of him.
Three.
I had written the number beside so many other things that I had hardly stopped to look at him with it in mind.
The last empty place had a bag on it. My bag. Full of spare things in case somebody needed something.
I put it underneath the table and took the plate.
My son looked up as I sat down, then went back to what he was doing. I could stay there without becoming the next activity.
Someone passed me the napkins. I took one and left the rest within reach.
For a little while, I had nothing in my hands but lunch.