In Kather­ine Mansfield’s The Gar­den Par­ty (1922), Lau­ra Sheri­dan describes a flur­ry of prepa­ra­tion in the gar­den much the same way as a movie scene is staged. Table dec­o­ra­tions are placed just so. Sec­onds before the first per­son appears, the host, with a glare, sig­nals a ver­i­ta­ble ​“rolling!”, and every­one knows not to touch a thing until the guests do.

The prepa­ra­tions for my twins’ sec­ond birth­day par­ty fol­lowed a sim­i­lar course. The par­ty menu was a talk­ing point that last­ed for weeks, months, even years after the event. Only adults would have appre­ci­at­ed the intri­cate styling; pre­pared by my per­fec­tion­ist moth­er, each bespoke slice, sand­wich, and spread was extrav­a­gant. I stayed up until two am on the morn­ing of the par­ty, cut­ting cook­ie dough into the Hebrew ini­tials of each of my children. 

I had bought the aleph bet cook­ie cut­ters while liv­ing in Tel Aviv, before the kids were even born. Exam­in­ing them back in Mel­bourne, they seemed even more exquis­ite; each a con­tor­tion of pre­cious met­al hold­ing its own sto­ry. The cook­ies they formed were like arti­facts, each topped with but­ter icing. 

For the next decade in fact, that sec­ond birth­day par­ty would be the culi­nary mark­er, nev­er quite attained again, though not for lack of try­ing. Birth­days were a big deal in my house; prepa­ra­tions would start six months before the day itself. There would be edi­ble bee­hives and kan­ga­roo cakes, roller-skate par­ties and bush walks. Yet the aleph bet cook­ies would not appear again; they were lost to one of sev­er­al toy box­es full of game parts and puz­zle pieces. 

Then came Covid-19 and its after­math. More par­ties and mile­stones can­celled. There would be no bar mitz­vah. I reread The Plague by Albert Camus and told myself the worst was actu­al­ly hap­pen­ing; that we did indeed live in times so inter­est­ing that the phrase had become outdated. 

Jump for­ward anoth­er three years and talk of birth­day par­ties had dwin­dled to a vir­tu­al halt. Now I would be the one plead­ing, beg­ging — ​“Please, can I bake you a cake? Any cake. Any shape at all! Which one do you want? Please, have a par­ty and invite who­ev­er you like. What should I book? A restau­rant? A movie? Any­thing.” Words fell in vain on the floor, as they had the year before and the year before that. I began to yearn for the past and for the per­son labor­ing with ded­i­ca­tion and delir­i­um all through the night, icing cup­cakes and wrap­ping par­ty favors. 

The rab­bis say we leave with ques­tions and return with answers. I was mired in queries, like an ellip­sis. Soon their six­teenth birth­day was around the corner. 

Ever since their birth, I had not missed a birth­day. I’m not sure if that was a goal or a coin­ci­dence, but that’s the way things were. So when it sud­den­ly became appar­ent that I might indeed miss their six­teenth, I awoke from my fog of nev­er-end­ing ques­tions on rota­tion. I realised that if I were to pre­serve any sem­blance of birth­day cus­toms, I would need to rethink my pre­vi­ous­ly-booked over­seas research trip. 

But, a super­sti­tious fatal­ist at heart, I wasn’t com­fort­able tam­per­ing with pre-booked dates.One day, dur­ing an intense plan­ning peri­od of aca­d­e­m­ic research and trav­el, I woke up and decid­ed that being home for my children’s birth­day was still impor­tant, even more so than being home for Rosh Hashanah, which was tak­ing place at around the same time. With­in hours, I rejig­gered my accom­mo­da­tions, meet­ings and appoint­ments. It all seemed to hap­pen so eas­i­ly, it felt almost pre­or­dained in itself. I look back on that time with goose­bumps as I swal­low the glob­al changes and I real­ize what would soon come to pass. I brace myself for each new day in a world that has since been over­come with unten­able anx­i­ety and vio­lence of war. 

“Why don’t you stay longer — a few more days?” peo­ple asked me, as I raced around South Africa and Eswa­ti­ni, spend­ing tire­less hours with my back arched over dusty archives, try­ing to stretch the days so that they would accom­mo­date one more tour, one more inter­view, one more site vis­it. I man­aged to arrange it so that I would arrive home just in time — the night before their birth­days. My plane land­ed in Mel­bourne at half-past nine in the evening. I had already pre­pared every­thing for the next day’s cel­e­bra­tions. My chil­dren had allot­ted me a two-hour stretch over lunch, after which they intend­ed to return to their real birth­day cel­e­bra­tion, involv­ing a house full of rau­cous teenagers. I opened the front door, dropped my bags in a heap, and raced to see my children’s fif­teen-year-old faces one more time. 

On the morn­ing of birth­day num­ber six­teen, I had begun to ques­tion my choic­es as my eyes remained cement­ed shut — equal parts jet­lag and adren­a­lin. By the time lunch was upon me, I was stand­ing in what sound­ed like a full barn, wood­en walls bulging close to burst­ing with the cacoph­o­ny of a full string orches­tra, the drum­mer per­form­ing on my head. Con­ver­sa­tion was dif­fi­cult. I mis­tak­en­ly ordered a whole bot­tle of cham­pagne instead of a glass, and went in search of oth­er par­tak­ers of liq­uid lunch­es. The two hours my chil­dren had gift­ed me could not have passed quick­ly enough. Final­ly, I end­ed up where I need­ed to be — on my couch, head throb­bing, legs up. As the after­noon dwin­dled into evening, I lay there, deter­mined to stay awake until ten o’clock, at least. Mid­night would be too ambitious. 

