The Audacity of Hope

It is left to Michelle to coordinate all the children’s activities, which she does with a
general’s efficiency. When I can, I volunteer to help, which Michelle appreciates,
although she is careful to limit my responsibilities. The day before Sasha’s birthday
party this past June, I was told to procure twenty balloons, enough cheese pizza to feed
twenty kids, and ice. This seemed manageable, so when Michelle told me that she was
going to get goody bags to hand out at the end of the party, I suggested that I do that as
well. She laughed.
“You can’t handle goody bags,” she said. “Let me explain the goody bag thing. You
have to go into the party store and choose the bags. Then you have to choose what to
put in the bags, and what is in the boys’ bags has to be different from what is in the
girls’ bags. You’d walk in there and wander around the aisles for an hour, and then your
head would explode.”
Feeling less confident, I got on the Internet. I found a place that sold balloons near the
gymnastics studio where the party would be held, and a pizza place that promised
delivery at 3:45 p.m. By the time the guests showed up the next day, the balloons were
in place and the juice boxes were on ice. I sat with the other parents, catching up and
watching twenty or so five-year-olds run and jump and bounce on the equipment like a
band of merry elves. I had a slight scare when at 3:50 the pizzas had not yet arrived, but
the delivery person got there ten minutes before the children were scheduled to eat.
Michelle’s brother, Craig, knowing the pressure I was under, gave me a high five.
Michelle looked up from putting pizza on paper plates and smiled.
As a grand finale, after all the pizza was eaten and the juice boxes drunk, after we had
sung “Happy Birthday” and eaten some cake, the gymnastics instructor gathered all the
kids around an old, multicolored parachute and told Sasha to sit at its center. On the
count of three, Sasha was hoisted up into the air and back down again, then up for a
second time, and then for a third. And each time she rose above the billowing sail, she
laughed and laughed with a look of pure joy.
I wonder if Sasha will remember that moment when she is grown. Probably not; it
seems as if I can retrieve only the barest fragments of memory from when I was five.
But I suspect that the happiness she felt on that parachute registers permanently in her;
that such moments accumulate and embed themselves in a child’s character, becoming a
part of their soul. Sometimes, when I listen to Michelle talk about her father, I hear the
echo of such joy in her, the love and respect that Frasier Robinson earned not through
fame or spectacular deeds but through small, daily, ordinary acts—a love he earned by
being there. And I ask myself whether my daughters will be able to speak of me in that
same way.
As it is, the window for making such memories rapidly closes. Already Malia seems to
be moving into a different phase; she’s more curious about boys and relationships, more
self-conscious about what she wears. She’s always been older than her years, uncannily
wise. Once, when she was just six years old and we were taking a walk together along
the lake, she asked me out of the blue if our family was rich. I told her that we weren’t
really rich, but that we had a lot more than most people. I asked her why she wanted to
know.