Oh, to be a child again!
Children’s parties are the happiest gatherings, because they celebrate not just a child’s birthday, they celebrate the child in every adult. Sometimes, the adults outnumber the kiddos, ultimately becoming the movers and shakers of the party.
Adults never really lose the child in them that delights in make-believe, gleeful nursery rhymes, storybook cakes, balloons and happily-ever-after. Just like Disneyland is the holy grail for children and parents who aspire and perspire to bring their children there, children’s parties are the elixir of adults (including yayas) because they can shed off their adult selves even just for an hour and wear the skin of a child. One who eats cotton candy without counting the calories, shrieks even if many are watching, cheers for every relay or hit-the-pot as one would in a UAAP match between Ateneo and La Salle, wipes off the tears one moment after losing in a contest, then joins another game in the next. Children move on fast from drama, make friends easily, fight easily and make up quickly. And children are easy to please — ice cream and cake mean the world to them.
I was invited recently to Chayeli Cabal Revilla’s seventh birthday party and her mom Chaye’s 50th, the former eclipsing the latter (by design). Held at the ballroom of the Crimson Hotel in Alabang, it was grand, but not stiff. The ballroom had a virtual ceiling of balloons in pastel shades of lavender, pink, yellow and blue. But the balloons were not just for ogling, as they were strewn all over the ballroom too, like pop-ups amid the ice cream, burger, and candy counters. A mini playground was built in a corner of the ballroom, where Chayeli and her guests could romp and jump. It allowed the children to be children, to run around, well, like children, and the mythical ponies in little Chayeli’s favorite movie.
“Chaylie loves the 2021 movie My Little Pony: A New Generation, which is all about friendship and restoring harmony by love and forgiveness,” says Chaye, the EVP and chief finance, risk and sustainability officer of the Metro Pacific Investments Corp. or MPIC. In fact, when I asked Chayeli her birthday wish, she answered, “To have many more friends!”
Since my only son is already 37, I researched about My Little Pony: The New Generation, and according to online sources, the film “follows Sunny Starscout, an earth pony who, after meeting the unicorn Izzy Moonbow, embarks on a quest to reunite all pony kinds and restore magic to the land.”
A lesson there for adults as well. Perhaps, in a child’s mind, or in an adult’s mind when the child grows up, a peaceful and amicable solution to the turmoil in the West Philippine Sea is possible.
And yes, that was the first time in a very long time (my son was into Ghostbusters and the Ninja Turtles) that I actually researched on characters from a children’s movie! Attending children’s parties, indeed, widens one’s horizons.
The party, which led me to flip through Google and not through Hans Christian Andersen or the Brothers Grimm’s books, was like a storybook for this adult, in more ways than one.
Amidst the revelry among the children and the adults (who also had their own loot bags, which included their own bottled scents from a perfume counter), I asked the other birthday celebrant, Chaye, who wears three vital hats as CFO, CRO and CSO of MPIC, how she balances work and motherhood.
“I guess by what I’m doing now, going away for work for three days but bringing Chayeli along with me,” she said.
“Both career and motherhood are blessings. We were given our work and families as part of God’s mission and purpose for us. Therefore, we embrace both, and so there is no need for us to balance or prioritize one over the other.”
She then added, “For me, no balancing needed, because I embrace both as God’s blessing and purpose for me; I do what I do with obedience and joy.”
And that, dear readers is truly more Gospel than fairytale.
(You may e-mail me at [email protected]. Follow me on Instagram @joanneraeramirez.)
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