Sixteen

I guess the adventure really began months ago, as my step-daughter contemplated her upcoming sixteenth birthday. Someone really should shoot the producers at MTV for their stupid show, "My Super Sweet Sixteen" . If you have a 14 or 15 year old girl in your home, you've probably been subjected to veiwing an episode or two of it. In all my high mindedness concerning my dear, sweet D, I never guessed she would take a television show to heart. Oh, how wrong I can be at times. I won't elaborate on the interim drama that ensued with her mother, at least right now, but once it was all said and done, D got to have her very own Sweet Sixteen birthday party, paid for by her mother, chaparoned by yours truely and Dad of all Trades. Oh, and I did the cake.

Yes, I know it seems like a small thing, but, really, it's not ever a small thing for me to make a cake. You see, I am somewhat of a perfectionist. After having been repeatedly accused of not wanting to have "anything to do with the party", me, being a sucker for punishment, commenced to baking and sculpting and frosting. Yes, that is a car cake, yes it is pink, and yes.....it is large. Very, very large. 6 recipes, large, in fact. It's supposed to be a mini cooper. It wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but, after 20 hours of baking and frosting, it was close enough.

So the party was scheduled for the Saturday night after the big day. After a long day of feeling slightly nauseated, I gathered the three small children's belongings and paraphenalia, and dropped them off with my friend Sheryl. We drove to the appointed party place and commenced to partying. The place was rather nice, and the kids spent more time playing sand volley ball and shooting hoops than dirty dancing on the dance floor or playing tonsil hockey in the darkness, which freed up my husband and I to shoot some very bad games of pool and *gasp* DANCE.....while no one was looking. ;) I don't think the turnout was quite what Delani had hoped, but she was determined to have a good time anyway. When the designated party stopping time came, we cleaned up the balloons, assorted paper goods and chased off the party goers so they could roam the streets without the pleasure of our company.

While the party was *the* main event in D's eyes, for me, the real event was the obtaining of the driver's license. I have now accompanied all three of my step-children to take this test of all tests, in fact, I've been largely responsible for teaching them all to drive as well. If that won't turn your hair grey, I don't know what will. Our present to D was a 1991 Honda Civic, purchased (or purchasing, as the case may be) from my SIL. We gave her the car several months early to allow her to practice driving it since it's a stick shift. After lots and lots of practice, some tears, and a couple close calls, we feel reasonably confident that she can drive it without one of us in the front seat with the obligatory white knuckles, stomping at the invisible brake pedal on the passenger side of the car. The significance of this event is that after 8 years of non-stop chauferring of teenage type people, I get a break. When you have one or more small people to strap into car seats each time you leave the house, and bus service that doesn't accomodate either early morning seminary or after school practices, this becomes a very big deal indeed. The idea of not having to plan naptime around afternoon pickup, or not having to drag sleeping children out into the night to pickup kids after a dance or movie makes me positively giddy.

Of course, I am a little sad that this little girl is getting so big. She was 5 when her dad and I got married, so there's quite a lot of accumulated history between us. I've watched her grow from the little girl that was sad her dad kissed me at our wedding, into a bright, athletic young woman who doesn't seem to be in a hurry to act like a crazed and angry teenager, bent on self destruction. I keep bracing for it, but so far, we've been pretty lucky. I think that *just* maybe, she might still like us enough by the time she has her own wedding, she will be willing to laugh when I cry because her new husband kisses her.