__________

My world first shud­dered off when my moth­er died sud­den­ly on Mon­day Feb­ru­ary 17, 2014. Some­time on Sat­ur­day Octo­ber 7, 2023 between gig­gles over a Sein­feld rerun and the dizzy sight of teenagers laugh­ing, it shud­dered again. My children’s birth­day turned into the worst day I could nev­er have imag­ined. I spent the next few hours stuck to my phone as text mes­sages bounced in from Tel Aviv. It took me sev­er­al hours to com­pre­hend that the frag­ment­ed news her­ald­ed an his­toric change. 

In ways that do not make any sense tem­po­ral­ly or emo­tion­al­ly, it’s still my children’s six­teenth birth­day on Octo­ber 7, 2023. It has been the longest birth­day. It’s one I want to rip out of time and throw so far away it for­gets its pur­pose as a day in the calendar. 

I tell them—This is not your birth­day any­more.. Let’s for­get this one. And next year…we will change the date. Make it go away, the bloody footage that ago­nis­es through the hours and min­utes and sec­onds of that day, is the one con­tin­u­ing on, still rolling on screen. It is still today. The longest day. I tell them — this is not about you, or me or us. This is a day of mourn­ing which is etched eter­nal­ly — no cook­ie cut­ter to offer a feel­go­od metaphor. This is a day when all the bridges between our today and our yes­ter­day and our yes­ter­year have been burnt, as Ste­fan Zweig lament­ed. I It is a day when the unspeak­able past began scream­ing in deaf­en­ing tones, its noise caus­ing even more pain than the silence. It is a day when I went from pon­der­ing words like ​‘tes­ti­mo­ny’ and ​‘wit­ness’, in terms of the past, to leap­ing along with them into the present, as if I have, togeth­er with these words, cracked through time and back again. Yes­ter­day I was some­one who spent end­less hours look­ing back — as far back into the past as my spade could exca­vate, deter­mined to keep dig­ging until I reached myself once more. Today I want to close my eyes for fear of what I will find. All the parts have been con­fused and jum­bled into one box of time, miss­ing or bro­ken, like the con­tents of toy box­es my chil­dren once had in their play­room. Try­ing to fit the pieces togeth­er is futile; they make no sense any­more. Metaphors sound shal­low; com­par­isons are incom­pre­hen­si­ble. It’s not about me or us or cake. Every cor­ner col­lects more debris of a shat­tered sto­ry in time. What do we do with the pieces? How do we label them now? The era of the wit­ness was a closed chap­ter yes­ter­day. Where do we put what we’ve wit­nessed? The words slip in so eas­i­ly — but then slip away. Where does any­thing belong, now that the words have been mixed up, become illeg­i­ble on pages ripped up and spat out? It will be tomor­row, I tell my chil­dren. But not today. 

I think of Kather­ine Mans­field again. For decades, that vision of the par­ty in dis­ar­ray had drift­ed back into my thoughts at times when I had been trou­bled by the chaos of my own life: 

The rib­bons and the ros­es were all pulled untied. The lit­tle red table nap­kins lay on the floor, all the shin­ing plates were dirty and all the wink­ing glass­es. The love­ly food that the man had trimmed was all thrown about, and there were bones and bits and fruit peels and shells every­where. There was even a bot­tle lying down with stuff com­ing out of it onto the cloth and nobody stood it up again.

The imagery of birth­day mess is shred­ded of all mean­ing, along with every­thing else; ​“mess” sounds like a con­ceit­ed descrip­tion now. The phras­ing, once poignant and pierc­ing, is not so today:

“And the lit­tle pink house with the snow roof and the green win­dows was bro­ken — bro­ken — half melt­ed away in the cen­tre of the table.” 

“Today is a new type of bro­ken”, I tell them. Today is not about us. 

“But if not us, who?” 

Today, noth­ing mat­ters any­more, and every­thing does. The world has inched fur­ther from itself.There are too many ques­tions, and yes­ter­day has burnt all of the answers. But tomor­row is still coming. 

Ref­er­ences

Hirsch, Mar­i­anne. The Gen­er­a­tion of Post­mem­o­ry. New York: Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2012. 

Mans­field, Kather­ine. Bliss and Oth­er Sto­ries. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1920.

The Gar­den Par­ty and Oth­er Sto­ries. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1922. 

Wiev­ior­ka, Annette. Th Era of the Wit­ness. Itha­ca: Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2006. 

The West­ern Dai­ly Press. ​‘Mr Cham­ber­lain at Liv­er­pool: A Series of Speech­es, Patri­o­tism Still a Live Force’. Bris­tol, Eng­land, Jan­u­ary 21, 1898. 

Zweig, Ste­fan. The World of Yes­ter­day. Lon­don: Cas­sell and Com­pa­ny, 1947.

The views and opin­ions expressed above are those of the author, based on their obser­va­tions and experiences.

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