Party

Standing in this cavernous room, dwarfed by the vaulted ceilings and feeling as small as the coconut shrimp, you realize you've no business throwing a party in honour of yourself. The vast grey linoleum floor makes your sparkly flats look like tiny doll shoes. And you feel like a little girl in a frilly dress, waiting for your friends to come through the door.

You’re turning fifty, but you feel like five, a small child shivering at the thought of no one coming to celebrate your life. And equally afraid that they will come to celebrate your life, such as it is.

Staring out accusingly from red rosette eyes is the cake you ordered for the occasion, while nearby, the flowers you bought mock you with their gorgeous, opulent scent. The ice surrounding the beer is melting. And so are you. No one is coming to your party.

You finger the necklace your dad gave you when you turned sweet sixteen, a little heart on a delicate gold chain. When he discovered you were not as sweet and innocent as he imagined - that is, not a virgin - he called you horrible names and said you never should have been born. He died without ever taking it back.

Thereafter, you wore the necklace for every milestone in your life. Yes, it’s true you felt the heart represented the love you imagined he gave you before the downfall. But you also boldly display it as if it's a cautionary talisman, a warning to yourself and to others, such as your daughters, not to get taken in by people who give you gold-plated jewelry.

Full of self-aggrandizing delusions, you announced this celebration of making it to a half-century. Foolishly you persisted: bought the dress, applied for the liquor license, ordered the booze, called the caterers, booked your apartment complex’s party room, invited the people. What were you thinking? And where are the people?

Not a soul arrives, not a reveller, not a mouse. December is not an ideal month for a birthday, too much Christmas and too much snow. You admonish yourself, as if you had any control over when you were born. As if you had any control over being born at all. You shouldn’t even be here.

You shouldn’t be here at all.

The hour approaches. The wall clock strikes eight. Its relentless tick-tock resounds in the yawning craw of the room, growing louder in your ears, mimicking the rhythmic sound of a bouncing ball. The ball your dad confiscated when it landed in the petunia bed. Your blue-and-pink-striped ball that he wouldn't give back.

Suddenly and inexplicably, your first guest comes striding across the room to greet you. You sense his mustered confidence, for he feels just as insecure as you do in a roomful of no one and nothing. You guess that he wishes he hadn’t come, and you wish you could crawl under the table and die.

All the bad birthday parties from your childhood come crashing into your fevered brain. Your dad drinking too much and scaring all the kids with his vampire impressions. Didn’t he know that little children are scared of big men threatening to bite them? And your mom timidly singing happy birthday, while holding the cake so you could make a wish and blow out the candles - same wish, year after year, until it finally came true and she left him.

You offer your guest a drink, he gladly accepts. Nervously, he sips the wine as you take a long pull from your flask of whiskey; it burns all the way down but brings a modicum of calm. As you replace the lid, you see your aunt with her new husband enter. Like mirages, they come to you, smiling, and proffering something in colourful paper and bows. Your aunt hugs you, and the familiar scent of her dusting powder is both comforting and disturbing - she attended all your kid parties, in an effort to help your mother through the calamity.

You pour the couple some wine. And then, as if by magic, the invitees with their plus-ones-and-twos begin to file in. They talk and laugh and they eat the coconut shrimp. They spin upbeat tunes on the turntable and they dance.

At their joyous insistence, you unwrap their gifts: red lavender tea in a tin with an embossed woman on it; peaches in a Mason jar, glowing like little suns; a candleholder fashioned from an old barrel; dangly earrings that make little tinkling sounds; vinyl music, shiny and black as licorice; a smooth, blue rock, pale as the sky on a wan winter morning.

When the revellers are almost all gone you gather up scraps of brown rice paper, purple mylar, silver ribbon. Stragglers offer to help clean up but you send them on their way. Like Garbo, you want to be alone. Sitting down, you press the cold blue rock to your hot forehead: polished aquamarine, cool and luminous, much like your youngest daughter, who gave it to you. Your other child, your eldest daughter, gifted you the lavender tea - she is like the dancing woman on the tin, lovely and wise.

In the kitchenette you steep a potful of leaves and wonder how you managed to birth and raise such wondrous offspring. Some of your childrearing choices were learned from your own struggling parental unit and yet your two have flourished. And they came to your party, they were here.

You step out onto the small balcony, holding a cup of lavender infusion to your nose. The fragrant steam enters and calms your beleaguered system. Sipping, you notice that the sky is the same colour as your dress, a transcendent shade of predawn; black lace crawls over the cyan satin, just as dark branches edge across the sky. Below are gardens of winter bramble.

Setting the teacup on the railing, you unfasten your necklace and whisper forgiveness to the golden heart. Then you fling it to the frosty December wind. You are fifty going on five. You are two going on two-hundred. You are all the ages. And you're still here.